Today was somewhere around our 9th doctor’s appointment among 5 different providers over the last couple of months to get this pressure sore on her bum treated. We have tried a variety of bandages, ointments, and currently are using Desitin (yes the diaper rash cream) per doctor’s orders, to protect it while it heals. It has not been a straight forward process at all. To get it to a place of healing we have had to adjust her wheelchair and do all sorts of uncommon treatments that I would have never thought of.
Despite my worries, it is in fact healing! Pressure sores can take a while to heal depending on how deep they are and how many layers of tissue were affected. And if the get to the point where they are open but begin healing, they will slowly heal from the bottom up and dead tissue and debris of various alarming colors can begin to appear. Almost making it seem it is getting worse, when it is in fact healing.
Rylie’s sore started a few months ago and because it reached a stage 2, and opened, it is now going through stages of healing. Because her body is pushing the dead tissue to the surface, it sometimes needs to be cleaned of the debris which is what the doctor did this morning. It was painful for her and caused some tears, but I’m so encouraged it is healing!
This wound has given me horrible anxiety the last few months. Rylie has been through a lot, and in the past has gone through much more intense physical ailments and even surgeries in comparison to this sore. But for some reason this sore has made me insanely worry. Maybe because it changes so much, and I am never sure if it’s healing or getting worse? Maybe because I’ve never experienced caring for something like this?….
It made me think of emotional wounds. And how I always want to feel better quickly. I don’t want to feel anxious or depressed. Or if there is something specific that has hurt me, I generally tend to stuff it away and just try not to think about it. I may even reach for something to ease the symptoms quickly. I pray for God to take it away, and miraculously bring me joy. But it is rare that he does that. I find myself often in a bit of a tantrum or sinking into despair and thinking of all the ways it could get worse or how I wish something would have turned out.
He has been teaching me a lot about surrender lately. Surrendering my daughter, her medical needs, her discomforts…… surrendering my wants, the way I wish things could be, and the picture perfect dreams I built in my head for my life……. Surrendering my soul….
Our emotions are so complicated, intertwined with the rest of the complexities within our brain. And because life is so fast, and there is so much to do, and so many distractions to distract, I know I often to not take inventory of all of the emotional and spiritual baggage that piles up in my brain and my heart. I just keep throwing bags on top of bags until I hit that emotional limit where there is an emotional earthquake of sorts and I just become completely irrational.
Emotional wounds have layers just like pressure wounds. Some have multiple layers because I never stopped to deal with the first layer, and now that I have begun a slow process of healing, there is “dead tissue” of sort that needs to be cleaned. When a doctor debris a wound, he uses a metal tool to scrape and pull away the dead tissue. And because it is still technically attached to the body, this is a rather painful process and can produce a bit of bleeding and drainage afterwards. Even my daughter who has hulk-ess levels of pain tolerance began to cry today when he had to debride (medical term for removing dead tissue) her wound.
So also, emotional healing often looks a lot different than how we would have imagined. And often will take a lot longer than we would like. God can use the most unlikely of circumstances or experiences in our lives to bring healing to different places in our soul. Often starting at the core of our wounds so that they will heal from the inside out. When we really begin to surrender and let him do the necessary work as he sees fit, he will use different things in our life to bring about the necessary pruning, even if it is excruciatingly painful. Sometimes in the form of seemingly unbearable circumstances.
So here’s to a painful debridement of the soul, and applying the figurative Desitin even when by all accounts it seems to not make sense. Because, Jesus heals.
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