All My Help Comes From the Lord

Several years ago, I was admitted to the hospital with excruciating pain in my left side. Initially, they thought it was a urinary tract infection, but after an abdominal ultrasound, they discovered I had a kidney infection. Then I heard the comforting voice of the Holy Spirit: “Dawn, pray your way to victory.” Right there and then, I knew my only source of survival and help would be in praying to the Lord. I learned to pray when I did not feel like praying.

Psalm 121 became my daily affirmation. I worshiped the God of heaven in the hospital room—weak, battered, and ravished by pain and fever.

For the next seven days, I was treated with seven different antibiotics, but instead of improving, my condition grew worse. On the eighth day, the doctor walked into my room, held up a bottle, and said to me, “This is the best antibiotic on the market to treat kidney infection; there is no other like it.” A second scan revealed that my kidney had started to form abscesses on the exterior. It was Sabbath when they performed surgery to drain the abscess and obtain a specimen. After that, the sample revealed I had methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a type of bacteria that is extremely difficult to treat because it resists most antibiotics. The medical team was astonished because five previous specimens were negative for MRSA. With the correct diagnosis, I was given vancomycin—one of the few antibiotics to treat this superbug. The infectious disease doctor told me that he had never had a case of MRSA affecting the kidney in which the bacteria had remained undetected in the blood.

He said he could only hypothesize that it was present, and my body fought it. Five days later, the fever was gone, and I was released from the hospital to a rehabilitation facility to continue my recovery. It took nearly ninety days for my complete healing.

Whenever I reminisce about the difficult journey with MRSA, I am reminded I am now closer to God and am growing in Him. I am eternally grateful to Him for not only giving me a second chance at life but also teaching me that prayer is the source of victory.

Dawn M. Johnson