Yesterday I had a somewhat scary experience….. I went; “under the knife”! (A slang English term for; ‘surgery’.) This is what happened; Last week Jasmine asked me; ‘what is that lump on your eyelid?’ The conversation progressed very quickly to; ‘I have a Dr. friend, you should let him have a look at it.’ Well, things in Taiwan can happen very quickly and within an hour I was in Dr. Chou’s Surgery looking into this expensive piece of opthamological equipment. Dr. Chou is a long time friend of Jasmine and he said to me; ‘I am sure this is not a malignant tumor, but over time it will get bigger, if you would like I can cut it out for you’.

My gut reaction was; “No way! You want to stick a knife near my eyeball and cut off that lump? The blood would drain into my eye, and imagine me walking around for days with a big stitch in my eyelid…no, no, no!” But after Dr. Chou’s reassurances, I thought about it a bit more. We left his surgey and an hour later I decided that perhaps I would never have another opportunity like this present itself to me, so I would be silly not to take it!

Well, yesterday I was flat on my back in Dr. Chou’s surgery, covered in surgical gowns, surgical cap, face mask, eye coverings… you name it. Must have looked just like “ER”. After an initial prick with the needle, I didn’t feel anything else for the next 10 minutes… but I could smell my flesh burning When Dr.Chou cauterized the cut.

Dr. Chou’s specialist field is “Neurological Ophthalmology”. He worked in a hospital for 20 years, and for the past 6 years has had his own clinic, doing general ophthalmology, eye surgery, cataracts, and cutting lumps off the eyelids of people like me. He was very professional, very kind and and very friendly. Dr. Chou is a Christian man, and generously declined to take any payment from me for this operation. I think in NZ an operation like this would be very expensive, and I would never have dreamed of doing it, but God has provided for me here in Taiwan through Dr. Chou. What a tremendoud blessing. May God bless you Dr. Chou.

Here I am with Dr. Chou this morning;

See if you can spot the difference?

No……..???  Have a closer look….