Guillermo’s miracle puzzled doctors
Something was seriously wrong with Guillermo in the summer of 2017. He was turning yellow! He had no appetite and was losing weight; he had to force himself to eat, and had to endure painful bloating. When he couldn’t even keep water on his stomach, he went to the doctor.
The physician took one look at Guillermo’s jaundiced eyes and skin and scheduled him for a CT scan. By the next day he was in the Fresno Heart and Surgery Hospital scheduled for gall bladder surgery that night.
The problem was a rogue gallstone that had blocked the bile duct. The remedy was to go in on that Friday night and bust up the gallstone, allowing the accumulated buildup to drain. Then the next morning they would go back in and remove Guillermo’s gall bladder. Little did the doctors know at the time what they were really dealing with.
Guillermo awoke Saturday morning ready to go into the operating room for the gall bladder removal, but when the doctors came in, the plan had changed. The lead physician broke the news. He said he thought they were dealing with pancreatic cancer. He told Guillermo that the marker number for assessing the health of the pancreas was 125. According to the doctor, Guillermo’s was 60,000!
Cancer of the Pancreas! Cancer of the Pancreas! As those words soaked in, the physicians laid out a new plan. The next day, Sunday, they would take Guillermo to Clovis Community Hospital for an MRI. They would also call in a specialist to do a biopsy of the pancreas. With that, they left Guillermo to himself and his thoughts.
For the rest of the day, Guillermo and his family tried to come to grips with what they were facing. The hospital sent a grief counselor to meet with the family, and close friends came to commiserate. Then night came, and Guillermo was alone with God. In the early morning hours, he had a long, serious talk with the Almighty. He didn’t pray for healing; he prayed for certainty that all his sins be forgiven and that all was well with his soul. Then he went to sleep.
Morning came, and while the staff was preparing to transport Guillermo to the Clovis hospital, he prayed two simple prayers. “Lord, please give me a good report on the MRI.” Then “Lord please give me a good report on the biopsy of my pancreas.” For some reason there was no prayer for healing — just for good reports on the tests. With that they loaded Guillermo and his wife into an ambulance and headed for the Clovis hospital.
They took care of the MRI first and then the biopsy. It was when Guillermo woke up from the endoscopy that Guillermo got his first hint of a miracle. As he regained consciousness, he asked the nurse, “How did the biopsy go?”
“There was nothing to biopsy,” she said. The tumor they thought would be there wasn’t there. With that, they brought Guillermo back to the Fresno Heart and Surgery Hospital to await the results of the MRI. That’s when Guillermo got more good news. The MRI showed a perfectly formed Pancreas. It showed no cancer — no tumor. That’s when Guillermo prayed a third prayer: “Lord please bring my numbers down.”
At that point, the doctors admitted they were stymied. They began to talk about an exploratory operation, but Guillermo said no. He was certain that God had healed him. The doctors, however, weren’t convinced. They sent an oncologist in to talk with Guillermo. He told him, “If I had a patient with your numbers, I would tell him that he had stage four pancreatic cancer and that he was on his way out.”
With that, the doctor walked over to a computer to check on Guillermo’s numbers. He was shocked. They had fallen in half!
The oncologist left, and Guillermo began to claim his miracle to his family and friends. God had healed him of pancreatic cancer.
A very puzzled group of doctors kept Guillermo in the hospital for a couple of days for observation and then sent him home. Two weeks later they removed the troublesome gall bladder.
Within days, Guillermo (Spanish for William) had returned to writing his column, “Coate Tales” for the Madera Tribune, for you see it was this writer, William (Guillermo) Coate, who experienced the miraculous grace of the God who bore his sins in His body on the tree and by whose wounds he was healed.
