How it all began: Part 2

Part 2 in an ongoing series

Once you get diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, you're left with a lot of questions. But at age 12, the questions are better left made by people like your parents. Mine had many, and they still do to this day. Still, twenty-five years after that blood test came back with a positive rheumatoid factor, they have just as many unanswered questions as they did the first week.

What did it all mean? Is it treatable? The biggest one, the most confusing one, was how did this all happen?

There were, and remain, a lot of theories.

One doctor asked if I had been to Mexico lately and drank the water there. No, my folks answered.

Our own theory was that an injury I had suffered a month earlier in our home's backyard was the culprit. I'd had arthroscopic knee surgery to fix torn cartilage as a result, and maybe - just maybe - I was victim to a compromised operating room. It's something no one could prove.

Or was it the result of a childhood food allergy to processed food? Special diets through the years have seemed to rule that out.

Or did I just simply become a statistic, another one of the thousands of young people who got JRA for the same unknown reasons why any of us catch diseases, big and small? Over time, we all tend to settle into the easiest answer because, honestly, we are too busy managing the diseases daily changes to have any time to find out alternative answers. It's the quandary anyone with a serious health condition faces.

The disease in Year One, wasn't totally active, looking back. I was immediately put an a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. It wasn't until Year Two when I was introduced to steroids like cortisone and prednisone. A few years later, I started seeing my first pain medicine.

After the first 12 months, I still only had arthritis in my hip and knee. I was still a fairly normal kid, and played sports at school. I even played competitive lacrosse. It wasn't all that bad. Doctors even held out hope I would go into remission by age 16, a hope we held tightly, even when I turned 18.

How it all began: Part 1

Part 1 in an ongoing series

Leave it to Beaver was on the television, me in my bed watching intently as any typical 12-year-old might. Mom was sitting next to me in a chair, a constant companion in my private hospital room. They give private rooms to people who either pay the extra money to get one, which we did not, or for folks, like me, who are really sick.

How sick, that was up to the 72-hour blood test being performed to single out the infection that had made its way into my blood stream and surfaced as an inflamed left hip filled with puss. As I lay in the hospital, a long clear tube was jetting out of the hip and fed into a small round plastic container. It was slowly siphoning any infection left over from the surgery performed to clean it out a few days earlier.

This, as it turns out, is normal procedure for these types of things. My close-knit family sure wasn't accustomed to this. This was probably the first time in my family's history that one of its own was in such a precarious medical state. I mean, the worst thing that had happened to us was when my older brother Darrell busted up his forehead while riding a bike too fast as a kid in suburban New Jersey.

The five Popes were now living happily in Solana Beach, Calif., a picturesque coastal town that was quintessential 1980s San Diego. Wicker furniture and macrame were common in every home. It's the birthplace of things like street luging, fish tacos and drinks made with wheat grass. It was, and still is, a great place to live.

I was a pretty typical pre-teen back in 1984. I played Pop Warner football, rode a BMX style bike to school and always wore long shorts and Vans tennis shoes. My major concerns back then were getting to school on time and getting the high-score on Asteroids at the local 7-11.

But one April morning changed all that. Instead of heading off to Skyline Elementary school, I headed to the hospital with a raging fever and a left hip that hurt so bad, mom had to avoid bumps in the road while in the car because it would somehow make me feel worse.

As soon as I got to Scripps Hospital, I went into the operating room. I don't remember much more from that day but my memories are filled with what happened in the ensuing days as a two-week guest there.

In three days, I'd be given the diagnosis of Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Yes, at 12, you can get arthritis. Not the kind most folks know as they get older and their joints wear out. This one was different. It meant my immune system didn't know how to fight off the disease that had set in. In so many words, my body was turning on itself.

"There is no cure," I remember the doctor saying.

Of course, no one in my family would knew the journey that lay ahead. And as the doctor left the room, Leave it to Beaver was suddenly over.

Work towards patience and find your reward

Anyone who has been sick for an extended period knows that, during these times, we develop curious amounts of one important trait: patience.

Some say the real blessing from above actually lay in the waiting, you know, the time we spend pining and anticipating God's response to our tribulations. That time, as many know by experience, can take a long time. So what do we do during that time that can make us better people? Well, God talks about that very thing in his word.

It confirms that we all don't inherently have patience. We must work at it. Man, can't we all begin with patience? Nope. I've learned this time and again, whenever I'm in the hospital, or recovering from surgery, or waiting for career opportunities to happen.

James 1 even says we must work towards earning a beginner's level of patience. It reads, "Count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have it perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (NKJV).

Ecclesiastes 3 in the Old Testament talks about waiting for God's timing. Now that's something I've been praying a lot about lately. In verse 3, it reads, "There is a time for healing, a time to break down and a time to build up." Everyone can relate to that statement. Sure, we want things now. But read that again. To me, the passage kind of lets us off the hook. It says that it's OK to sit tight for a period of time, whether it's taking time to heal or mend. God is cool in that way. Rather than put pressure on us, He says, "Just chill out, friend."

Can't we all be helped by taking that literally? I know I can.

God doesn't stop there, however. In 2 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul says something very interesting which we can all rally around. It says in Chapter 1:3-4, "...the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other, so that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure, which is manifest evidence of the righteous judgment of God..."

Wow. He's saying, without mincing words, that our patience in the time of tribulation is what earns us points with the Big Man himself! So, it's actually to our benefit to be patient, however hard, because God sees our effort in this area. It's hard to do, don't get me wrong. But I know from my own experiences that if He's watching me, and approves, good things happen.

So remember, when times are hard because of your illness or condition, He's watching you. We can either choose to rush our condition (a trap we all fall into) or we can wait it out. And as long as our heart is in the right place, this period of waiting will pay off in the end. I hope it does for you, too.

One year down and the shoulder is healed

Back in April 2008, I had a shoulder replacement of my right side. This was the second such time for this type of procedure, the first taking place on my left in the summer of 1997. I was very nervous before this surgery because I worried that, perhaps like the one before, I would be left with difficulty reaching behind my head. You wouldn't believe how precious that motion is until you don't have it. For almost a year, I could not reach behind my head with either arm. My left side never healed correctly an the right side was so far damaged the doctor said it was not only bone-on-bone but the joint nearly wore through the socket completely. No wonder it hurt. So you can understand my thoughts of it healing wrong. Once the surgeon got in there, he said it was so worn, he could only perform a hemi-replacement, which is like having it half replaced. You see, for me, the plastic cup the new metal joint would normally seat could not be affixed properly.

Once I awoke from surgery, with my brother Jeff at mt side, I asked one question.

"Did they do the whole thing?"

"The doctor did a hemi," the nearby nurse said after looking it up in her chart.

I began to sob wildly. Devastation set in. I thought having a hemi would mean I'd never be able to reach behind my head again. But hat night, while reading, the Lord led me to John 11, the story of the death of Lazarus. Though Jesus arrived to give Lazarus his healing, the bible tells us He "groaned" inside Himself. Why? The crowd, including Mary and Martha, failed to show their faith in Him. In effect, He was saying we must believe on Him no matter if He is there in person or just there in our thoughts.

That is what we must always remember: Jesus is there for us through every bad thing and all we must do is call on Him. When we do, He shows up. I didn't do that for my shoulder, but Jesus showed up anyway and a year later, my fake shoulder works just as good as the original. By the way, my surgeon's name? Dr. Lazarus. No lie.

Handing off healing to Him

The foot reconstruction is complete. Taking just over four hours to finish the triple osteotomy, it's probably one of the the most invasive procedures somebody can undergo to correct a deformed foot like mine. What's a triple osteotomy, you ask? Well, osteotomy means "cutting of the bone," and the docs did a lot of that. In the end, he put in five large screws throughout the length of the foot, then three more connected to a small, metal plate on the left big toe. If this doesn't get it straight, nothing will.

It was pretty painful in recovery and still is. On the plus side, it looks more straight every day I clean it. This shot above was two weeks post-op when the doctor cut off the bandages and stitches for the first time. He pulled out 36 stitches from the foot, some on the heel and sole. God stuck with we every day in recovery. To get me to keep looking forward, He got me to help others. It's always the best cure-all. Go and do something for somebody else! get your mind off YOU! When you do that, you direct your mind and heart toward Him.