The Right Rev Rowland

Today is my 4-week anniversary.

February 13, 2010, I had a massive heart attack at the age of 39. I was headed to work and dropped off a dishwasher we had just sold. As I drove, my chest tightened, my arm ached, and I couldn’t catch my breath. By the time I reached work, I had to call from the parking lot to tell them I couldn’t come in.

Off to the first hospital and a cath lab so they could try to use a stint to remove a suspected blockage in my arteries, but they found three of them almost completely blocked. All I remember laying on the table was hearing, “We need a helicopter, now!”

Lifeflight wasn’t an option, so it was an ambulance ride over to the next hospital to get in line for surgery. Before they loaded me up, my wife came  in to see me. I told her, “I’m not leaving you.” I don’t think she believed me. I had no clue what a foolish promise it was. The ambulance ride is the last thing I remember.

Three days later, I woke up in ICU, on morphine and percocet. I drifted in and out, with a parade of visitors and well-wishers coming to pray and give me their encouragement. Some I remember, some I can’t. When they moved me from ICU to recovery, I had no idea where I was. I understand that my heart stopped as soon as they got me to surgery, and they had to bypass my heart function immediately.

I would drift off to sleep for an hour or so, I would wake up thinking a day had passed. The first day I was there, I thought a week had passed. They would make me periodically get up and walk, and the first two times I had no idea where I was. I had some sense that my wife was beside me, but I began to have this delusion that we were being held against our will and kept in this little room. Must have been some powerful drugs?

One week after being admitted, I was discharged. At home, I live in a recliner, walk 2x a day. I eat really bland, low-salt food. They sent me home with a big bottle of pain pills, thank God, and eight other medications to regulate my heart.

This is my 4-week anniversary. We have moved into a smaller home, my wife is looking for work, and I am trying to get my strength back so I can go back to work. Our lives have been turned upside-down.

Through this whole process, there has been one miracle after another, from the gifts of friends, dinners cooked, bills that were forgiven, a church family that showed up to move us in one evening.

The greatest miracle I’ve seen, though, is a wife who stayed by my side, served me, comforted me, and taken over everything that I used to manage in our home. She has been a paragon of strength to bear up under every burden, yet tender enough to nurse me back to health. In the hospital, she was the nurse’s best friend, attending to most of my issues before we had to ask medical staff for help.

My wife has been my angel from God. I would never have made it through this experience without her, and I can’t wait to make it up to her for scaring her the way I did. God has sustained us and carried us through, and he has used my lovely bride to do most of it.

Thankful to be alive….. =)

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