Giving Thanks in November

I really did mean to enter a thankful post each day in November. Yesterday, however, got away from me.

Yesterday was catch up day. No, I didn't catch up on housework or laundry or even reading. It was catch up day because the events of the past couple days finally caught up with me. Like a little wind-up toy, I teetered over and stopped for a while. The stress, the fears, the joys, Friday's succession of meetings with doctors and electro-physiologists, and testing and the over three hour battle through Chicago rush hour traffic at the end of a very long day finally took its toll.

Saturday I scurried around and prepared a rather unorganized Thanksgiving dinner for my family with all the trimmings. I thought it would be a mess since my Thursday evening shopping time and my all day Friday cleaning and baking and cooking time was lost. But everything turned out fine. Our growing family sat down together: Tom and me, John and Beth and Elliott, Jake and Sam. Seven of us around the table. The cheesecake didn't get baked, but we didn't need it. We revealed in the completeness of our circle and reflected on how different that day would have been if Jake did not have a defibrillator. It was another day I will never forget.

Yesterday I slowed down and rested. I stayed quiet all day. I thought a great deal about how many, many times and how many, many ways God has intervened and spared Jake's life. The enormity of what almost happened settled in around me, but amidst the horror of those thoughts, God was there, comforting me, encouraging me, reminding me of all that He has done.

I also came to grips with the truth that had Jake died Thursday night, I would still be thanking God for sparing his life so many, many times. O, the comfort and peace that comes from knowing that God is sovereign and He is GOOD!

So yesterday I missed my Sunday thanksgiving post, but I did not miss thanking God for His unfailing mercies and unfathomable grace.

We gather together to ask the Lord's blessing;
he chastens and hastens his will to make known;
the wicked oppressing now cease from distressing:
sing praise to his Name, he forgets not his own.

Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
so from the beginning the fight we were winning:
thou, Lord, wast at our side: all glory be thine!

We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
and pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation:
thy Name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!

Giving Thanks in November

We have reason to rejoice and give thanks this morning!

Yesterday, Jake’s defibrillator fired at work. He was nearing the end of his shift at Sam's Club, scurrying around trying to get an aisle moved and a new one set up before he left. He was moving boxes and climbing up and down the steel. He felt tired, but his break was coming up, so he was pushing hard to get as much done as he could. He began to feel over heated, so he took off one of his shirts to cool down and kept working. All of a sudden, he felt as though he would black out and then before he could even get oriented from that, his defibrillator fired.

He was able to get to the manager’s office and sit down. Long story short; he called us and Tom went to pick him up from work while I began making phone calls to Children’s and Jake’s local cardiologist. We took him to the ER (where his whole pacemaker journey started back in August) and they ran an EKG. By this time, his color had returned and his heart rate returned to normal. He still felt shaken, but OK.

The ER doc called in a rep from Medtronic, the manufacturer of his pacemaker/defib, and he downloaded the information about what happened before, during and after the event. It showed that Jake had suffered a bout of sustained ventricular tachycardia with his heart rate soaring to 300 bpm. The first thing the pacemaker tried to do was ‘get out in front’ of the arrhythmia by pacing faster than his heart was going and take over to pace it back down. It wasn’t able to do that, so it fired. This brought his rhythm back to ‘normal.’ The whole episode took 8 or 9 seconds.

While this was a very scary event, it is a VERY good thing. Without the defib, he would have died. Also, this proves that the pacer is doing it’s job. Sometimes they malfunction and deliver a treatment unnecessarily. This was definitely necessary and it did just what it was meant to do!

Obviously, there will be follow-up and we may learn more. He just had a nuclear stress test on Monday that apparently went well, so that may eventually give us more information, too.

So, last night was stressful but in the larger scheme of things, we are rejoicing because it saved his life! God has graciously intervened and preserved his life yet again. We have much for which to be thankful!

Rejoice with us and give thanks to God!  His loving-kindness endures forever.