Miracle or not a miracle, My Long Suffering Wife Ruth is back home and fine

A column by John Estridge

There is a reason people who made comments on my blog did not have them published quickly. And people who wrote columns for me last week did not have them published right away.

There were no obits. There was no information on the blog I enjoy sharing.

That is because My Long Suffering Wife Ruth had a health scare.

Wednesday evening Ruth called me at my job at the library. Getting a call like that from Ruth at work is like the old days when the landline started ringing at 2 in the morning: Something bad had happened. No good news comes at that time in the morning via phone. And there has to be a serious problem if Ruth calls me at work.

There was.

Ruth asked me to come home. I could not breathe. It took me many seconds before I could verbally ask the obvious: “What is wrong?”

Ruth has tachycardia. Thank God for Google on spelling. She has had it for many years. I have witnessed it too many times, and scares me every time, not to mention what it does to Ruth. I can never think of that term outside having Google at my beck and call. It means her heart speeds up. It has done more than 200 beats per minute.

She had one of those Wednesday evening, but there were two differences in this event: The duration ended up being three hours (the others maybe 30 minutes) and she said she felt a tightness in her chest.

Oh, those last words sent the worst thoughts imaginable through my brain. Driving the short distance home, I had the wherewithal to ask for God’s healing and that He bring us comfort.

We went to Batesville. I did not speed (too much) and I really concentrated on keeping our conversation light and keeping the dread I was feeling out of my voice. I cannot play poker due to not having a poker face so I do not really know how I did.

People manning Batesville’s ER were very nice. They were busy. It is the times.

At first it was like the other times we have gone to the hospital when Ruth has had an event. They were pretty sure it was nothing more than the tachycardia, and we would soon get to go home.

But

A nurse, the doctor, I cannot remember which said an enzyme was present in her blood sample. Upon questioning, the ER doctor explained the enzyme is shed from the heart muscle due to a heart attack.

So, there it was.

They did another blood test. And then a nurse came in with a rapid COVID test, and I knew what was coming next: we were going to a larger hospital in the City. The doctor called Christ Hospital, but the hospital was full with 19 people in its ER waiting for beds.

We – I mean Ruth — ended up in Mercy West.

I went home to get things and take a nap. Neither of us had slept well Monday or Tuesday nights and it was 2 a.m. Thursday morning when Ruth left Batesville in an ambulance.

By the time I got there later Thursday morning, they had already performed one test on Ruth. Then, a chaplain came into Ruth’s room. He asked me — as Ruth was talking with a hospital employee at the time – if he could do anything for us. I asked him to pray. He asked me what I wanted him to pray for.

To my credit I swallowed the first 20 retorts I could have given him at that moment and softly said “Healing.” And so he did, but he said it would be a silent prayer as Ruth was still having her conversation. And I was good with that.

Because of COVID just one person is allowed to be in the patient’s room and visiting hours are 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sometime Thursday afternoon I stopped by the nurses’ station and asked if I could spend the night. I went to the nurse sitting at the center of the long counter. She told me I would have to ask the head nurse. There were several people who looked like nurses either sitting or standing behind the counter so I let a bewildered look – it is almost permanent anymore – pass over all of them. A few moments passed before one offered to call the head nurse.

She did and sent on my request. Then the nurse making the call asked me “why do you want to spend the night?”

You know at one time in my life I really believed there was not a stupid question, but Thursday I heard two in such a short time. My bewildered look was very real that time, and I put my palms up and shrugged in the universal bewildered pantomime language.

“Is it because you just want to?” she asked me. I nodded. And I was given permission.

Ruth and I watched TV. It was pouring outside so the quality of the TV reception – I think it was satellite TV – was as bad as cable is in Brookville. But Ruth napped and the Olympics, Battling Bots and a Brad Pitt war movie played out in spurts as Ruth would wake and turn the channel. More than once she said there were sports channels, but for once in my jock life, I couldn’t have cared less about organized sports.

An aside here. People put down hospital cafeteria food. One exception is Ruth and I were on vacation at Pine Mountain in Pineville, Kentucky one year and I asked a person where was the best place to eat in Pineville, and that person told me the hospital cafeteria. We did not try it during our stay, but Mercy West Hospital has a phenomenal cafeteria. The cheeseburger almost reached Nixie status, I kid you not.

Anyway, to make a long story slightly shorter, they did more tests on Ruth the rest of the day Thursday and Friday.

Oh, one other aside here. Thursday when I walked in I – of course – had a thermos of coffee. Ruth smelled the coffee before she smelled me. She was not amused. Her last meal had been noon Wednesday, and she was not allowed to eat due to the testing that was occurring, and worse, she could not have any caffeine, coffee.

I felt really bad, but I did drink all of my coffee.

The gist of the matter is Ruth did not have a heart attack, at least there was no damage whatsoever to her heart. The official reason for the enzyme to be present in her bloodstream and no damage to her heart is because the duration of her tachycardia caused the enzyme to be shed, not that she had a heart attack, and then there was no trace of a heart attack.

Ruth and my reason is MIRACLE.

Not everyone gets healed. I believe it has to be God’s will for something to be done by God such as healing. But I also believe God has to be asked, and prayer is powerful. I believe if something is His will, it will be done whether a mountain is moved or a heart is undamaged. I do not know why God’s will is for some to be healed and some not to be healed. At some point somewhere else, He might let me in on the secret, but I have always tried not to be too bitter in the times it was not His will.

Ruth and I came home, and we sat and did what we have been doing for some time: we sit side by side and binge watch TV shows. Now it is Outlander.

Saturday, we spent the whole day that way. Saturday night before we went to bed after the TV had been turned off, we talked about how easy it is to take our simple rite – sitting side by side binge watching TV and me making a bushel basket full of snarky comments that gets on her nerves to no end – for granted.

It can all end in the blink of an eye.

We knew that before. We have known it all of our lives. But something like what occurred to Ruth drives that home in unmistakable terms. We both cried Saturday night/Sunday morning, and I am crying now.

All I can say is thank God.