StoriesAboutGod.org

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.