Teenage Deaths

                                     courtesy of home.comcast.net

I was never really exposed or aware of the high rate of teenage deaths unlike I started teaching in New Zealand.  Almost every year since I have been teaching, there was a death amongst one of my former students and 4 out of 5 times, it will be suicide.  

Teenagers here take their own lives for reasons known or unknown but when you look at the known reasons, they seem to be so miniscule for the young people to take their own lives.  Here in NZ, there are lots of counselors available and most of them are free to the youths. One year the police were even looking out for a so called 'death pact' going around when one teenager took her life and everyone watched closely all her friends who were at her funeral.

Most of the teenagers are usually what experts labelled as high risk in that they usually would be your disruptive kids in class or the rebellious type that do not fit into your normal average school environment.

I have always wondered if the way that children are raised today (with velvet gloves and very pc oriented!) are making them too soft and thus not able to handle everyday problems and taking the easy way out when they are faced with any issues they think they cannot solve!

God works in mysterious ways!

                                          courtesy of www.phrasecrazy.com

Recently  I was stressed out at work so much so that about 3 weeks ago, I had sharp abdominal pain in the middle of the night and my 12 year old daughter had to call the ambulance and I ended up in the Dunedin Hospital Emergency.  

My pains started at about 1.30 am, was admitted about 2.45 am.  Doctors tried to give me all sort of painkillers, took my blood for test, took ECGs, X-rays but still I had my pains and was vomiting, too, (due to the side effects of morphine) until about 8.30 am in the morning when they decided to take a urine sample.  I panicked when I saw how pink my urine was but found out later that it was a result of my passing a kidney stone!  Immediately, they sent me for a CT scan and then gave me different painkillers again.  Then the director of the ED came and informed me that I had stones in both my kidneys and also a very big 2.5 cm big stone!  I waited at the ED for the specialist who never showed up so at about 1.45pm, the ED director told me I could go home as the Urology Department needed to talk about the big stone tomorrow before they get back to me.  So I left at about 3.40 pm when one of my friends picked me up and send me home.

It was only after I saw my GP and got him to call the specialist to find out what they planned to treat me that I found out that I actually have a big magnesium cyst.  I saw it on the CT scan when I finally got to see the urologist last week and it is about 1/3 of my kidney.  Now I am waiting for the shock wave treatment which hopefully will break up everything or I may have to go for the keyhole operation.

Looking back I would never have known that I have all these kidney stones if I was not stressed out so GOD must have decided for me that it is time I took care of my health and brought it to my attention.  I always think that things happen for a purpose and GOD does work in mysterious ways....