Chapter 21

   I don’t remember much of the ensuing days except that it seemed like every time I floated up out of unconsciousness, Matron Connie was there. My next moment of awareness was early Monday morning and I was already in the pre-op room. It was a narrow room lined with glass-fronted wood shelves and there was barely enough room for the doctor to squeeze around my gurney. There was another man in the room with us, my anesthetist. I found out later he had just gotten a new machine from the United States and I was one of the first patients he used it on. The blood oxygen monitor clipped on my finger and gave the anesthetist a reading of how much oxygen was in my blood, determining how effective my breathing was.

    "We’re not going to do surgery on this man!", the anesthetist said.
    "Why not?", the doctor said.
     I swiveled my head to look at the anesthetists and said in a drug-slurred voice,  "Why not?"
    "Look at his blood oxygen level", he answered.
    I looked up at the machine which was clipped to my finger and the readout read 63%. I asked, "What should it be reading?"
    "Better than 95+ percent"  he answered,  and everything for me fades out again.

    When I again waken I find myself in a room sitting up in a chair with my left arm, strapped, sticking straight out to my side. There are about 10 people in the room, standing in front of me, all looking at me; I assume some doctors and nurses. There is a doctor drilling a hole in the left side of my chest and inserting a tube into me. (now don’t get squeamish on me because I don’t remember feeling any pain).

    Anyway, I remember saying, "You know,  that is really uncomfortable", and everyone bursts out laughing. Apparently that was the understatement of the century. I remember them laughing and everything fades out again.

    My next recollection takes place back in my room and a doctor is really chewing out one of the nurses. There is a blood-filled bottle hung below my bed and the doctor is upset because the bottle is not covered up where I cannot see it. Again, everything fades out to nothingness.

    What has taken place is that I had badly broken five of the ribs on the left side of my chest in the accident. Whether or not they were noticed before the aborted surgery is not clear, but apparently my left lung was collapsing and that accounted for the dangerously low blood oxygen level. I was told much later by an American anesthesiologist that to attempt surgery with me in that condition would have probably been fatal. My Lord was looking out for me, although I didn’t realize it.

    When I next float up into consciousness I am sitting up in bed with the tube still in my chest. Almost immediately I start to go unconscious again,  and the last thing I hear is, "Look,  his tongue is turning blue!"

    What has happened is a fatty embolism has broken loose  and has gone up to my pulmonary artery and occluded it. In laymen’s terms, A glob of fat from deep in my broken left leg has broken loose and has traveled though my bloodstream and lodged in the artery feeding my lungs. Although I am inhaling and exhaling, no blood is flowing through my lungs,  so I am not getting any oxygen and I am suffocating. God again spares my life by having someone right there to help me before there is brain damage, but I go into a coma and the terrible nightmares begin.

Other Voices - Linda Low     

   The Monday of John's surgery I waited for the early morning phone call from the embassy. David Abel, a consular officer, usually called about 6:00AM, just before he got off work.   When he hadn't called by 8:00AM I was getting nervous and perturbed.  Had he forgotten?  Should I call him?  finally about 9:00AM he called.  It appears he had been looking all over the hospital for "recovery" which turned out to mean ICU.  The news, he found, was not good.

    Not only had John not had surgery, he was now in a coma due to a collapsed lung and fatty emboli (clot) in his lung. Such devastating news half a world away! The other  large complication was my medical knowledge.  I knew full well what the doctors were not telling Mr. Abel.  I kept all of this to myself as I wouldn't give Satan the satisfaction or fuel of knowing what I knew.

    With this news in mind I started checking into travel arrangements with Bro. George Smith.  He owns a travel service and has much more experience with such things.  the next morning I went to get a passport.  I explained the problem and asked about expediting the processing.   I was told I needed a visa to hurry things along and was given a number to call.   However, when I called I was told I had to have an itinerary to get a visa - but I couldn't get an itinerary without a passport!  Talk about a rock and a hard place!   I finally decided to go back home and just apply for a passport, paying the extra fee to get it Fedex'ed to me when they completed it.  the man at the passport office said it would take about 10 days (instead of the usual 4 weeks). However, he had not counted on one thing - the intervening hand of our god.  My passport arrived on Saturday, just three days later!!

    At this time I received news that John had been seen by a new American Embassy ICU nurse, Chloe Clark, and that he was in a severe depression.  Her concern was that he would continue to plummet until we lost him.  she urged me to get there as quickly as possible.

    The next four days were frantic. I took out life insurance on myself, got power of attorney for Ben to pay bills and care for the other kids, notified family and consulted with our pastor.  Brother George got flight arrangements made and I was on a plane that Friday.

    My nightmares had two distinct phases, both of them bizarre and both of them combining elements of my past and my present hospital situation. The first was in San Diego, California and I was in a drug house. This house was on the same street where my dad,  Walt,  lived, on the second floor. There was another guy present,  although not a factor in the dream. There were two women, one white and one black and they were always trying to give me drugs. There were all of these huge multicolored pillows around me and I couldn’t move no matter how hard I tried. I would strain and try to get away from the women but they always succeeded in giving me injections and I would fade in and out of consciousness. I had no concept of time,  although it seemed like this phase went on and on - a bad dream that kept replaying and replaying.

    The second dream lasted much longer and was much more exhausting to me. It always took place on the hospital’s airplane,   where I was a patient. This airplane would travel to small outlying hospital/clinics in Zimbabwe,  picking up seriously ill people for transport back to the Parirenyatwa Hospital for treatment. I was always tied up in bed and the airplane was always being hijacked! (Remember! this is only a dream,  the hospital doesn't even have an airplane) Often, my nurses were part of the plot to hijack the aircraft and because I liked them, I would try to knock them out instead of killing them.

    I remember hitting one of them and she asked me, "Why did you hit me?"
    I replied, "Because I didn’t want to have to kill you!" (too many Rambo movies,  I  guess)

    I was always trying to break out of my restraints to subdue the hijackers. Sometimes I would succeed and occasionally I would have to take control of the airplane and land it safely. This I could do from my bed with assistance of the auto-landing system on the airplane. Just as often,  the hijackers would succeed and I could only watch, helplessly,  as they controlled the situation.

    This nightmare repeated endlessly. Imagine the worst nightmare that you have ever had. You know, the kind you wake up drenched in sweat and shaking. That’s what these two dreams were to me except they never ended. I would seem to wake up and realize that I had just had a terrible nightmare, but what made it such a hell for me was the realization that I couldn’t stop from going right back into the same nightmare, time after time after time . . .

Other Voices - Simplicio Shamba    

   Specialist doctors were sought and they started to help John but he had to be quickly transferred to intensive care because he had gone into a coma.  John could not talk or open his eyes.  He was just breathing under the guidance of machines.  Tubes were all over his body.  This was not a good sight at all.

    I wrote a prayer request for the whole convention to pray for John.  They did and God started working through.   John went in and out of the coma twice.  The most difficult one was the collapsed lung but God saw him through and brought him back to life.