In mid July 2009 on the island of
Kauai, Hawaii I became very sick. I had been healthy all my 63 years and this
was a new experience for me. After a week of high fever, aches and waking up
with the sweats I called my doctor friend in Montana. After hearing my symptoms
Dan said I needed to see a local doctor.
I did and he thought it was a sinus
infection. After a few days I started getting vertigo, and seeing double. I decided if I didn’t feel better in the
morning I would go to the emergency room.
In the morning, still feeling lousy,
I took a cab from where I lived outside of Koloa to the hospital on Kauai where
I was admitted with what was originally thought to be double pneumonia. It was
not.
While my lungs sounded clear x-rays
revealed two white clouds. I was transferred by air taxi to the Staub Medical
Center in Honolulu. Here I tested positive for Wegener’s granulomatosis, a rare
autoimmune disease that attacks the organs of the body. I my case it was the
lungs.
I do not remember of lot of the
initial weeks in intensive care as I was drugged and in an induced coma. I was
not expected to live very long and my wife and three daughters were called.
They came from Montana to visit me for the last time. I did not know they were
even there.
My body weight went from 167 to 132.
Massive doses of steroids were given me as part of my treatment. When I awoke
from the coma I was on a ventilator and had all sorts of tubes in my body.
I was literally a rag doll and could
only move the muscles in my neck. An emergency button to call for help was
draped over my shoulder so I could press it with my neck.
I remember thinking. How am I going
to possibly come back from this. I believed I couldn’t and became totally
depressed.
The bed I was in was a special
physical therapy bed which could be set to do a wave like motion under the
body. It wasn’t suppose to be on for me but it was. The motion caused me to
move sideways and my body became lodged between the mattress and the sideboard.
I was being squeezed with my arms dangling helplessly over the side of the bed.
I could not move my head to press the call button. I was crying out “nurse
help…nurse help!”
Then a strange thing happened. It
was as if my spirit had left my body. I
was sitting on the edge of a small stream with tall wet grass along the banks.
A mist was rising from the water. I knew if I just lay down in the wet grass it
would be over. No more struggles. There would be peace. My spirit was ready to
totally give up.
Then a hand gripped my shoulder. I
“sprung back.”
A voice said, “Can I help you?”
After getting me help I found out
that the man who touched my shoulder was the pastor at the hospital. He told me
that he received a call 30 minutes earlier from my friend Jim in White Fish,
Montana who asked that the Chaplain to look me up.
From that moment on I never had
depression again. In fact, during the rest of my hospital stay I was even
joyful. My spirit was strong and I made dramatic progress physically. Within
two weeks I was completely off the ventilator and oxygen.
I still could not mover a muscle but
my physical therapist thought my muscles were ‘firing’ and I believed him. He
began by massaging my muscles and moving my limbs.
I was moved from Intensive Care to
the sixth floor of the hospital where they put patients who are closed to being
released. I worked hard and talked and joked with almost every aide and nurse
on that floor.
One day the doctors looked at me and
my progress and said “John you are a living miracle.” They suggested I be
transferred to a nursing home in Montana where I would be near friends and my
support system.
Flying Nurses International flew with
me from Honolulu to Salt Lake City and onto Glacier International Airport in
Kalispell, Mt.
It wasn’t until I was back in Montana
that I learned that my doctor friend Dan and Jim, who I knew from my appraisal
business, had been meeting and praying
for me daily throughout my ordeal.
The doctors were right, I am a living miracle.
I was right, I could not come back on my
own. I have no doubt that God through His grace spared my life and used my
friends and that Chaplain to help me back.
John Woods
Kauai, Hawaii