Blood Patch

I was in excruciating pain! My neck and head hurt so bad I thought I had been in a car accident. I tried to endure the pain through the weekend and went to work on Monday morning. By then, I knew I needed to go to the emergency room. The pain was simply too intense. I suspected what might be happening to me.

The previous week I had spent three days in the hospital having tests run. For an entire year, I had been dealing with issues of debilitating pressure in my head and trouble with my eyes tracking properly.

A lumbar puncture was done.

That was the culprit causing my spinal tap (or postdural puncture) headache. If you’ve never had one, you are fortunate! As long as I was lying flat, there was no headache. My medical providers told me the only way to get rid of the headache was through a process called a blood patch. It is a surgical procedure that uses one’s own blood to close the hole in the dura mater of the spinal cord, which was caused by the lumbar puncture. After inserting the blood, the resulting blood clot then patches the meningeal leak. I felt immediate relief! You know, sin also causes tremendous pressure and pain in our lives. Year after year, we try to live with it through denial, substance abuse, anger, or other coping mechanisms that may even bring on depression.

But none of these are fixes.

We end up in a spiritual emergency room with such pain that we can hardly stand it. It is only when we turn to Jesus as our Great Physician that we can be healed. Instead of our blood, we need the blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

His precious blood was shed on the cross at Calvary.

He was the ultimate sacrifice that sealed the hole of sin deep down inside of us. And we don’t have to worry about blood types.

Jesus is our Creator, and His blood provides the redemption from all sin and suffering for each of us. Aren’t we blessed to have this kind of a Savior?

Karen M. Phillips