BROTHER CLOUD’S PANCREATITIS UPDATE
August 25, 2014, 1:25pm Nepal time
On Tuesday (Aug. 19) I was having a great day, having gotten a lot of things accomplished, when I was struck with terrible abominable pain radiating to the back and could breathe only with great difficulty. I knew what it was because this was the second attack of pancreatitis that I have experienced.
I was alone at home and in too much pain even to walk down the stairs and try to get to a hospital. Linda was on a village trip three hours away with our Bible college students and preachers and wasn’t scheduled to be back until late that night.
Thankfully, Joseph Han was in town, since his language study doesn’t allow him to make the Tuesday village trips these days, and he came over and got me to the emergency room. I was admitted that evening and have been here ever since.
They got me on powerful pain meds and ran all the tests and determined that it was indeed acute pancreatitis.
It started about three years ago when Linda and I were in the States for a couple of months, and I had my gall bladder removed. One of the stones was stuck near the pancreas, so they had to go in via an IRCP procedure and remove it, and the last thing the doctor told me before I was put under was, “One of the common complications of IRCP is pancreatitis; please sign this release form.”
The pancreas is like the brain center of the abdominal organs and is associated with the lungs, kidneys, heart, gall bladder, etc. It is very sensitive and has been called a raging bull when touched. It can injure other major organs, which is why it is potentially life crippling, even deadly. I met a man in a church a couple of years ago who was admitted to the hospital with pancreatitis. He was released a year later, with kidney failure, diabetes, and blindness.
After the pain meds took affect in the emergency room, Linda got back from the village, having cut short the trip. From having brought so many Nepalis to this hospital for treatment over the years with our ministry of helping believers and Hindus get good treatment they could not otherwise afford, Linda knows a lot of the doctors and nurses, including the 70-year-old co-owner and head doctor, and he has taken a personal interest in my case. I am being treated by about 15 doctors!
The first four days was a fog of pain and misery. I was taken off of all food and liquids and fed only through an IV. By Thursday, the doctors said things didn’t look good, and they were worried about which direction it was going. One lung had collected water, and I could only breathe properly with oxygen. I was still in a lot of pain, though it could be masked with meds. My kidneys weren’t working right. My bowels had shut down.
That is the day when the word began to spread widely and so many people began to pray for me. We have received many hundreds of e-mails and phone calls from all over the world. It has been an amazing outpouring of Christian love. The leaders of our church also came over and prayed for me according to James 5.
By Friday things began to turn for the better, and today (Monday, Aug. 25) there is great improvement. The kidneys are functioning normally. The intestines and bowels are working. The blood work is normal. Blood sugar is normal.
There is still pain at times. Though the water is gone from the lung, it is still not functioning fully and I am still on oxygen. And my blood pressure is a little high.
That’s where things stand.
It is a serious wake up call to change my diet, which I would only do kicking and screaming, being the cheeseburger-loving guy that I am. (I fear the KFC and Pizza Hut here will now go out of business.)
I was convinced that the pancreas problem was behind me, but once you have had an attack, the pancreas is weakened.
I don’t know when I will get out of the hospital. I am hoping and praying that it will be soon, of course. As anyone with personal experience with hospital stays knows, even when you don’t have pain, you are hooked up to noisy monitors, tied down by plastic hoses, prodded and poked and cut and stabbed, force fasting, restricted to a severe diet. You can’t get in a comfortable position. You can’t get decent rest. The current higher powers that be won’t let the CIA treat America’s worst enemies like this!
But I am in good care. This is one of Nepal’s top two hospitals, and we are in a private room in “VIP” status by the best doctors. (Don’t try to envision this in American terms, but it is the best Nepal has to offer.)
Linda, my favorite nurse, is here during the day, and men from the church work in two-man teams on the “night shift.”
And more than that, I am in the Lord’s hands. At the end of our first year in Nepal in late 1979, I got hepatitis and was very sick, and the Lord gave me the following promise.
“Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the LORD will deliver him in time of trouble. The LORD will preserve him, and keep him alive; and he shall be blessed upon the earth: and thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his enemies. The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness” (Psalm 41:1-3).
Having surrendered to live and minister in Asia’s poorest nation, we definitely “consider the poor,” and the Lord has comforted me with the reality of this promise in every sickness since.
I greatly appreciate your prayers. It has accomplished great things.
But I beg you to put Nepal on your daily prayer list and “make mention of” it before the Lord (Ephesians 1:16), that the Lord of the harvest will send forth labourers into His harvest (Luke 10:2).
This is the first time in Nepal’s dark history that there has been a great amount of religious liberty. The door is wide open in so many ways. The needs are in every direction. But truly sound, Bible-believing workers are so pathetically few.
In Christ,
David and Linda Cloud
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