Encountering God’s Miraculous Healing not Just Once but Thrice
Psalm 103:3 celebrates God as a healer who heals all our diseases. In New Testament times, there are many examples where Jesus healed the sick and the infirm. God is still in the business of healing today, and recently I came across the story of a fellow sister-in-Christ, Anussyia Sattya, whose healing was nothing short of miraculous.
Anussyia is a jovial and down-to-earth young lady, and if you were to know her casually, you would not be aware of her struggles with a debilitating condition known as Crohn’s Disease. Crohn’s is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that causes swelling of the tissues, known as inflammation, in the digestive tract. This inflammation can lead to severe abdominal pain and diarrhoea with up to 20 visits to the washroom in a day, fatigue, weight loss, and even malnutrition.
Suffering from the disease since 2017, Anussyia has been going for several biological treatments that caused her a fortune, and she is still going through it monthly. She shared, ‘By going through all these expensive treatments, you would look forward to better health. But in my case, it was not so. It was not getting better, and the doctor concluded that I was a chronic patient who was very difficult to treat. They had tried several drugs on me, but these would all work only for a few months, and my antibodies would start reacting against it.’
At the end of 2021, Anussyia had to switch drugs again. It was the final option of drugs they had for her. The doctor informed her that if this drug does not work, they would have to consider a surgery to remove her descending large colon and place a colostomy bag.
‘At the back of my mind, I was hoping it would not come to the surgery as I did not want to go through the associated pain and mess,’ Anussyia shared. ‘I was confident that this last drug would work, and it did work for some time. I was ‘ok’ clinically, and if you looked at me outwardly, I was alright. However, my inflammation marker was not going down, and my sigmoid was badly inflamed and narrowing.’
At one point, Anussyia’s health started deteriorating, and the doctor became firm in proceeding with the surgery. This situation broke her into pieces, and she was on the brink of giving up as her health issues seemed like it had hit a dead end and it had become too overwhelming. However, at this low point, her husband, parents, family, and everyone around her kept encouraging her that the Lord would make a way where there seemed to be no way.
Despite the challenges that she was going through, Anussyia never failed to serve in her church faithfully. ‘I remember last year, on 9th October (2022), I was supposed to be the service director in my church, but I could not fulfil my responsibilities due to my health condition, and a brother from my church took over my duty. In that service, he led the church in prayer, and everyone prayed for me in one accord.’
That same week, Anussyia went for her scope and MRE (Magnetic Resonance Enterography, used in medical environments for Crohn’s Disease to allow the examination of the small bowels) scan. Usually, her doctor would not be able to scope through her sigmoid because it was narrowed, too fragile, and could easily tear. This had been the case for the last few years. The doctor could only scope up to her rectum as her sigmoid could easily tear, leading to more pain or even death in severe cases. However, that week when the church had prayed for her, the doctor could scope through the sigmoid colon and up to her descending colon and see some improvements. Something good was starting to take place. It was the first sign that God was doing a miracle in Anussyia’s situation.
As usual, the enemy was not happy about it. ‘The next day after the scope, I had a fever that went up to 41 degrees Celsius, and it was not coming down,’ Anussyia shared. ‘My inflammation rate shot up to 80, which was really high and never happened in my health history’. She was admitted to the hospital for a week and was on high doses of hydrocortisone, and she had to take a four-month break from her work as a lecturer in UTAR, Sg. Long to rest at home. Meanwhile, the doctor was prepping her for surgery and making appointments to meet the top surgeons and IBD specialists in the country. Yet, amidst all this, God would carry out His second miracle.
Anussyia related, ‘When I met the specialists and surgeons at PPUM (Universiti Malaya Medical Centre), they asked me who the patient was. I told them that I was the patient. They looked at me and said, “You don’t look like a Crohn’s patient. You look so normal.” And I was standing there wondering what was going on. And then they went over my report, looked at me, and said, “We don’t think you need surgery because your narrowed colons are now opening up“, which meant the medication that had not worked earlier was now working well on me. I did not have to go for a surgery. Instead, they suggested that I could do dual treatment, which meant two different medications at the same time if my inflammation marker was not going down. And I was just thinking in my heart, The Lord who has brought me thus far will not put me in another difficult situation. True enough, my Lord did not fail me.’
To cut the long story short, in April 2023 – when I first heard Anussyia’s testimony – and when she redid her inflammation/CRP and Calprotectin Stool tests, the results were astounding. Her inflammation marker had dropped tremendously, and its status has now changed from Active Crohn’s to mild inflammation, and her Stool Test markers which have never gone less than 1000 have now dropped to 300, which is at the brim of getting normal. God had done a third miracle in her life.
From beginning to end, Anussyia’s story is one of the most powerful testimonies I have come across, not just of Christ’s power but also His faithfulness and patient work in our challenging situations.
‘I truly have no words to express how grateful and thankful I am to my Lord Jesus Christ, who has never failed even once through my difficult times and has never failed to mesmerise me with His amazing love,’ Anussyia expressed gratefully. ‘He has His timing to work things out for His children. The Lord who has taken me this far will definitely do the next miracle in my life which is to be drug-free, and this so-called life-long disease will no longer have control over me. I am so thankful to those who have prayed for me. Through prayer, difficult situations can change, and my life definitely changed.
‘As the song Firm Foundation (He Won’t) by Tribl encourages us, “God is our firm foundation, the rock on which we stand. When everything around me is shaken, I have never been more glad that I put my faith in Jesus because He has never let me down. He is faithful through generations, so why would He fail now?” Through my own experience, I can testify He definitely won’t. All glory to God.’
Christianity Malaysia would like to thank Anussyia for her hospitality, her generosity in sharing her story, and her valuable assistance and vetting of the article throughout its production. May her story go on to bless and encourage many others! All photos in the article were kindly contributed by Anussyia.
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Powerful testimony! I’ve know her & her husband for years and can testify that God has always been the center of their lives! Praise God for this miracle! He definitely “makes a way where there seems to be no way!”