Tag: health

A Living Miracle

November 26, 2025

Good afternoon,

Eighteen years ago today, I had my heart attack. I have two large scars because of the heart bypass surgery, and so it is hard to forget the events of those two weeks in November/December 2007. I had surgery a week after the attack, and I returned home a week after that. All my children and Shirley waited six hours in the St. Mary’s Hospital. waiting room for the doctor to give them the news of the surgery.  
Shirley did CPR, and the firefighters did CPR and defibrillated me twice. The paramedics gave me a clot buster, and drove me to the hospital. The nurses and doctors prepared me for surgery, and the surgeon did the bypass stuff, and I was sent home with an armful of drugs. exercises and a new diet. None of them acknowledged saving my life, but they were well-trained in their fields, and they were extraordinary. The rest they left to fate, karma or God ? 


I do not think everyday of being thankful, for being saved, and having these extra years of life here on earth, but I am. The odds, and I am not a betting person, were against me. Thousands have died since then with better odds. I was blue, and my heart was racing beyond belief, and the first responders did what they are trained to do, and it worked. You can tell I still think about why I am here with my re-telling the story. The story is still being written.


If you knew me at the time of the infarction, where were you and what did you think ? Blessings to you for all your prayers then and now .


Please pray for peace to really come to Gaza. AMEN

Fred

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom

am I complicit ? MPL 2025

Life is so slow .

eptember 15, 2025

Good afternoon,

There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

                         a time to be born and a time to die,….  Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

I have reflected on ‘time’ moving slow in my life a few times in the blog. Time changed for me about nine months following my heart attack. It has consistently been slow ever since. I was struck again by this sense of time in the last month. Normally, my pharmacist gives me two weeks of ‘blister ‘ packs of medication. I have been on much of the same meds since 2007. But in late August he/she gave me four weeks of meds. It seems to have taken forever to get through this one month supply, and I have another week to go ! Even though it has gone on for so many years, it still has not become normal, and it still feels strange and unnatural.


This is my life. I no longer ask why, but I do wonder what it might mean for my spiritual journey ? But after 17 years of slow time, it does not really matter. Some cancer patients have told me time slows down for them for a while, but then it goes away. And many people say that time goes faster as they get older. I say today,  ‘ it is only September 15th ‘. 


Maybe I am being offered more time to think ? I do not feel the need to do more. And I do not get any more done with all this extra time. The biblical prophets do not talk about time slowing down. Jesus doesn’t say anything about it. I wonder if his final week slowed down for him, as he and his disciples had to deal with so much conflict and tension. My body was traumatized by my diabetes and heart attack. Others have had the same experience and time marches on for them. Time walks in slow motion for me.

May peace quicken its pace in all places of war and violence. AMEN


Fred

black and white shadows

crush humanity’s freedom

am I complicit ? MPL 2025