A Cambridge God Adventure* 65) Bad news and positive poison.

(*please skip if you have not been following this story).  Some days of illness were just misery. One day, Albert Hull, a church leader who was helping as project administrator came to visit in order to 'put me in the picture'.  With other leaders he felt that I should not be left in the dark. He was so kind and gentle as he explained how the vision needed major corrections in light of problems we were encountering.  Planning for a restaurant as a welcoming pre-evangelism project now seemed far too ambitious and needed to be shelved.  Current finances could never allow us to even consider appointing a full-time Director of the centre.  Anyway, little could justify the appointment when several outreach ideas seemed to be coming to nothing. What would he/she do?  Plans to provide counselling to needy people was another area which regretfully needed to be postponed.  In my low physical state this sounded bad news turning worse. And to round it off he shared that he and his wife were retiring to live in another city!

Then I learned that the builders working behind the church had crashed into yet more dry rot with a further £45,000 needed.  The estimate for the project now soared to £869.000.  Bad news was really compounding!

Even as the church prayed every night I seemed to deteriorate.  But, extraordinarily, a few weeks before Easter, Carol (a Radio 4 addict) heard of a medical trial being undertaken at the London National Neurophysical Hospital for dystonia patients.  Brand new, early experiments at Baylor University, Texas, encouraged hope that injecting botulinum toxin straight into malfunctioning muscles could paralyze them.   Carol begged our Addenbrookes' consultant to push for me to be included in the London clinical trials.  This toxin is very dangerous indeed but apparently it could be positive!  Her advocacy (and prayer) won through.

I recall going by stretcher into a lecture hall at this hospital with tiers of white coated doctors looking down on me.  After examination, the consultant declared that I was an appropriate candidate to join the trial.  I was warned that US trials showed success rates varied dramatically.  A considerable proportion showed little or no change, and a only small fraction responded really successfully.  The rest found different levels of relief.   When I reached the day of the injections (and signed papers waiving hospital liability for many possible disturbing side-effects)  I knew the power of prayer upholding me.