Testimony of Healing November 10, 1973 Issue

One lovely Saturday morning, feeling in a helpful mood, I...

Michael Guyer

One lovely Saturday morning, feeling in a helpful mood, I jumped on my motorbike to go and help a friend paint his new apartment. About halfway there a car turned in front of me, and I collided with it, breaking the bone in the upper part of my leg. That news was not particularly bad to me. I had experienced a broken bone before. The news that really hit hard was that the mending process would take anywhere from six months to a year, which I would have to spend in traction and a full body cast, immobile from the chest down. At that time I knew nothing about Christian Science and accepted the medical prediction.

After being put in the cast I had to fight the many fears and feelings of claustrophobia, isolation, and loneliness. The feelings of isolation and loneliness stemmed from a recent tour of duty for thirteen months on an isolated station in the Arctic. Nine months of the year I had spent indoors. Much of the time it was dark, which is peculiar to that geographical area. The remembrance of this seemed to aggravate my mental state while in the cast. I had to fight these feelings and fears with all the willpower I could muster, and many times I felt that I was giving in to the whole depressing situation.

In five months they brought me out of my plaster incarceration with explicit instructions not to put any weight on the fractured leg. I was really anxious to get back on my feet, so anxious in fact that I went downstairs before I should have, and my good leg came out from under me. I tried to get my balance but fell, throwing weight on my newly mended leg, fracturing it again. They put me back in the body cast and predicted that the leg might never mend. Then they shipped me to San Francisco to be nearer my family.

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