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by: MadMax By the time they brought me to the doctor in the morning, I was nearly gone. --------------------------------- When I was 3 years old I contracted hepatitis A from eating bad seafood.  As my fever rose dramatically with the disease, my doctor told my parents to keep giving me aspirin to regulate my body’s temperature.  This only made things worse...far worse.  The aspirin and this disease which attacks the liver caused massive bleeding. I began to bleed out.  I lost my reflexes and strength as my body poured out blood internally.  My mother put me in a bathtub and blood was all around me.  I passed something that looked like a giant black glob of blood.  My mother called the doctor that night...the doctor said, “a little blood looks like a lot...bring him in to see me in the morning.” By the time they brought me to the doctor in the morning, I was nearly gone.  I was in a coma.  The doctor screamed for us to race to the children’s hospital (one of the finest children’s hospitals in the world).  The doctors at the hospital decided I was too far gone.  They didn’t want to put me in intensive care because that would separate me from my parents when I died.  And they wanted me to die with my family nearby.  They told my parents my blood count was 3 on a scale of 12 (I’m not a doctor, but that doesn’t sound good!).  They told my parents there was just no way to give me enough blood back to save me.  “Do you understand what we’re telling you?” they would ask my parents. My parents raised me in an Episcopal Church.  So they called the minister to the hospital.  At straight up 2 p.m. on November 2, 1977, the doctors pulled the sheets up to my chest and folded them back...so that when I died, they could merely fold it forward over my head.  The minister began administering last rites.  I was in a coma.  My mom prayed like crazy...she would tell you she was in stark denial saying, “no...this can’t be happening!” With children of my own, now, I can’t imagine that pain or that fear.  I pray I never know it. At straight up 3 p.m. I wake up.  I look over and smile.  My mom says, “hi!” I respond, saying, “hi.” They’re concerned about brain damage because I’ve lost so much blood.  “Where are you?” she asks.  Looking at the minister I respond, “Church.” So they asked me who I knew at church, and I named my best friend from church.  The minister jumps up and down screaming, “PRAISE GOD!!! PRAISE GOD!!” My mother is crying and laughing in joy.  The doctors come in expecting the worst, and are shocked by what they find.  They pull the sheets back quickly and ask me to kick my legs for my mommy.  I’m able to.  They run a scope in me ultimately to determine where the bleeding came from and what was going on.  They’re never to find anything.  Not even a place where I had healed.  The doctors ask my parents to meet with them in a conference room.  They tell my parents they didn’t do this.  That they were just trying to let me die with some dignity, surrounded by family.  That there was nothing they could do for someone who had lost so much blood.  It is a tremendous burden to live with this story.  It’s beautiful and awe-inspiring, and I am GREATLY appreciative of it.  Not just because He preserved my life...but because He gave me a sense of appreciation for life from the earliest times I can remember this story being told to me.  But it is difficult to consider if you’ve lived to being somehow worthy of God’s grace.  Because we never do.  But He remains who He is, in spite of us.  How can I possibly say thank you enough? View the story online at: http://www.storiesaboutgod.org/index.php/stories/story_page/gods/

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