Easter in the ICU
Sixteen years ago on Easter Saturday, I was lying in a bay in St. Joe’s emergency room. In a matter of minutes, they hooked me up to machines and started an IV.
That Good Friday, I took a couple of friends to play golf. As I walked down the 17th fairway puffing away at a cigar, I realized I was getting some severe pain in my left arm. I was thinking, “I must have pulled a muscle with that last swing.”
I had been making excuses about the left arm pain for the previous two weeks. If I had any exertion, the pain would show up. I would take a break, and it would go away.
But as I walked up the hill to the 17th green, the pain was in both arms. “Ah, this can’t be anything,” I thought again.
The pain lessened while we were having lunch. I went home, sat on the couch, and immediately fell asleep. When I woke up from the nap, I had the pain in both arms, and it was not going away. I went to bed early and figured I would be fine in the morning.
And I was fine on Saturday morning.
I felt so good, and it was such a lovely spring day. I asked Kathy to go for a walk. We got to the top of the hill in our neighborhood, and the pain in both arms returned, plus I had a shooting pain across my chest. “This can’t be good.”
We immediately ended the walk, and I stopped in on my next-door neighbor, a gynecologist. He asked me a couple of questions and with a grim look said, “You better call your internist.”
The internist asked me a couple of questions to understand my symptoms. He quickly concluded, “You need to go to the emergency room.”
I told him, “I have hockey tickets for the game this afternoon and an Easter brunch scheduled for tomorrow. How about I go on Monday morning.”
He answered, “You can die any minute.”
After checking me out, including getting the blood results back, the ER doctor told me, “You are not going home. You had a cardiac episode. But don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
I noticed the beeping heart monitor started to register an elevated heart rate. I was upset with the news of a cardiac episode. Then he said, “We are moving you to ICU.”
That did it for me. I thought, “Only people who are dying go to ICU.” Everyone started to tell me to relax as they swiftly wheeled me up to ICU. On the way up, my pastor was suddenly there standing over me. “Is this it?” I thought.
Upon my arrival at the ICU, they hooked me to everything imaginable. Then, nothing. It was Kathy and me.
The plan was to have me stay two nights in ICU. On Monday morning, I would have a heart catheterization to see the damage. They would either insert a stent to open the occluded artery or prepare me for open-heart surgery based on this information. My mind was racing again. I went from playing lousy golf on a beautiful day to ICU with the possibility of open-heart surgery in less than twenty-four hours. It was too much for me to process.
Kathy left me for the night with a Bible by my bedside. I was alone. But was I?
I opened the Bible to read about Easter. I read John 20:19, ”... the disciples were gathered together with the doors locked because of their fear of the Jews. Then Jesus came, stood among them, and said, ‘Peace to you!’”
Something happened to me when I read that verse. All fear left me. I still wasn’t sure of the outcome, but I was sure of this. Jesus was right there with me. Not in a spiritual way but in a tangible way. He was there. He was present. I could see Him.
He lives!
Then on Monday morning, lying naked on the gurney in the heart catheterization lab, I looked to my right, and there He was again. I heard Him say, “Peace to you. I’m here with you.”
When I returned to my room, I was told they put a stent in my widow-maker artery. I would need no further procedures. I would go home on Tuesday morning. It was all so quick. Golf to dying to going home just fine. When I think back as I write this to you, my reader, the hospital stay is a blur.
But I will never forget Jesus being present. That was the most amazing Easter weekend for me. I came to believe, “He lives truly!” He was there. I saw Him.
“Peace to you!” and Happy Easter!