Sick Polish Boy Pins Hopes on Jesus

“Doctors have done everything that they can,” Mother said. “Only one Doctor is left who can help.”

By Andrew McChesney

Tomasz Karauda was a very sick 5-year-old boy in Poland.

Medical doctors couldn’t understand why the boy with blue eyes and black hair couldn’t seem to recover from pneumonia. He coughed, suffered a fever, and complained of chest pains.

Tomasz stayed in the hospital for a while. When he felt better, he went home. But then the cough, fever, and chest pains returned, and he went back to the hospital. He was hospitalized 15 times in one year.

A doctor took X-rays and blood tests to diagnose the illness. He gave Tomasz every medicine that he could think of in hope that the boy would get well. Nothing worked.

Tomasz moved into the hospital when he was 6. He was too sick to stay at home. Father and Mother prayed. They slept in their son’s hospital room so he wouldn’t be alone.

But Tomasz grew worse every month. The doctor began to avoid Mother. He liked to share good news with the parents of sick children, but he didn’t have any good news to share about Tom.

Mother confronted the doctor.

“Why are you avoiding me all the time?” she asked.

The doctor looked sad.

“There isn’t much that we can do,” he said. “I’m very sorry. You need to let your son go.”

Mother quietly went to Tomasz’s bed. The boy sensed that something was different. Mother seemed to know something new. He saw tears in her eyes.

Tomasz looked out the hospital window. It was winter, and children joyfully raced their sleds down a snowy hill. Smiling parents hugged their children when they reached the bottom.

“Mommy,” Tomasz said, softly. “I think that I’ll never be healthy again. Is that true?”

Tears flowed down Mother’s cheeks.

“Doctors have done everything that they can,” she said. “Only one Doctor is left who can help. If you believe in Him, He might heal you. But you need to ask.”

Tomasz understood that Mother was talking about Jesus. He and Mother knelt beside the hospital bed.

The next day, Tomasz felt a little better. The day after that, he felt even better. In six days, the surprised doctor announced that he could go home. Tomasz was completely healthy!

Several years later, Tomasz learned why he had been sick. His father had contracted a parasite during a visit to Australia, and the parasite had passed to Tomasz and embedded itself in his lungs. No one knew about such an illness in Poland, so no one could treat it.

Tomasz has never been hospitalized again, but he goes to the hospital nearly every day. He is 28 and works as a pulmonary physician — a lung doctor — who treats people with lung problems.

When he studied to become a doctor, he saw evidence of his boyhood miracle. He tested his own respiratory system and found no sign of scarring on his lungs. After such a lengthy illness, there should have been scars, but he could find no indication that he had ever been ill.

He is finishing his hospital residency and thinking about becoming a missionary doctor in a faraway land. He wants to help others just like doctors and Jesus helped him.

“Maybe God has a mission for me to do,” he said. “I feel like I have received a great loan from God that I need to repay. One day, I hope to know my mission.”

Thank you for your 2017 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering that is helping Hope Channel open a studio in Poland so people can learn about Jesus’ soon coming in the Polish language on television and the Internet.