GROWING SEEDS: Do I Go East.....Or Do I Go West

August 5, 2018

"God does not promise to take us out of the 'valley of the shadow of death"; 
He promises to be there with us."
David Littell

We had church in Room 915 of the ICU this past week.   

We clasped hands, just as we do every week in our little church in Mt Vernon, and we each said a prayer of Thanksgiving.....a prayer of Peace......a prayer of Healing....and yes, a prayer of 'Even if He doesn't'.  

When you're at a crossroads......and you must turn left or you must turn right .....go east or go west....and you don't know which direction to go, the only direction to go is to your knees.  And we did just that a week ago today.  

Chuck hadn't been feeling well.....thought it was a cold....maybe allergies...maybe an MS attack.  But when he passed out and his color wasn't right and his skin was ice-cold and his already weak body was weaker, we found ourselves at that crossroad.  Do we go east to the closest hospital 30 minutes away.....or do we go west to his doctors in Dallas two hours away.  And that's when my knees hit the floor of the closet.  "Which direction Lord", I remember praying.  

The phone rang almost immediately.  It was a nurse at UTSW in Dallas.  "Go west", she said.  

And so we did.  We drove two hours to the Emergency Room at UTSW in Dallas where, after many tests, it was discovered this man I married 21 years ago had a very large blood clot in his heart.  IN his heart.  Our cardiology team said they had never witnessed the exact moment caught on a scan of a blood clot "in transit" through the heart..... and time was critical.  They needed to dissolve it immediately or it could mean sudden death.  They rushed him to ICU where they started a procedure called TPA - Tissue Plasminogen Activator - to dissolve this large clot before it could leave the heart and leave my husband dead. 

A team of 20 cardiologists and pulmonologists, as well as his MS neurologists, quickly conferred together.  They watched as the blood clot dissolved through the TPA procedure.  They saw his color return.....and they admitted; they witnessed a miracle.

The miracles were flying faster than we could keep up with them.....what if we had gone East to Mt. Pleasant instead of West to Dallas?  We would be planning his funeral today.  What if the doctors hadn't realized he had existing aortic valve stenosis and not done that echo cardiogram which discovered the unexpected blood clot?  We would be planning his funeral today.  That's the reality of it. The cardiologist said we had maybe hours at the most before this would have taken his life.  Most likely our East Texas hospital would not have done an echo cardiogram on Chuck and never known about the blood clot.

But yesterday, a week later, we came Home.  He's not out of danger just yet.....still has a large 8" blood clot in his leg and several small ones in his lungs....but today, as I type this to you, I'm listening to my husband breathe as he naps in front of me...his tired body grateful for more time.  His wife grateful for more time.....however long that might be.

And all the while......God proved Himself present with us through the valley of the shadow of death.  

"If God wants to perform a small miracle, He places us in difficult situations.

If He wants to perform a MIGHTY miracle, 

He places us in impossible circumstances."

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