This past week, in an email, I bad-mouthed doctors as mostly worthless.
And they are.
But a few stand out to me as so very valuable in my life.
For many years, I would get sick with some kind of respiratory ailment.
It was a bronchitis of sorts. When you have an itch in your lungs, like a real ticklish, scratchy, heavy itch that you can’t seem to tolerate anymore, it feels so good to cough in a heavy way.
In fact, a heavy cough is kind of the way to “scratch” your lungs. My body has generally been on the strong side.
That includes some unusual features — my sneezes, for example, are so loud and booming that they frighten people three houses over.
My coughs are mightier than the growl of a bear in the Colorado hinterland.
Well, little did I know this was what I was doing when I felt the urge to cough:
Step 1.) I’d get an itch in my throat.
Step 2.) I’d cough a little.
Step 3.) That coughing would further irritate my lungs.
At any time until here, I could have put a stop to this, but instead I would then do this:
Step 4.) I relieved my lungs by coughing loudly.
And that would feed a recurring cycle of Step 1 through Step 4. Well, once that began, I might be sick with that cough for two weeks. I might be sick with that cough for 6 months. Literally.
It started every autumn and it was impossible to know when it ended.
So sometime within a year or two of my 18th birthday, maybe I was 20, a doctor gave me a sober talking to.
He told me to stop coughing.
He explained to me that I get a very severe cough each year.
He explained to me that my lungs have been damaged by that cough and will recover.
But that will only happen if I stop coughing so hard.
If I do not stop having these seasonal illnesses, my lungs will be permanently scarred and I will live a much more sickly and much shorter life.
He explained that he knows it feels good to cough. But that my coughing was causing my illness.
The illness starts with very minor irritation that I “scratch” and I only make it all worse. If I had to cough, I could swallow the saliva in my mouth or I could drink some water, or some warm tea, but my job from this point forward was to stop coughing.
No more coughing allowed, and never any heavy bronchial coughing.
Some people who don’t know any better might say, “Well, how can you stop coughing? That’s a reflex.” I used to be that person. I knew no better. At least not until that doctor sat me down and gave me a good hard talking to.
Well, that behavior (from Steps 1-4 stopped) right then and there.
From the time that doctor sat me down and talked to me, I never went back to my old ways again.
Whenever my lungs were irritated from this point forward, I refused to cough.
At the same time, I moved to a little different place, though the climate was very similar, I stopped having months long bouts with bronchitis.
To this day I am grateful to that doctor.
Today, it being Christmas, I am reading the Luke 2 account of the birth of Jesus.
The book of Luke, authored by a doctor, is a little different that the other gospels. It’s neat hearing the story of Jesus from a doctor.
In the year ahead, I am committing to a pair of daily Bible readings — from The Daily Bible (NIV edition with commentary by F. LaGard Smith) and from The Geneva Bible (by Hendrickson Publishers).
I would like to encourage you to choose one of the above and to join me in reading the Bible cover to cover in the year ahead.
My preference for most people is to choose The Daily Bible. It is simply written and edifying.
For those looking for the more classic language to join me in the Geneva Bible.
Anyway, tap below to sign up for free. And follow the prompts if you wish to also join the paid online community.
In that community you can join me and others in some neat discussions and studies of the Bible in the year ahead.
And for $200, you can buy an unlimited number of memberships to the online community for the next year, which you can gift to as many people as you wish — all you need to do is send me their email address.
It makes for a neat extra little Christmastime gift.
Tap here to join me in the year ahead: 55hours.org.
Allan Stevo