Over the past few weeks have made references to my cousin Jerry on twitter and facebook. I have requested prayers and offered vague praise reports about things that have happened. I knew this was a story that needed to be told. It wasn’t until I was approached by a sweet classmate inquiring about my family after reading my tweets that I realized I should be the one to tell it, at least to my social media friends I have bombarded with scriptures and prayer requests. There is no doubt in my mind that soon Jerry can tell it much better than I can, but typing is a little out of the question for him at this point.
Jerry is my father’s cousin. He is 54 years old. He is divorced, with no children. Both of his parents have passed away. He has been a close part of my family, much more like an uncle than a brother. Until everything happened, I didn’t even know he had two older half-brothers. He had always just seemed like the youngest brother in my dad’s gaggle of siblings to me.
Jerry has suffered from diabetes for most of his life. Not the kind people are developing these days because they’re too fat to realize they need to put down the Big Mac and take a lap around the neighborhood, but Type 1, the very serious kind children develop because their bodies simply can’t make enough insulin. Of course that comes with a whole slew of problems. In addition to needing to watch his diet and take insulin shots, Jerry’s blood sugar would bottom out on occasion. He keeps a supply of peppermint and Coca Cola around in those cases where he starts to feel fuzzy and needs to boost his blood sugar levels. There have been times when our family members or his co-workers have realized this was happening and had to force him to drink a Coke or eat a piece of candy. Jerry lives alone with his Jack Russell terrier, Chester, and a menagerie of other pets.
Fortunately for Jerry, his next door neighbors are also his best friends. He would often attend their son’s high school baseball games. One weekend in early March, he decline an invitation to go, texting Angie (the wife and mother) that he had a stomach bug and wasn’t able to leave the house. Something as simple as a stomach virus can be lethal for a diabetic, especially one who is prone to having blood sugar levels plummet on a dime. But, Angie kept in touch with him over the weekend. He had continued giving himself his insulin shots and felt so poorly that he didn’t want to get them sick. On Monday evening she decided to send him some dinner over. She called his house and he did not answer. She sent her husband over, and he did not answer. As panic set it, they used the spare key to let themselves in. They found him in his bed. He was conscious, but just barely. They were well aware of his blood sugar problems, so they attempted to give him a piece of candy. He spit it out. His home blood sugar test kit read “High” instead of the 3 digit number it would normally display. They called 911.
An ambulance arrived and took him to the nearest local hospital. His blood sugar level was 1600. The average person’s blood sugar ranges from 130-150. Levels as of 500 can be fatal. The doctors realized there was little they could do for him at the small hospital, so they called for a helicopter to take him to DCH in Tuscaloosa. They warned the family and friends who had arrived that he had a very little chance of surviving. Jerry’s heart stopped twice on the 30 minute helicopter ride to Tuscaloosa. EMTs were able to resuscitate him.
When Jerry arrived at DCH, he was placed on a ventilator and full life support. Though his blood sugar levels gradually lowered and eventually stabilized, he showed no signs of improvement. On Tuesday a cardiologist examined him. “This will be very hard to watch,” he told my mother with a grim face. He told her that his heart simply wasn’t strong enough to pump. “Is that why his hands are so cold?” she asked. The doctor explained that his circulation was very low, and they had fixed it so that the blood flow would go through his major organs. There had surely been blood loss to the brain. His heart was so bad that it could have been what caused the coma in the first place. We could never really know.
A neurologist ordered an EEG, which measures activity in the brain. On Thursday, he called in the family members who were still posted up in the Intensive Care waiting room. Jerry’s half-brother Dennis, his cousin June, her husband George (my aunt and uncle), my sister, and I huddled into a cramped windowless room on the ICU corridor. A nurse sat with us as we fidgeted, impatient to hear what he would say. She looked at her shoes and tugged on the ends of her hair. We turned our heads as the neurologist finally appeared. Dr. Slaughter, a name under any other circumstances I would have found hilarious for a doctor. We sat quietly as he explained the results of the test showed that any movements we had seen were involuntary and that Jerry’s brainwaves were so slow and irregular at times. He believed that Jerry would never wake up.
He told us the machines were all that were keeping him alive. The ventilator was doing his breathing. He said if his heart were to stop again, they could bring him back, but it would probably just make everything worse. He left us in that shoebox of a room with no hope. I cried quietly as Dr. Slaughter told us to wait a few days before doing anything, but to consider that turning the machines off might be the best thing for Jerry.
Thursday night passed with no change. Friday came and went. Family members were in and out. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Jerry’s half-brothers and their wives. Lovely people I had never clapped eyes on before in my life. We told them we were glad to get to meet them, but we hated to meet that way. On Saturday morning Terry and I headed back to the hospital, expecting the same thing we had seen for the past several days. When we got off the elevator, we were greeted by tearful, but smiling faces.
“Shelley, you have to come see!” my cousin Kayla exclaimed as the elevator doors closed behind us. She grabbed my hand and tugged me back to the ICU patient rooms. She explained that Mary, Jerry’s sister-in-law, had been quietly praying over him just before I got there. She was holding his hand, and suddenly, she felt a squeeze. She looked up and his eyes had opened. She talked to him and he nodded his head.
We walked in, and sure enough, his eyes were open. They looked out of focus, but they were open. Mary asked him questions and he would nod, or squeeze her hand. I wasn’t sure if he really understood what she was asking him, but that he was aware enough to acknowledge her when she stopped talking was amazing to me.
“Jerry, did you go to heaven?” she asked.
A weak nod. This time I wasn’t the only one in the room crying.
He had woken up. They said he wouldn’t but he did. We wondered what would happen. If his heart was as bad as they told us, would he survive?
When we went back on Sunday, my dad and I went into his room. I was startled when Jerry looked me dead in the eye with clear, focused eyes and smiled. Dad and I talked to him and he smiled, or shook his head, nodded, he even shrugged. When my dad slipped and asked a question that needed more than a yes or no answer, he mouthed “I can’t talk.” A few minutes later we left and I told him that we loved him. “I love y’all.” It was almost audible. I think if I have ever felt God in a place in my life, it was at that moment.
The next day the ventilators and the life support were gone. He drank, as he says, the best tasting water in the world. They moved him to a private room. Tuesday night, when he’d been in the hospital just over a week, he told us he went to heaven twice. “I saw my parents…and Chad [a childhood friend who passed away several years ago]. I saw them twice, and they told me both times that it wasn’t time yet. The doctors told me I died twice in the helicopter.” We didn’t press it too much, but if what he thought was heaven was just a dream, it’s an amazing coincidence that he dreamed it twice and he had to be resuscitated twice. That is the amazing story Jerry will one day tell.
And as everything in Jerry’s health began to improve, there was still a dark cloud looming over everything. His heart. His brain and his lungs had defied the doctors’ understanding. They couldn’t explain why he had woken up. We had prayed for a miracle. Did we really have one, or had our hopes gotten up so far for nothing?
A week later, after Jerry had been in the hospital for just over two weeks, the cardiologist scheduled some tests. Jerry would have a heart catheterization to clear blockage and see what the state of his heart truly was.
“He is an iron man,” said the doctor who had told us we would sit quietly and watch as Jerry’s heart failed him, just two weeks before.
“When I first saw him two weeks ago, I never thought he would live. There is…there is no explanation for the changes that have happened in his heart. It’s in great shape for someone his age, especially a diabetic. All I can say is, we have had a miracle here.”
And when a doctor tells you that your loved one has experienced a miracle, when the man who is supposed to be driven by science and logical explanations, admits there is no logical, scientific reason for a heart to heal itself in two weeks like Jerry’s did, well, it’s hard not to sit up and listen. Jerry said a changed man would be leaving that hospital. And he has. He was transferred last week to a rehab center to begin physical therapy so he can regain his strength and go back to his life and his favorite pet Chester. But Jerry’s not the only one who has changed. I’m ecstatic to see how this journey will affect all of us: his family, friends, loved ones. We’ve been shown that miracles can happen, that God answers prayers, and that a little bit of faith can go a long way. And it just seems wrong not to share that message with the world.
