The Day I Almost Died

I have not told a story for some time now and during the night it came to me to tell of the time I almost died, although most of my children were there at the time. This way they can tell their children the story.

I have always had high blood pressure. I cannot remember, even when I was young, when it was not abnormaly high. Normal for me seems to be in the range of 155/95. The doctors have stressed out and done a mirage of things to correct the issue; even suggesting losing weight which has been a losing battle. At my lowest weight of 175 and in excellent shape it was still high. Okay, I think everyone understands now I have high blood pressure.

While living in California one doctor was determined to win the battle so out came the pill bottles and the experiments began. I actually got down to 14?/8?. He gave me two pills, and to this day I don't remember what, that seemed to have a bad reaction and when I told him about the reaction he just sluffed it off. It was my own fault for what happened to me and I learned a valuable lesson from it. I had to go for a checkup and, being the stubborn Irishman I am, I decided to take those two pills one more time to show him how bad it got.

He checked me out and made his usual comment of it being high and asked me if I wanted to stay and have it monitored for a while or go home. What normal person wants to stay in a doctors office; I naturally elected to go home.

On the way home I really started feeling rough. It was hard to sit up (thank goodness Cheryl was driving) and it was even hard to lay down; I was miserable. We pulled up to the garage and I attempted to walk into the house but could make it no further than the other end of the garage. I literally got down on my hands and knees and crawled back to our bedroom. Cheryl, of course, was starting to freak out. She had to help me get onto the bed. At that point she called the ambulance and made the decision to take me to the emergency room.

I was literally starting to black out by the time the ambulance arrived. The paramedics looked at our hallway, which was kind of small, and wondered how they were going to get me on the gurney and down the hall. They asked me if I could somehow get down to where there was more room. Now I must deviate from my story just a bit at this point.

We had a small dog named Dusty who was going nuts about strangers in the house and what they were doing to me. Cheryl decided to put him in the spare room where his barking would not be so distractive. At that point I started crawling down the hallway on my hands and knees and it was extremely difficult. Now, the only name the paramedics had heard during all this was Dusty's name and so assumed that was my name. One of them kept encouraging me by saying, "Come on Dusty, you can make it." By the time I finally made it to the gurney I was cognizant enough to still have my sense of humour. As I struggled to get on the gurney, again he said, "Come on Dusty, you can make it." At this point I looked up at him and went, "Woof, woof", and they had the most puzzled looks on their faces. Cheryl then told them that Dusty was the dog and my name was Tim. At least they found some humour in the situation at that point.

To the hospital I went and rushed into the ER where they found my blood pressure had dropped from 22?/18? (no, I am not lying) to 50/2? and I was shutting down. My kidneys had stopped functioning and they hurt like they have never hurt. My breathing was extremely shallow and quite frankly if it hadn't have been for the pain from my kidneys I might have just succumbed to the darkness that was surrounding me.

Shots of this, IV's of that and a lot of stuff took place. They ran a tube down my little feller so I could void my fluids and even then it hurt soooooo bad. Of course they had to have the cutest nurse on duty take care of that part. No man wants that. I vaguely remember my children coming in to see me and they were all crying. My son, Michael, left because he couldn't handle it. Cheryl was in such a state. Me, I was just the cause of everything so I am telling what they told me later.

I remember having two elders from my church come in and give me a blessing. Immediately after they left my bedside I voided everything that was in my system and I started regaining my strength back. Still a lot of pain until my kidneys started working like they should, but within 24 hours I was back to being my usual obnoxious self and making everyone suffer from my weird sense of humour.

So that is the story of the day I almost bought the farm. When I returned to church everyone was asking me how I was doing and I just told them that resurrection is not all it is cut out to be. They were still as ugly as I remembered them. (I am such a nice guy)

Enough of my blarney for today.