Mum, Is Pete Going To Die?

Apologies for the drastic nature of the title, but it captures the anguish of those who came to visit me during those first few days. I couldn’t have many visitors, but family, and a few close friends, came to see me. One moment that brought a smile to my face was when my friends Harry and Lily arrived. They were really late. They were late because in their rush to get to me, they had entered the incorrect address into their satnav. And when I say incorrect address, they’d actually entered the address of a completely different hospital. A hospital 27 miles away!

Other than feeling horrendous, I was blissfully unaware of quite how ill I was. As far as I was concerned, I was in the hospital, and that’s where they make people better. During the first couple of days, I don’t ever recall thinking, “I’m dying!”. But, as it turns out, that’s exactly what everyone else was thinking.

It has been both difficult and helpful to chat to people about how they felt during that time. A particularly sobering conversation was had with Jo and Sarah. I asked them recently to share with me what it was like, visiting me in that condition. Apparently, as they left the cardiac ward after their first visit, through tears, Sarah asked, “Mum, is Pete going to die?” to which Jo replied, “Well, Sarah, he doesn’t look very well.” You know it isn’t looking good when a mother can’t bring herself to say to her child, “No dear, I’m sure he’s going to be fine.”

In conversation recently, Harry shared with me how he remembers calling a friend of ours who lives in Colorado and saying to him, “I don’t think he’s going to make it!” I am now very aware that Mim, my parents, and everyone else who visited me during that first week, were also wondering whether each visit would be the last time they saw me.

This weekend just past marked one year on from when they delivered the news of my condition. They knew that I had an infection in my blood and, because they could hear a heart murmur, that something was wrong with my heart. They had performed an echocardiogram: an ultrasound of the heart. They could see that my heart wasn’t functioning as it should, but it didn’t quite give them a good enough view, so they needed to get a closer look.

I was informed that I would be going for a transoesophageal echocardiogram (TOE). Apparently, a “small” probe would be pushed down my throat, which, because it could scan from the inside, right next my heart, would give them much clearer images. I was with it enough to know that this procedure did not sound particularly pleasant. I asked my Mum if she knew what it felt like and she replied with, “It’s really not that bad. Just like swallowing a small piece of food.”

Now, sometimes, the people who love us most, tell us what I like to call, ‘comforting lies’. You know, the not quite accurate information we give people to protect them from a painful truth. This was one of those moments. I guess it did feel a bit like swallowing a small piece of food. If the piece of food was a mechanical snake that got stuck in your throat for a few minutes! It really wasn’t very nice at all. I have since forgiven my Mum and completely understand that, at the time, telling me it wasn’t that bad was the best she could do for me.

It was the morning of Friday 12th January 2018, when they told me that I had Infective Endocarditis. I had no idea what that meant, but they had drawn the curtains around my bed, and the looks on their faces told me enough to understand that it wasn’t good news. The consultant went on to say that endocarditis is an infection of the inner lining of the heart. The bacteria in my bloodstream had somehow found its way into my heart and damaged my mitral valve. The valve was leaking severely, which was preventing a healthy flow of blood through my heart.

I’m not sure how you’re supposed to feel at a time like this. I just remember feeling not very much at all. I don’t recall much of what the consultant said. I just felt numb. I do, however, remember her telling us that it was very serious and would require me to be in hospital for at least six weeks. Then, if they managed to get rid of the infection, I would need major surgery to fix the leaky valve. If they couldn’t get rid of the infection, then… Well, that would be that for me.

It must have been at this point that I started to understand the seriousness of the situation. The pastor of my Church came to visit me and I can remember saying to him, “Sean, if this is the end for me, I want my funeral to be joyful, upbeat and colourful.” Discussing your own funeral with someone is very surreal. Mim arrived at the hospital shortly after they had given us the news and my Mum filled her in. She just remembers sitting by my bed and crying for most of the rest of the day.

At the end of that day, when visiting hours were over and everyone had gone home, I suddenly found myself alone with my thoughts. Well, alone as you can be in a hospital. I had no energy, so was unable to move from my bed. Or even really move at all. I couldn’t even lift the jug to pour myself some water. It was then that it finally sunk in – I was SERIOUSLY ill!

This really was the first major crisis that I had experienced in my adult life. I had always wondered how my faith in God would stand up if something massive were to happen to me. There’s a guy in the Bible called Job and he’s up there among the heroes when it comes to keeping faith in the middle of a trial. On a 1 to 10 scale of how badly life could go, Job was about a 20! I’m not exaggerating. Everything he owned was destroyed and his children all died in the space of a day. If anyone had a reason to abandon their faith in God, it was Job.

But Job’s response is remarkable. Many would say ridiculous. Crazy even. He simply says, “The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” His friends thought he’d lost the plot, but Job’s faith in God was rock solid. When we are faced with suffering and pain, as far as faith in God is concerned, we have a decision to make – We can choose to worship Him or we can choose to walk away from Him.

Like Job, I made the choice to worship Him. I didn’t understand why I was sick or how I’d found myself in such a desperate situation. To be honest, we still don’t really know how the bacteria found its way into my bloodstream. But there’s one thing I was certain of back then, something I’m even more sure of now – God is good and He is in control. When we at our weakest, He gives us strength to carry on. When we are at our most desperate, He is a rock we can cling to. If you are being bombarded by bad news, He can give you a place to shelter.

When the nurses had dimmed the lights and closed the curtains around my bed, I knew it was time to sleep. But that really was the last thing I wanted to do, so I plugged in the headphones a friend had brought me, and clicked shuffle on my ‘chilled worship’ playlist. One of the first few songs that played is called ‘God of this restless heart’ and contains these lyrics, “God of this restless heart, draw swiftly near. Hasten to come and still our earthly fear.” Click here to listen to the song on youtube.

As I heard those lyrics, I found myself smiling. It wasn’t a small smile either. It was an ear to ear kind of smile. A smile that was overflowing from a joyful heart. If someone had come in at that moment, they probably would have wondered what was going on, because I wasn’t in a situation that warranted that kind of smile. I’ve found it hard to put into words the incredible joy I experienced in that moment. That is until yesterday, when a friend at the Church I was visiting asked if he could pray for me.

One thing he prayed was a perfect desciption of how I felt lying on that hospital bed, listening to that song. He told me he had a sense that God was pouring joy all over me. That’s exactly what it was like. As if God literally had a massive jug full of joy and was pouring it all over me. Thinking back to how joyful I was in that moment still feels odd.

By all accounts, being that joyful, in that circumstance, made no sense at all. But that is another amazing thing about Jesus. At no point does He promise that life will be perfect if we follow Him. However, He does promise to give us the strength we need to face anything that life may throw at us. That strength is found in the joy that only He can give us. I love the way John Piper describes it:

But God is happiness. Joy is fundamental to his triune nature. To find God is to find the fountain of all joy, so beautifully and simply put by Augustine: “Following after God is the desire of happiness; to reach God is happiness itself.” We participate in joy when we reach the essence of all joy: God himself.

The chorus of the next song (click here to listen on youtube) I listened to started with, “I lift my hands to heaven, here my heart surrendered, in you I find my rest, You are Lord of all.” The joy continued as I lifted my hands as high I physically could. Which consisted of my arms remaining firmly beside me on the bed and my hands raising just a few inches. It was all I could manage, but it was enough, as I heard God say, “It’s ok, I’ve got you.”