In 2012, I had planned quadruple bypass open heart surgery and a valve repair at the nearby VA hospital. But what happened 2 days after surgery was not planned.
Lying in bed in the SICU, with my wife at the end of the bed on a visit, the techs rolled me over in bed to do an X-ray and I threw a pulmonary embolus and stopped breathing. Then my heart flatlined. I was dead unless something happened quickly.
The only cardio-surgeon left in the hospital at the time had to bust open my recently closed chest and hand-massage my heart to beating again. After almost 8 minutes, my heart started beating on its own again. But they couldn't close my chest back up because the SICU was not a sterile environment and they were afraid of infection.
So the next day, they wheeled me back into the operating room to hook me up to the equipment to make sure everything was still working okay, then wired my breast bone back together for the second time in three days but left the chest wound and cavity open.
I had an open chest wound for two months and it was closed little by little with a wound vacuum dressing. I had two blood transfusions and spent 5 weeks in the hospital instead of the standard 5 days after the open heart surgery.
I eventually went home and slowly got better and stronger. 3 years later I was pretty much back to full strength after a lot of rehab and exercising.
On a followup visit to the hospital one day, in a chance encounter in the hallway, I ran into the surgeon who saved my life that day three years earlier by hand-massaging my heart back to normal sinus rhythm. He actually remembered me and took 5 minutes or so to talk and ask how I was doing.
He told me that in his 40 plus years as a cardio-surgeon, he had to crack open the chest and hand massage the patient's heart on several occasions because of life or death situations like my own.
But what he told me next, floored me. He said that of the few times he had done it over the years, that I was the very first patient who had survived and recovered. It was inexplicable as to shy I survived and the others didn't, he said. He called it a miracle.
Tears welled up in my eyes and I cried right there in the hallway, hugging this man who had literally saved my life in the face of what he knew was a high risk technique that had little chance of success. I will never forget that moment.
To this day almost 8 years later, when I think about it, and as I write these comments, I get tears in my eyes because of the miracle of God and the skills of this surgeon and his medical team who had saved my life.
For the grace of God and this surgeon's efforts, I am as heathy as ever and back working on my cattle farm daily and enjoying our two year old grand daughter who we have recently adapted.
That's my story and I am sticking to it.
Technically not necessarily contrary to know laws, but certainly the grace of God.