Nevertheless
It was early in my walk as a new budding interventional cardiologist when I was busy at the main hospital. I got a frantic call late morning to come help out a colleague who had been performing an elective cardiac catheterization on a patient who had come in that morning or the procedure. It had been a routine procedure and the patient was scheduled to leave later that day. I drove hurriedly to the other hospital as it was 15-20 minutes away however it seemed like I was there in an instant in time. I walked into the recording area where I saw two of my colleagues in distress. Apparently, there had been a complication during the procedure. The woman on the procedure table laid lifeless without blood pressure or heart rate. There had been a complication where there was a dissection of the Left Main coronary artery which provided most of the circulation to the left ventricle. This then caused occlusion of blood flow to the left side of the heart. The patient had been shocked 25 times and yet, there she was, apparently dead. I quickly gathered myself and said: are there any balloons here?” See, at this time, in the early nineties, there were no stents, the hospital did not have a surgical program at that time and I was left with whatever the staff could muster. I asked for a catheter and engaged the ostium of the Left Main coronary artery. I then “wired” the artery and placed the wire down the Left Anterior Descending artery which was one of the main branches from the Left Main trunk. I then was given and undersized balloon because that’s all that was available and dilated the trunk. I then injected dye and saw the blood swirling around the Aorta with no flow to the left side of the heart. I looked to my colleagues and pronounced: She’s dead. We will have to go tell her husband.” Then, flippantly, I then said: “Let me just shock her one more time and then we will go tell her husband” (thinking, “This is useless”).
After this last shock, the patient had normal blood pressure and normal heart rate! I immediately called the surgeon at the main hospital and told him I was coming via ambulance with this patient and that he was going to perform coronary bypass revascularization on my patient. We rushed her to the hospital in the ambulance where the surgeon performed bypass surgery on her. The next day she was extubated and then eventually sent to a step-down telemetry unit within a short period of time. I went to see her, thinking she had brain damage, heart damage, kidney damage, all of it. To my great astonishment, there she was, in her bed, and quite awake. She looked at me and I proceeded to tell he who I was. She said: “I know who you are. Thank you for saving my life.” Now, if there has ever been a moment in my life where shock came into my very inner parts of my being, this was it. I then said: “you cannot know who I am. You had no blood flow to your brain. You were dead.” She then proceeded to tell me everything I had said in the room. Again, I was dumbfounded. I said: “How is this possible?” She then started telling me that she was in the room but above me and she was with God! I rebutted: “I don’t believe in God.” And then she exhorted: “Nevertheless.” I pressed on in my prideful, cynical attack: “Well, what did God look like?” Now I knew in my mind that there could not be any plausible answer that I would believe in to that question. To my amazement, she replied: “I don’t know, but I felt loved, so loved, that I didn’t want to come back, or even for my children.”
Years later, I was in my office, answering a phone call from one of my lawyers as I was in the middle of a difficult divorce and angry as I could be. The next patient I went into to see was her. I thought for a minute and then asked her if I could go back to that day and recount what she had told me? She said, of course. I told her that I wouldn’t be upset or mad at her if she had made the whole thing up, yet I dared to ask: “Was it really true?” See, when she had said that she would rather stay with God then be with her children, I thought she was deranged. She told me: “Yes, it was true.” I then blurted out: “why do I doubt? I just don’t believe it.” Shen then said the most extraordinary thing I had heard anyone ever say to me and I didn’t understand the answer at all. She said: “I doubt. We all doubt.” Aghast, I replied: “But you were there, with Him, how could you doubt?” Then she retorted: “We all doubt. That’s just the way it is.” I was flabbergasted.
With all that, I was still an atheist. That had not changed me one iota. Strange. Much later, in June of 2011, God’s grace came upon me and I became a disciple of Christ. That’s for another story. When she found out that I became a believer, she was so happy and joyous, she could hardly contain herself. Since then, she continues to be my patient. I saw her not too long ago and or course, we have this relationship of brother and sister in Christ. Funny. There’s a peace to her, the look in her eyes, the way she comports herself that is godly. I can’t explain it but I know how she feels. It’s that way for all those who truly are followers and not just fans of Christ. I can explain it but then, unless you believed in Christ as Savior and Lord, you’d think me deranged!