Hi Doves,

I have been reading your encouragements and prayers with thankful hearts, but only today I am able to sit up and write this one.  I am so thankful to know that there are fellow Christians who really care and it is such a blessing at this time. Thank you all and particularly Ted Porter, Jan Mikael , Peggy McIlveene and all others who have been encouraging and praying for me.

I was rather disappointed that the blessed hope did not take place especially after all those strange dreams and rainbows, then again as the Lord said that His thoughts are not ours.  He sees the bigger picture, whereas we see through a dark glass and have a tunnel vision.  Only problem was that it did not give me time to recover from my disappointment,  for the next day was my operation.  But my family was a great support and everything went well.  Praise God!

I had to have a cyst removed from my mouth; lower front jaw- the cyst had eaten away the front, lower gum and had spread to the  back and front of the lower teeth.  All this was because I tripped and hit my chin on the washing machine 6 yrs ago.  At that time I had a some pain and discomfort after the fall, but I did not take it seriously.  Nevertheless a cyst had formed and had started gnawing away at my gums and dislodged my 4 lower teeth.  Only at the  beginning  of this year I felt sharp pain and that too I did not attend to it immediately, hoping optimistically that it would go on its own.  Eventually by the time I was referred to the Oral and Maxillofacial surgeon it had become quite advanced. Again I had a 2 months wait,, for the Dr was attending a seminar in US for a month and further there was no available date to perform an OP even at the private hospital. The doctors initially suspected that the cyst was malignant and then they gave the good news that it was nothing to worry about. That was such good news for us.

The doctors were good, and they did not operate from the outside of my chin,  for not wanting to mar my chin, instead they did it from the inside, which makes it harder for them to work on  me.  But the OP itself was 45 mins and within an hour I was awake.  I had never gone for a surgery all my life; they were worried for once before with the local anaesthesia  I nearly blacked out, when they did the biopsy.  I am a little underweight for my height. In fact with all your prayers and my family being with me and above all the Lord with me it went off well.   I did not bleed as much as they expected and was home the next day.  I am on antibiotics and only today, after 5 days, my swelling on my face has abated with ice packs.  All these time a stranger was staring back at me, whenever I looked in the mirror :)   I still have the root canal therapy to do in a month’s time.  But the main thing is that this OP is over.

Thank you once again for all your prayers.  I want to thank Jan for showing so much concern for me, when he had his own OP the very next day.  I pray that he would come out of it good as new.  Operations can be daunting but the Lord normally brings out his people good as news.  My mum who is 85yrs, had a major OP 1 ½ yrs back and walked out of the hospital without any complication within 10 day.  In fact the doctors were very sure (the blood test showed so) that the tumour she had in her ovary was malignant but it turned out to be benign.  The Lord is good!  I pray that Jan too would be back on his feet soon.  This seems to be the season for OP(s) for the Christians.  My mum has one other OP on the back burner, but due to her age the Dr has put it off.  I have a couple of them lined up, but hopefully it should stay dormant.  My son has one scheduled after Sept.  I guess we can’t go up the easy way without our faith being tested.

Thank you once again for your support, understanding and prayers

God bless you all.
YSIC

Shanthi