Praying for Daylight article, Part 2 of 3

My husband Randy, an ordained minister and pastor, is a happy sort, always laughing and having fun.  He was raised in a very warm, loving and faith-based environment.  It was that strong faith and confidence in God that kept us on the right path all along. In many ways, I learned from Randy about trusting in God and having that ongoing relationship with Him. It was what I learned from Randy that kept me focused during the next days and months.

I suffered a second Torsades episode and inexplicably survived. The next hours and days are a blur.  The heavy doses of medication took over.  I was in and out of consciousness. I remember very little about that time. A couple things really stick out in my mind. I remember my husband Randy sneaking the baby into my room in ICU so I could see him.  I remember sneaking out of ICU in a wheelchair with my nurse to hide in a supply closet behind the newborn nursery so I could hold the baby for a few fleeting moments.  Other than that, I was void… void of all understanding and emotion because of the medication.   

Hiding in the supply closet...

I was initially diagnosed with Atrial Flutter which is a heart arrhythmia disorder. In laymen’s terms, the top two chambers of my heart do not exactly contract; they flutter and typically beat between 240 – 400 beats per minute. Later, I was also diagnosed with other Atrial Fibrillation.  I remember one evening, the I.C.U. doctor, who was a diminutive man with a kind face and always holding a clip board, told my husband, “there isn’t anymore we can do for her. We will have to wait and see.”  I heard Randy loudly say, as he grabbed the lapels of the doctor’s lab coat, “Yes, there is something we can do.  We can pray!”  The doctor shook his head in sympathetic agreement and patted him on the arm and retreated from the room looking intently at the floor, as if the answers were in the linoleum.

Randy took a long deep breath, staring at the vacant space where the doctor had stood.  He finally turned to me and unsteadily walked toward my ICU bed.  He knelt at my bedside.  His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep and bouts of tears. I asked him to pray with me.  As he held my hand, through his tears, he choked through the prayer.  After a moment, I said, “We need to talk.”  Randy was a little surprised, “About what?”

“You need to send the bank (my employer) a death certificate so they can pay on the life insurance policy.”

            “NO!”

“Randy, we need to talk about this.”

            “NO!”

“There is another small life insurance policy in the desk drawer at home.”

            “NO!”

“I want you to sell the house. Make sure my mom is taken care of and move back to Alabama with the baby.  I want you to raise him there with your family.”

            “NO! We’re not talking about this.”

“We have to talk about it.”

            “No, God’s going to heal you.”

“But what if it is my time?”

            “I don’t believe that! God didn’t bring us this far to let it end now!”

“Well, just in case…”

            “NO! We can’t lose you.  The baby needs you… I need you.”

After a few very difficult and tear filled moments, I quietly reminded him, “Just remember what I said.”

Randy left that night unsure if he would ever see me alive again.    To be continued...

Praying for Daylight, 2006, Part 1 of 3

The following is an excerpt from an article I wrote for a Christian magazine. It gives you a small peek into the series of events that took place when I just gave birth to my first child in 2000 words or less.


I looked up from my hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit as I heard the sound of the sliding glass door and the privacy curtain being flung back. A team of hurried people in white coats, surgical scrubs, and booties rushed to the foot of my bed with pained looks on their faces.  A few were breathing heavy, as if they had run some distance before arriving at my bedside.  The faces now are all a blur. The only word I spoke was an alarmed, “What?!” After a long silence, one of them asked, “How do you feel?”  My mind was swimming.  How do you describe how you feel after you’ve just had a baby by emergency C-section because your heart rate shot up higher than the baby’s about 24-hours ago? How do you put into words how you feel when the nurses rush your sleeping newborn baby out of your room because of how disturbed they are over your high heart rate?  How do you describe how you feel while looking at your husband’s concerned face and watching the blood drain from it until he is a sickly shade of gray?  How do you describe what it feels like to have your heart beat over 240 beats per minute? I responded as I craned my head around to see the vital sign monitor that was strategically placed behind the hospital bed, “About the same, why?”  As the words came out of my mouth, I realized why the team of medical professionals rushed to my bedside.  My heart rate was “slowing down” to 310 beats per minute and my blood pressure was 220 over 110. 

Just then another someone in scrubs was causing a raucous as they rolled a metal machine over the doorsill of the room –later I learned it was the “crash” cart…. From that time forward, that ‘cart’ was stationed just outside my room.  All at once, I thought my head was going to explode, literally.  Each attendant went to work. It seemed all six or eight of them were working on one of my extremities.  One was repositioning my blood pressure cuff, another was listening to my heart with a stethoscope, another was taking a pulse, another was working on all the sticky pieces that connected me to the monitor, another was checking all the I.V.’s, and still another was running from the front desk to my I.C.U. room with strips from the E.K.G. machine and murmuring under his breath, then whispering to another very authoritative looking person – both were shaking their heads and looking up at me from time to time.  The medical experts began to leave my room two by two murmuring to one another.  I was eventually left with just the I.C.U. nurse who was assigned to me.  He was a pleasant man with a beard and colorful smock.  I asked him, “What just happened here?”  He responded without looking at my face,

“You had an episode.” 

     “What kind of episode?” I asked. 

“It’s called a Torsades des Pointes.”

     “Ok….”

 “That is when the points on your EKG don’t point anymore, they curl”

     “So what does that mean?”

 “That means we were waiting for you to arrest or have a stroke”

I stared at him blankly.

 “You are lucky. I’ve never heard of anyone surviving a Torsades,” he said matter-of-factly.

My head fell back onto my pillow and tears streamed down my face. I began to pray, “Lord, I just had a baby. I would like to see him grow up. You know we dedicated this baby to You long before he was born.  I trusted in You with all of the problems I had during the pregnancy (Prior miscarriage, bleeding, placenta previa, toxemia, diagnosed with a blood clotting disorder, high risk of the baby being born with Down Syndrome, genetic counseling, etc.).  I turned over “the keys” long ago. If this is Your will and this is my time, I am ready to come home to You.  All I ask is You to strengthen Randy, give him the wisdom and perseverance he will need to raise our son… alone.”          To be continued...