Miracle Story #1

I’ve been fortunate enough to have witnessed two miracles in my 37+ years, both in real life or death circumstances. The first one happened right around this date in March, 10 years ago, so I feel compelled to share this story with you, to the best of my recollection.

It was a very dusty affair that Friday at my office job, full of fighting monstrous dust bunnies and sorting the file system into a semblance of order. It had only been two or three weeks since I had begun, thanks to my father/boss hiring me, and I was reasonably bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, & eager to impress. Around 10:00 am, give or take a few minutes, I began feeling short of breath, but I shrugged it off with a simple thought; “You’ll be fine, it’s just the dust…”

Thirty-five minutes after that found me in the bathroom, gasping for air, my ridiculously robust imagination spinning up all sorts of nightmare scenarios. I wasn’t feeling the need to bother my father with this, he was very busy that day. I went to the downstairs level in search of my mom, who deemed it serious enough an issue to call him downstairs and rush me to the doctor for an urgent checkup.

My dad’s idea of rushing gave 27-year old me an extended panic attack, as he urged his car across town in record time, his foot pressing down hard on the gas pedal. As soon as we arrived, the nurse barely needed a thirty-second examination before she called for a wheelchair for me and told us to go to the ER NOWNOWNOW!

Once I was situated in a hospital bed, hooked up to an O2 cannula, my need for more oxygen was temporarily sated, and the ER staff performed multiple tests & scans to find out what was going on with me. By 6:30, the ER head nurse and one of the doctors were in a hushed debate whether I was getting enough oxygen to justify sending me home; the nurse believed I should be admitted and watched over for 24 hours, and thankfully she convinced the doctor of that.

That day passed by, and three different doctors were brought in to diagnose whatever type of pneumonia I had, as well as repair my left lung, which had been surrounded by a buildup of fluid until it popped like an old balloon. It took several more days of the doctors disagreeing on the cause of my pneumonia, the course of treatment, and how long the fluid had been in my chest cavity, while I languished in the three patient hospital suite, with an irregularly small appetite and barely any energy to speak of.

That first week was easily one of the hardest times I’ve ever had to face, for so many reasons. As some of you may know, sleeping in a hospital is very hard to accomplish, especially when one of my fellow patients did an uncanny imitation of a grizzly bear in his sleep, and another kept leaving his bed, unable to recall where he was, which caused the bed sensor alert to go off at the nurse station. The case of pneumonia inside of me was a right bloody bastard of an illness, draining me of energy and appetite, to the point where I lost 15-20 pounds during my hospital stay. Finally, the most challenging part of my stay was my total lack of health insurance, which complicated matters as my itemized hospital bill was at least a mile long, figuratively speaking.

Somewhere between Friday and Saturday afternoon, things slowly began to look up. The doctors finally got me on the surgical schedule to repair my lung and take the fluid out of my chest, a county health department worker came to help me enroll in a program for uninsured people, and I was constantly entertained by visitors, whenever I was awake. Sunday was a whirlwind of activity, as they whisked me off to prepare for surgery, right up until a nurse sprayed some knockout liquid into my mouth. I remember looking at the surgical room lights and thinking “GAHHHH, what’s this bitter stuff?”, then all faded to black.

Five hours or so later, I was in post-op recovery, with a drainage tube in my left side, bandages around my back, and a mouth that was as dry as a desert, but I had to wait two hours before I could have the cup of tempting ice chips that was just out of my reach. The main thing that kept my mind off my physical discomfort was TNT’s fortuitous decision to show all three Lord Of The Ring movies, back to back to back; an escape to Middle Earth was exactly what I needed. Staying in that private room for a night was a welcome relief, and I found a decent amount of rest, other than having to call a resident in when my IV tube got pulled out.

Monday was a restful day, as the staff rolled me into a recovery room, in a wing of the hospital that had been recently been renovated and brought up to date. The rest of my stay was mostly without other hospital roommates, other than a patient who had overnight surgery and a quick release. The doctors came by to tell my parents and I what had happened during the surgery, and it was such a relief to hear it had all gone well, despite the tube in my side being an ineffective tool to remove the fluid from me. I had never realized before that “get a surgical operation done on my chest” was on my bucket list, but I was very glad to cross that particular line off.

My last day in the fifteen-day-long stay at French Hospital came along before I knew it, beginning with Doctor Hayashi removing the tube from my side that morning. It tickled a great deal, thankfully, making it easier for the good doctor and causing me to have a fit of giggling through that procedure. The hospital discharge papers got all the signatures needed, I was handed a final report of my bill, the breakdown of what county program covered in the bill, and a few random release papers, & I finally was wheeled out to my family’s van, which waited in a loading zone. As hard as the whole hospital stay was, it remains in my mind a true miracle, and is a special reminder I must have a purpose in this life that I haven’t yet reached.