Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
“Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.

• Luke 4:22-24

I have been exhausted lately.  I only had a low-grade fever one day, and being “elderly”, the doctor would laugh at me saying that 99F was a low-grade fever.  As they have discovered, 99F is almost normal for someone of my age.

But that wasn’t all.  I was having digestive issues.  I had great blood pressure readings, but my blood sugar was about 50 to 80% higher than usual.

I just felt achy, and I would have preferred to sleep all day and all night.

This lasted for two weeks.  I kept telling myself that I was not sick enough to see the doctor.

My wife mastered this technique.  She would get congestion in her chest, but she would not see the doctor until it was a more severe medical issue.  She had done that growing up, and it resulted in medical conditions that stayed with her, but as she put it, her parents could not afford the big medical bills.

But she had a point.  If you have a head cold, the doctor cannot do anything.  Sinus issues?  Take something over the counter.  But Bronchitis?  Now we have something a doctor needs to treat.

As it turned out, I am very glad I stayed at home.

I get sinus issues this time every year anyway.  But the point that I had been sick for two weeks is key.  I have a two-week pill pack.

For two weeks, I would take my evening medicines, counting them each time, coming up one pill short each night.  I would forget about it by morning.

So, after two weeks, I started to refill the pill pack.  And one medication was missing, a diabetes medicine.  And another of the medicines had two bottles in my bag that I use to hold my medicine bottles.

I was not taking double of one and none of the other, but somehow, I had tossed one bottle into the bag (emptying the bag and only putting the bottle back into the bag once I have the medicine for the two-weeks in the pill pack).  And since the medicine that I had two bottles of was a distinctive pill, I noticed it was not in the pill pack.  Thus, a normal looking round white pill was missing for two weeks.

I am hoping within a few days that the blood sugar will be back to normal, and I will start feeling better, but I am so glad that I did not go to the doctor.  I would have sworn I was taking all my medicines as prescribed and then he would go into panic mode trying to add another medicine.

When all along, I did not know that I had been missing the same pill every night for two weeks. And as it turned out, it nearly took two weeks for me to get the blood sugar back under control. And yes, I am feeling a little better also. God is good.

And God has a sense of humor.  This was definitely one of those “Physician heal thyself” moments.  Next time, I will double check everything.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.