Blurt: Miracles Do Happen

Originally Published June 4, 2009

I've suffered with all kinds of addiction throughout my whole life. I'm craving a cigarette right now. My health is horrible. I'm on oxygen. I got out of the hospital back in February. I was having trouble breathing and wasn't feeling that great for a couple of days and I just became worse and worse. I mean I was feeling that scary kind of sick, thinking the worse is going to happen, the kind of sick where you don’t know if you can stand up. I was feeling dizzy and unsteady. It was so bad I knew I needed help, but I was stubborn. I knew I couldn’t afford the bill. I don’t like going to the hospital. I had put it off already for two days. Surely I would feel better if I just got some rest. But I had gotten to the point where I had no choice. I knew if I didn’t do something soon, I might die.

So I ended up calling an ambulance and was rushed to the hospital. I don’t know if you have ever been in the back of an ambulance but it is uncomfortable and you feel as if you’re going to fall on the floor and when you’re in the state I was in you just wanted the whole thing to be over with as soon as possible. As they were taking me out of the ambulance and transferring me to the hospital's gurney, I passed out. I woke up with an endotracheal tube down my throat attached to a respirator, unable to talk and being told I almost died. I had congestive heart failure and respiratory failure. When I was passed out they did not know if I was going to come out of it. I had basically slipped into a coma.

Let me say here that this is such a scary feeling it made me rethink how I was taking care of myself. It’s like being a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. so let's talk about miracles.

I had basically flat lined. I was near death. My family had all come to the hospital and was worried and wondering if I was going to make it. My mother had called for a priest. He performed the sacrament of anointing the sick, usually done in preparation for the last rites. At that moment, in this time of sorrow and worrisome, a time when all hope was nearly gone, when the doctors had little hope for me, a time when my son was guilt ridden for purchasing the cigarettes I had smoked, when my parents felt the pain of the possibility of losing their first born child, it was at that moment, as the priest was anointing me with oil; God stepped in and said that He was not ready for me. That He had more for me to do. That He said He would grant me another chance, even though He had granted thousands of them before to this soul. It was at that very moment that my vital signs began to improve.

It is for that reason I decided to embark on this journey. to make myself whole and complete, to make myself well again, to find the strength to walk again, to lose the weight I had acquired through my gluttony for life. To live, to be, to one day love again, and rekindle my love for myself and the love for my family. To fulfill the dreams i once had, to ride the rollercoaster of life, and once again spin that wheel. He had saved me once again. Amen. But for what purpose...?