How My Doctor’s Biggest Mistake Led Me to Jesus

Everyone’s special, right? But how many people do you know who can move their knees caps out of their sockets and several inches around their legs? Just me, right?

I had inherited this physical problem from my mom. My knee caps would fall out of place and cause me to fall and break my legs at least once a year. Consequently, I could move my knee caps all over my knees and gross out my friends. So nurses Mom and Aunt Hazel decided I couldn't be a socialite, or a dance floor queen, if I were always wearing casts.

They knew of a famous orthopedic surgeon and arranged for me to have surgery on both knees. Dr. J. Vernon Luck Sr., accompanied by Dr. Munsen and Dr. Nichols, performed the surgery at the Los Angeles Children’s Orthopedic Hospital in June of 1960—as soon as school was out.

However, things did not go as my mom and aunt planned. During the surgery the doctor accidentally cut a nerve in my left knee, leaving my leg and foot paralyzed. Because of this, what the doctor called his "once in a blue moon" case, I was confined to bed with casts for three months, and a leg brace for many years more along with six more major surgeries over the next four years.

The doctors graciously covered the cost for all the following surgeries and my mom did not sue. Back in those days, most people trusted the doctors and didn't sue for accidents. Dr. Luck went on to pioneer limb reattachment in the year after his biggest mistake ever. He became so famous that an important research hospital is now named after him: J. Vernon Luck Research Center. I now wonder if his “mistake” may have pushed him to research and develop how to help reattach nerves.

This was the beginning of many painful tests and treatments. As a young girl, I remember lying in my hospital bed feeling pretty sorry for myself and not knowing how to relieve the pain. My mom and aunt were great. I don't remember how they got my home with two full length leg casts, but they did. So I was confined to bed (and you can read in there using bedpans and having sponge baths) for the summer. A few friends came to visit, and my sister was there through it all. She still is. Like my mom and aunt, she too later became a nurse, and went on to become a nurse practitioner.

During this time in bed, I read everything my mom brought me and was still bored. Here's my amazing mom from an old church photo I just discovered!

Finally, out of desperation, my mom checked out a Bible from the library (we didn't have one and only went to church on Christmas and Easter). She figured that would take me a little longer to read. She was right. But I did read the whole thing, cover to cover.

It was through this reading of that Bible that God began to reveal Himself to me. I found I liked the man Jesus that  I read about in the New Testament (when I finally got there after reading the whole Old Testament first!), and how He loved and cared for people in need, like me. And I soon came to love the real Jesus I had not previously recognized, but had encountered in those experiences I wrote about in earlier blog entries.

So now I began the all-important high school years, with a disability I never imagined…..and a relationship with the Living God I also never imagined. And God said that it was good. And this “evening and the morning” were the next day of my life.