Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

• Matthew 25:37-46

If you say, “The Lord is my refuge,”
    and you make the Most High your dwelling,
no harm will overtake you,
    no disaster will come near your tent.
For he will command his angels concerning you
    to guard you in all your ways;
they will lift you up in their hands,
    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the cobra;
    you will trample the great lion and the serpent.
“Because he loves me,” says the Lord, “I will rescue him;
    I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.
He will call on me, and I will answer him;
    I will be with him in trouble,
    I will deliver him and honor him.
With long life I will satisfy him
    and show him my salvation.”

• Psalm 91:9-16

Whether you can take the Scripture from Matthew literally or figuratively, Jesus is among us and His angels are here too.

I recently had good reason to believe that, in many ways.  On Monday of this week, four days ago, my wife went into the hospital for a colonoscopy.  She had drunk the gallon of laxative the day before and everything went smoothly.  A polyp was removed.  Her diverticulosis was not flaring.  Her hemorrhoids were not bleeding.  As we thought, there was no evidence that she ever had a GI bleed, much less figuring out where.  As I said in a previous post, miracles happen, and doctors hate that because they cannot explain it.  They insist on more tests and this was the test.

But that is before the “angels” appeared.

We had breakfast on the way home and then my wife complained of a racing heartbeat as she got into bed.  Her blood pressure was low and her pulse was high.  From my experience, she was dehydrated, but she was experiencing cold sweats and tightness in her chest.  She took a nitroglycerin pill.

At first, she wanted me to stay with her, but then she said that I could go.  She was better.  I told her to get some sleep.

I got no further away from the closed bedroom door than my recliner when I heard a thud.  I went back to check on her, but the bedroom door would not open.  It took me some time to realize that she was lying on the floor, against the door.

I learned later that she had passed out, fell against the door and then slid down against the door.  I could only open the door a crack, enough to see her back and head.

She would normally have to go to the ER immediately due to falling and hitting her head, but with the colonoscopy, they had stopped her blood thinners and she was close to normal.  But the problem was that I could not even tell if she was breathing.

I called 911.  We live a few blocks from the volunteer fire department and EMTs were there within a minute of hanging up.  They saw that we had a window air conditioner.  They ripped it out of the window and pulled my wife away from the door.  They got her vital signs and she was starting to wake up, a little groggy.

By this point, three more fire department vehicles had pulled up and the local ambulance company and our next door neighbor.  Yes, standing room only, with nine visitors in muddy boots, not doing anything, except for the original two.

The ambulance driver came in with a stretcher and the other guy from the ambulance asked me questions, questions I had already answered from the EMTs.  They wrapped my wife in a blanket and got her into the ambulance, but then the ambulance stayed parked in the middle of the street, since they were the last to arrive and there was no more parking space near the house…

When I got to the hospital, that we had only left about three hours before, the ambulance was about to leave.  I asked them if they needed anything, and they had forgotten to get my signature on the workorder.  But then they told me something that is important to know.

If you have a low blood pressure and you take nitroglycerin, your blood pressure will drop even more and you will pass out.

I put that in a paragraph of its own so that people will remember.

Of course, the doctors would never listen to an EMT that rides an ambulance.  My wife had a CT of the brain and they did not find anything.  – I know, an old joke, that my wife told me when I was in that position – but this was followed two days later by an echocardiogram.  They tried to work her into the schedule the day after the incident, but she needed kidney dialysis.  They did draw blood and found the enzymes that usually appear after a heart attack, but that was never confirmed (yet, requiring the echocardiogram).

On Tuesday, they found that her foot was swelling.  They took images and thought a bone was cracked, but later they think the ligament was torn slightly from the bone to one of the toes.  She now has a monster boot, when she was supposed to get the lightweight short boot.

On Wednesday, she had her echocardiogram.  No damage due to a heart attack, but they found a narrowing of her aortic valve, the one she had replaced by open-heart surgery in 2018.  They will be replacing it again, this time using the TAVR, the instrument that goes in through the groin, only one day stay in the hospital.  But that will not take place until May or later.  The original valve was supposed to last at least ten years, but no one said that kidney failure destroys heart valves made of animal tissue.

A team of doctors conferred, at least four with an MD after their name and others who read the test results.  They determined that the combination of low blood pressure and nitroglycerin caused her to collapse and become unconscious.  What the EMT had said two days prior without all the tests.  (We are “cursed” with good insurance.)

At least no open-heart again.  She still has pain from the zip ties that they used to close her rib cage and her surgery was a little less than five years ago.

So, in summary, my wife is back home, hobbled in a clunky, heavy boot.  She is wearing a heart monitor for two weeks.  She will need a TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement) surgery in the coming months, but wait.  I said nothing of the angels.

The invisible kind watched over both of us through the entire ordeal.

For me, my energy is gone, but when she needs to get from one place to another in the house, she grabs onto me and I walk slower than you walk while holding a baby who is walking for the first time.  One step, rest, another step, rest.  It takes ten minutes from the bedroom to the SUV.  She would never have gotten into a regular car.

I say that to illustrate the strength that comes from those invisible angels.

And the guy that crawled through the window, breaking the wall socket (ugh), and ensuring my wife was still breathing…  That counts as an earth angel.  His partner, too.  The other six firepersons that stood around and watched, knocking their mud onto our carpet… not so much.

But then, the nurses and doctors at the hospital were very attentive,  My wife tells jokes and they enjoy coming to the room.  A nursing student practically adopted her as her special patient.  The lady to set up the heart monitor stayed for about thirty minutes, just to talk and laugh.  My wife convinced her, for a few minutes, that she raced hot rods late at night.  The nurse said that if it were not for being a single Mom, she’d go just to root for her.

All of those count as earth angels, even the guy who delivered the wrong sized boot.  It works.  Its just overkill and heavy.

Some people though may read this and say that those people were just doing their jobs.  We never had that nurse who came into the room and then later found that there was no nurse of that description working at the hospital.  (We have friends with that experience.)  But as Jesus said, you will never know when you have seen the risen Lord when you help others.

You might see people, but my wife and I saw angels.

As for the title of the post, here is a song composed and performed by Alabama, Angels Among Us.  And watch the video as testimonials flash across the screen.  I missed a few.  Somehow my eyes got a little wet.

And to all of those whose blogs I follow, you may find that I have missed reading some of your posts. I have been, and continue to be, a little busy. I apologize.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.