“Mike, take a picture of the nearest green directional sign and send it to me”.
Mike and I were good friends and we would talk every several days. His health had continued to deteriorate and there was little that could be done. He needed a triple transplant of a heart, liver and kidney which could be done but Mike was too sick to survive such a procedure. This day I had felt strongly led to call him and dived into this
event.
I had Mike pull over on a Chicago expressway because his voice had started to slur. Knowing him to be a diabetic, I realized that his blood sugar was crashing and that he was in danger of passing out while driving. When the picture of the sign showed up on my phone a minute later, I realized he was heading the opposite direction of where he thought he was going, away from the city, and that he was in a dangerous place.
“Mike, I will call you back in a minute, make sure your car is in a safe place, turned off and the emergency flashers are on”
I hung up with Mike and called Emergency services. I quickly explained to the dispatcher the situation and told the dispatcher where he was and that they needed to get to him fast. I called Mike back and told him to sit tight; help was on the way.
Mike and I found ourselves in the middle of a nightmare that just seemed to get worse by the minute. The bottom of this barrel was very dark and very hopeless. I breathed a prayer at that moment, “God, I don’t know what to do.” I called some friends and briefly told them the situation and asked them to pray.
Mike’s journey began a long time ago. At the age of 5 he was taken to a hospital and was given a liver transplant. There was little explanation given to him at the moment and he woke up the next day in pain and confused. Life now became very different for him and hospitals became a continual horror movie that he was forced to watch over and over again.
I met Mike almost 14 years ago when two churches merged and he and his family came as part of the church merger. He and his wife and two small children quickly became part of the fellowship. Mike eventually became one of the deacons and served in that office of the church. My heart was drawn to him and his family and I soon found out that he had been given a liver transplant as a small child and was occasionally struggling with issues of an aging transplant 30 years later. Mike did not seem terribly concerned about these things but I watched him struggle. Mike worked to support his family and for several years was generally part of our fellowship without fail. Each Sunday as I walked up the aisle to where I usually sat, I would put my hand on his shoulder and greet him and his wife.
As the years went by there were more and more requests to pray for Mike. He ended up in the hospital frequently as his condition weakened and his liver began to fail. I found
myself visiting him often at different hospitals. Sometimes his condition was very serious and other times it was just an adjustment in medication. But there was a steady downhill slide. He became associated with the transplant group involving several university hospitals but there seemed to be no forward action with regard to him getting a transplant. Our friendship deepened but our joint frustration increased. Eventually, Mike was not able to maintain a job and he had to go on disability. His wife filed for divorce and separated from him.
Physically he continued to decline to such a point that his cardiologist said the he would require a heart, a kidney and a liver transplant. At this point the only thing that was maintaining his existence was his thrice weekly dialysis treatments. He began to look like he could walk on to a zombie movie set without needing any makeup. I would contact him every several days and continued to pray that somehow, we could get a breakthrough. It was frustrating as well as almost everyone seemed to abandon him. Understandably many did not know what to say or how to support him and so walked away and watched from a distance. I believe God had directed me to walk with him until the end and so I continued just to walk with him as best I could not knowing where it could lead.
Eventually for almost a whole year he was perpetually in and out of hospitals. At one hospital visit I asked him if his parents were still alive and why I did not ever see them visit him at the hospital. He said they were divorced and they lived in different states. He was estranged from his mother so I encouraged him to contact both parents and at least see if there could be some reconciliation of their relationship so that he could get some emotional and spiritual support for himself and his family. He called me a few days later and asked me to come and see him at the hospital on a Sunday and I was surprised to see both parents there with big smiles on their faces. All three had obviously reconciled and they thanked me profusely for bringing them back together. Mike began to spend time with his mother and they formed a good relationship. Shortly thereafter she discovered that she had terminal cancer but as a result came to faith in Christ and knew the peace in her heart of her future eternal destiny before her death only months later. His father began regular communication and became an integral part in his life and the darkening days ahead. Each day for me was learning to follow the Spirit’s leading for how to support him as I could. I dove deeply into the Word of God and learned His precious promises.
One day as Mike was driving to the hospital with his two children, he apparently passed out on the highway because of his suddenly lowered blood sugar. He must have been able to pull over safely before he passed out. His eleven-year-old son tried to call Emergency services but his father’s phone was locked so he flagged down a car which invoked emergency services to get him to the hospital. We had developed a close spiritual relationship over this time period and I would at times feel led to just call him. I did so that evening and when he answered he told me that he was in the hospital receiving blood transfusions. Evidently at his morning dialysis session his blood work
showed he needed a transfusion and they called him to come in to get one. Unfortunately, they did not speak of the urgency of the situation so that he would come back immediately. He received three units of blood that night and lived to tell about it. He had no memory of how he got to the hospital. I visited him the next day and thanked his son for his brave effort. The frustration for both of us deepened and yet I sensed God wanted to keep him around for something special.
A few days later, he called again about the incident that began this story. He told me during that conversation that his liver doctor had called while he was driving that day and told him that he had about two weeks left to live. He was obviously stunned. I went and visited him two days later and I wondered what I should say to him. As we sat there facing each other, I breathed a quiet prayer and asked God what I should say. What do you say to a dying man that you know only has a few days left to live? I sat there for a while and tried to engage in some hopeful conversation. I asked him, “So what will it be like to meet Jesus when you see him”. He thought for a second and then responded. “Oh, I think it will be okay”. Then a few seconds later he said “No, it won’t be okay at all, I have done nothing for God over these last several years”. I thought briefly and then felt led to ask him, “Did you forgive your wife for leaving you?” He looked at me and then said. “That would be the hardest thing I could do”. I stood up and said, “You have two weeks” and left his house. As I came to my car, I thought, ‘What did I just do?”. The man is dying and you just told him to forgive his wife. Still, I left. Two days later he called me and said, “I did it, I called my wife and asked for her forgiveness.” I asked him, “How did she receive it”. He said, “She took it well and heard what he had to say”. He asked me, “So what is next”. I gulped and said, “Let’s see what God does”.
He then wanted to come to the church and confess his sin before the congregation and have the elders pray for him on the basis of James 5:14-16. “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” So that next Sunday he came and came before the church and we prayed for him in accordance with this scripture. Afterward he asked me, “What happens next?”. I said, “Let’s see what God does.” The next Sunday he came to me excitedly and told me his cardiologist had called and wanted to see him that Monday. I said to him, “So this is the same cardiologist that has looked at your heart 7 times and told you that you needed a heart transplant”, He said “Yes”. The next day he called me in the morning and told me that his doctor said he could repair the two valves and that he wouldn’t need a heart transplant. At the end of the day, he called me again and told me that his doctor had repaired his heart valves and said that his heart condition had improved and that he would not need a heart transplant. The doctor also said that the repair would take about 5 to 6 weeks to heal before anything else could happen but he cancelled the heart transplant. So, one transplant of the three was cancelled, we had to wait another 6 weeks until the repair healed to see if he could get the other two organs transplanted into his body.
As the repair healed, I wondered what would happen. Would he survive long enough to get liver and kidney transplants. We hung in together and prayed. After six weeks the transplant doctors brought him in for an ultrasound study. He was then put on a transplant list with 30 other people. He was told; he would be called each week if there was a possibility of a transplant but that process could take up to 30 weeks. I held my breath. Would he survive long enough to get his transplant?
The first week he was called and told that this was not his transplant. But the second week he was called and went to the hospital. After a review of the organs donated and his case, it was elected that he should receive this transplant. His father called and told me that he was going to receive a double implant of a kidney and a liver. The surgery took place over the next 15 hours in which he received both a liver and a kidney. Amazingly, he survived the surgery and I went to see him two days later. His abdomen had multiple surgical clips but he was alive. It took almost 6 weeks to heal enough to go home and another year for complete healing of the scars. But by God’s grace he is still alive today after 8 years, working and rejoicing in God’s work in his life.
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