Blackouts, brainscans and a God who heals!
I was 15 when it first happened, oÂn a journey home from a hiking expedition in Snowdon (Wales).
One minute I wa sitting oÂn the bus talking and laughing with everyone else, the next thing I remember was an ambulance man standing over me asking if I waas alright. Apparently I had balcked out and people were generally concerned. I put it down to being exhausted from the 70 miles we had hiked over 3 days ( it should have been 50, but we got a little lost but that is another story) and thought no more about it.
It turned out that it was the start of many and soon it was happening about oÂnce a week, after about a year this increased to about 3 or 4 a week. It didn’t really bother me much at the time, I saw it as an inconvenience, but all of my mates would just prop me up� and talk to me until I came round. It became a bit of a joke and they would make up stories about what I had missed whilst I was out of it. However my parents were worried sick and so we saw doctors, specialists and finally they sent me for a brain scan to try and find out what was going oÂn.
The day of the scan was memorable , we had to catch a train to London, oÂn the way to the station we bumped into a lady from the church I went to, who greeted us with some real encouragement. “Hello how are you? You’re off for your brain scan aren’t you? Oh don’t worry it’s probably oÂnly a tumour!” Well that was great my Mums jaw needed scraping off the pavement and for the first time I started to feel scared. To add to the drama of the morning, as I walked under a tree just by the station a pigeon deposited a rather large package oÂn my head that needed to be clean for the scan. All was not going well.
The scan was an interesting experience, yes they did find a brain, but they had to stick 20 electrodes to my head with air-fix glue and made me do different things for half an hour as reams of paper poured out of the machine.
Now I was really scared, what did this mean, did I have a tumour, did I have long to live all the thoughts that until then I had managed to supress came out. It wasn’t a nice place to be. The results a couple of weeks later were good in some way, I didn’t have a tumour; infact they didn’t really know what I did have! It was possibly a mild form of epilepsy but even that was uncertain. Despite not knowing they put me oÂn tablets which had� no� effect what-so-ever and the blackouts carried oÂn.
The blackouts were strange really! I got pins and needles in my chin which would quickly move up the sides of my face, when they met at the top I blacked out. The problem was as soon as it started I couldn’t speak nor do anything to stop it. The worst oÂne left me paralysed for a good half an hour, very frightening indeed.
Well that seemed to be my lot so you just get oÂn with life and the countless visits to the doctors or hospital.
Then oÂne Sunday a remarkable thing happened. At the church youth group a visiting speaker� had come and as he started so did the pins and needles in my chin, he spotted something going oÂn and asked if I was OK and someone filled him in. He said has anyone ever prayed for you, to which I managed to shake my head, he offered to there and then and did, I knew something had happened, I can’t explain what, but I didn’t blackout , God had stepped in and healed me, it was awesome.
I went home and told my parents who thought it was great and needed convincing. I stopped taking my medication (probably best to get checked first, but I knew), the doctors wanted convincing as well. They were convinced in time as that Sunday night proved to be tthe end of my blackouts, the doctors could not explain what had happened even though I told them very clearly. For me I praised God and still do, before that day healing was just something that happened in the New Testament, now I saw God still healed and used ordinary people in the process.
I am 38 now and am still blackout free. God is a God who heals.
