My Glimpse of Eternity (3 page)

Dr. James Thompson, the night doctor on duty, was young and gentle. I decided he was too young and good-looking to be wise. As he applied pressure to my lower right side, the ceiling lights separated into small bright specks, like lighted fish eggs, and I passed out. So much for my vow to be strong and unflinching.

When my eyes began to focus again, the doctor asked a series of questions, then did a urinalysis, a blood test and X-rays. After checking results, he spoke frankly.

“You’re in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m afraid that you have a swollen appendix, ready to burst. The blood test shows an infection. I have only twenty-four beds in this little beach hospital and I have twenty-six patients, two of whom are women in labor. I am the only doctor on duty. Your appendix must be removed immediately, but I cannot do it here.”

A hurried call was made to the Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, Florida, and arrangements completed for the head surgeon on the staff of that hospital to meet me there and have the operating room ready. Dr. Thompson warned me: “If you get relief, you’ll know your appendix has ruptured. Do not be persuaded otherwise. Go through with the operation. You need surgery immediately.”

The doctor then gave me a shot to ease the pain. Minutes later the throbbing eased and I felt a kind of euphoria. Everything was going to work out fine, I concluded.

Two ambulance attendants entered the emergency room and began preparing me carefully for the twenty-two-mile ride to the Clearwater hospital. They wrapped the white sheet about me as neatly mitred at the corners as a bride’s gift for a wedding shower. Then I was lifted gently and seemed to float into the back of the ambulance, the interior of which was quilted and carpeted, with velvet draperies lining the windows. John sat beside me holding my hand, while Dad drove our car behind the ambulance.

I was still euphoric and yet aware of everything—the rotating red light reflecting through the windows, the screaming siren muted somewhat by the well-insulated interior of the vehicle. We were quiet and very much alone, as the drivers had closed the curtain behind them. John then began philosophizing and continued to do so during the rest of the ride to Clearwater.

“How silly our value system is,” he began. “We think that money and what we own are so important until a time like this. So last month Sunoco gave me the ‘salesman of the month’ award; it seemed so important then, but what good is it now? My mother is right—she told me that if you have the Lord and your health, that’s all a marriage really needs. It seemed so simplistic, but she’s right, Bets.”

A male attendant, a nurse’s aide and a registered nurse met us at the emergency entrance of the Clearwater Hospital and wheeled me into the prep room adjoining surgery. The necessary papers were filled out and my side was shaved and painted. Dr. Malcolm White, an older man with a harried look, began to examine me. Finally he removed his glasses, wiped his face with his handkerchief, and with a reassuring smile said, “I’m glad Dr. Thompson was not able to operate on you in his hospital. With all due respect to another doctor, I feel he has made a wrong analysis. It would have unnecessarily ruined a vacation for your two families. You have an internal infection which I think we can clear up with penicillin. We’ll keep you here for a day or so until the infection is gone and the dizziness subsides. You’ll be as good as new!”

This was what we wanted to hear. John and Dad returned to our vacation lodge and I went to sleep, reassured.

But the infection did not clear up. Day after day, the doctors conferred, ran tests, and gave me shots of penicillin for the infection. The pain returned. When my temperature began to climb, they called in another specialist in internal medicine. After studying the X-rays, he said, “I feel you may have a tubular pregnancy.”

On the seventh day of my stay in the Clearwater Hospital several of the doctors gathered together in my room for an “organ recital”—a review, it seemed, of every part of my lower anatomy. When I protested this, John and my dad intervened to suggest that I be flown back to Indiana and admitted to our local hospital there. The doctors agreed to release me, and hours later I was on a plane with John and Brenda for Terre Haute.

When the plane landed at the Terre Haute airport, I asked John to take me home. He was surprised.

“I thought the doctors told you to check into the hospital as soon as you arrived,” he said.

“John, the doctors can’t agree on anything about me. Dr. Thompson said one thing, Dr. White something else. They’ve discussed me endlessly, pawed over me day after day. I’m tired of the whole thing. Let’s go home. I’ll find a way to clear up the infection.” Then I remembered that my parents and Gary were driving back in our car from Florida. “I’ll be admitted to the hospital when Mom and Dad get home,” I said.

Reluctantly John agreed, on the promise that I would go to bed. He didn’t have to pressure me. I felt terrible. But I had another problem too. In my head. It was pride.

As I look back on that decision, it was completely indefensible. Why did I deliberately disobey the doctor’s instructions to enter myself into the hospital? The reason I gave John about the doctors not being able to agree on what was wrong with me was true enough. Yet that didn’t get to the real issue.

I realize now that I have always been a person who liked to run things. A fierce dislike of hospitals was being born in me because there I found myself utterly out of control. The patient lies on the high bed like a horizontal department store dummy, made to feel like a thing—a piece of anatomy with problem parts—not like a person at all. Was it false modesty or prudishness that made me shrink from the casual uncovering for breast or vaginal or rectal examinations, the constant chatter about my female trouble at the Clearwater Hospital?

Then too one is always at the mercy of the hospital routine—stick the thermometer in the mouth at 6:00 a.m. . . . wake the patient out of a good sleep . . . slap a washcloth on her face fifteen minutes later . . . leave her sitting on the bedpan for twenty minutes—there is little the patient can do to alter the course of events.

Complaining did little good, I found, and often resulted in poor service and less attention. Trying to talk to the doctors did not help much either. I could see it in their eyes and in their impatience always to be off—
I have the knowledge . . . she has none . . . let her talk a little . . . be kind. . . .

I kept thinking, “But it’s
my
body you doctors are discussing. It’s
my
life and
my
future at stake. How can you bypass
me
this way?” As a person I felt kicked into the corner and ignored. So I found the whole hospital system an assault on my personhood.

Oh, I tried to be bright and cheery. I would greet the nurses with warmth and the doctors with open friendliness. I wanted them to think me a good patient. But underneath I was in rebellion, primarily because of a feeling of helplessness. I didn’t know then how to handle that.

So by trying to take things in my own hands and refusing to enter the hospital for further treatment, I put myself on a collision course between two forces—my pride and a deadly infection.

3
The Comforter

T
hree days later I awoke in a panic. I was afire with fever. My body had swelled up like a blimp. I could not move my legs, had no feeling in my hands and could barely get my breath.

“John, wake up, wake up. I’m in trouble.” The voice hardly sounded like me. It seemed to be coming from across the room. Then I became almost hysterical when I realized I could not see.

John bounded from bed and dialed my parents. “Pray for Bets; she’s much worse. Meet us at the hospital emergency room as soon as you can get there.”

Then he was calling the hospital, asking for a surgeon. “This is an emergency!” John said, his voice cracking.

I faded and returned, faded and returned again. Feeling came into my hands; they had been asleep. Vision in my eyes returned slightly, but I could not smell or taste.

John dialed a neighbor who agreed to come right over and stay with Brenda. He dressed quickly, then found a bathrobe for me. I felt his arms under my knees and shoulders just as Brenda came into the room.

I focused my eyes enough to see my daughter standing in the doorway in her pajamas with the pink teddy bears printed on them. Under one arm was “Jingles,” her large stuffed donkey; in the other was “Pete,” her life-sized stuffed monkey.

“What’s wrong with Mommie? She’s big enough to walk, Daddy; why are you carrying Mommie?”

“It’s all right, dear,” I said groggily.

As John carried me to the car, I blacked out. A few minutes later I came to when John sped around a corner, tires squealing. As we pulled up in front of the emergency entrance of Union Hospital, a stream of thoughts seared my consciousness like a lightning bolt. I had been born at this hospital; now I was returning here to die.

The next thing I recall was opening my eyes to blurred lights on the ceiling of the examining room, swirling about like a lake of tiny minnows. A physician was standing over me. My husband, remembering that the last examination in the Florida hospital indicated a possible tubular pregnancy and a dead fetus, had called Dr. Paul Bherne, who was a gynecologist and surgeon.

As I faded in and out of my twilight zone, I recall Dr. Bherne sitting at the right corner of the examining cot, taking a ball-point pen from his pocket and scrawling on the white bed sheet a diagram for my husband. He drew a picture of the womb, the tubes and ovaries. “Her tubular pregnancy took place here,” he said, pointing to the right tube. “The fetus has been dead for some time: this explains the gangrenous infection in your wife’s bloodstream.”

Before I was wheeled to the operating room, I was asked to sign several papers releasing the hospital of responsibility if anything went wrong during surgery. Because of my blurred vision these were read to me and a nurse helped me sign in the proper place. One of the papers, a copy of which I retained, was titled: “Consent to Operation that Will Result in Sterilization.”

I, the undersigned, a patient in Union Hospital, Terre Haute, Indiana, hereby certify: That I have full knowledge that the nature of the operation to be performed under the direction of Dr. Paul Bherne will result in sterilization; that consent thereto is hereby given voluntarily by me, if competent, and for me by my parents, guardian or best friend, as the case may be, if incompetent for any reason; that the Union Hospital and Dr. Bherne shall in no way be held liable for the resulting sterilization.

Below my signature there was another statement for John to sign:

I, the spouse of Betty Upchurch, the patient above-mentioned, and knowing the contents and meaning of the above instrument, fully agree, request, consent and advise that said operation be performed.

We were signing away any possibility of adding to our family; yet what choice did we have? How sad that Brenda would never have a brother or sister!

I was rolled to the operating room and placed on the table. Another doctor and an anesthetist joined Dr. Bherne. They gave me a spinal injection, then a shot of sodium pentathol in the right arm, and then the countdown—99, 98, 97. I heard myself complaining that it was too cold on that operating table, that he was cutting me too deep, clear through my back and into the table. Dr. Bherne, speaking to a nurse, said, “I know she can’t possibly feel that. More sodium pentathol, please.”

I didn’t feel anything from then on, but pieces of conversation from the medical men pierced my befogged senses. There were comments about “a huge mass,” many technical terms, then before I slipped into deep unconsciousness the words, “I don’t see how she can survive this massive gangrenous infection.”

In my childhood our family used to hold yearly family picnics outside of Rockville, Indiana, beside the brown, one-lane, 30-foot covered bridge which spanned the Wasbash River. The river, although swift-moving through this wooded area, was wide enough and deep enough for swimming. The water was so fresh and pure that we drank it.

My uncles loved to roughhouse with us children at these picnics, particularly Uncle Jesse, whose position as a railroad brakeman earned my deep admiration. Uncle Jesse would pick up like a sack of potatoes. Then I would squeal with delight as I sailed through the air from one uncle’s strong arms to another.

In the recovery room after the operation, as my temperature soared to 105 degrees and the morphine took full effect, I dreamed that once again I was flying through the air from uncle to uncle. Then suddenly the scene changed from the Wabash River to a large city, and some tiny pink men were tossing me from a church steeple to the top of an apartment house to a skyscraper. The dwarfed creatures would scream with laughter each time I would almost fall to the ground. Next I found myself being hurled from one jet plane to another as planes were whizzing about me in all directions. There was a terrible pain in my stomach which got worse each time one of the small creatures touched me.

Was this death, I wondered? The voice in the operating room had said I could not survive the infection, yet how could this be death if I could feel such pain? Then I rallied to sound—it was the voice of Dr. Bherne.

“I have never cut into such a nasty mess in all my eighteen years of practice.”

Then I heard my father’s voice, but not what he said. Then it was Dr. Bherne talking again:

“Dr. Thompson was right in his diagnosis. There was no tubular pregnancy. It was a ruptured appendix. Why, her appendix burst with such impact that all I found of it were small fragments. I didn’t even attempt to remove them. Nor did I try to suture the incision back together again. We will leave it open to drain.”

As they talked on I only half heard the words, but my father later gave me the substance of Dr. Bherne’s grim prognosis for me. Peritonitis infection had coated all my organs, causing some to disintegrate. “I have seen 200-pound men die with a ruptured appendix and no complications,” he told my parents. “Your daughter has carried that mass of infection for eleven days. I’m sure it’s now spread all through her body. She’s a desperately sick woman.”

Since few hospitals had intensive-care units in 1959, arrangements were made for around-the-clock nursing—three nurses a day, eight hours each. A stomach pump, connected by a long tube through my nose, had to be closely monitored so that it was properly irrigated and would thus prevent vomiting and hemorrhaging. My blood pressure, pulse and heartbeat were constantly checked. Dr. Bherne asked my parents to keep an eye on the intravenous feeding process to see that the needle connection into the vein during blood transfusions was kept secure. My veins had not responded fully because of the high fever and high infectious content of my blood. Close relatives could visit me, the doctor said, one or two at a time. Either of my parents or John could remain day and night by my side without restrictions.

I knew that this was an extremely difficult time for John. Hospitals and doctors had always intimidated him. Death was something he would just never talk about. Dad told me later that the sight of my drawn white face after the operation had paralyzed him with fear. For days afterward he would arrive for a visit, pat me softly on the shoulder and then station himself outside, seated on the floor and leaning against the door in an attempt to protect me from visitors. He would sit there for hours at a time, moving only to let nurses, doctors and members of the family enter and leave.

I wanted to comfort John, but was too weak. When he would enter the room and kiss me lightly on the cheek, I could barely open my eyes. I needed him there beside me to tell me his business troubles and report on Brenda. It seemed that everyone decided that because my eyes were closed most of the time, I could neither hear nor see what was going on in the room. In reality, I was intensely aware of what was going on.

While Mother stayed home with Brenda and Gary, Dad Perkins would sit by my bed day and night. At certain periods he would stand beside me and pray. Oh, how I remember those prayers! The words were like living water dripping into my veins, a healing balm for a fever-ridden spirit. Dad’s prayers were so real, so true, so powerful that they were better than any life-support system. He said things like:

“Lord, we are so weak, but You are strong. How we love You, how we trust You, how completely and totally we depend on You. Betty is Your child, Lord Jesus, and she needs Your love and Your tenderness and Your compassion and Your healing touch. We do not beg for her life for any selfish reason of our own. You loaned her to us for a few years and yet we know she has always belonged to You. Oh, how we praise You for Your goodness to us during these years, for the blessings You poured upon us, for Your day-by-day presence in our home. We can sense Your love filling this room now. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for Your comforting Presence.”

As the words of my father’s prayer sank into my mind, I was suddenly convicted of something. Jesus was very real to Dad. Was He to me? For years I had prayed to Him, sung to Him, quoted Him, but I had to admit that I did not feel close to Jesus.

The fault was obviously mine. I had become too involved with my worldly life and felt no need for Him. Up until now I had never really been sick. My parents and John had provided comfort. Brenda had given me fulfillment as a mother. When on earth, Jesus had responded to the needs of people. Up to this point I had had no needs.

A series of scenes flashed before me. I was thirteen. It was Sunday night and Dad had preached a moving sermon on our need to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. We were to be ready for His Second Coming. No one wanted to be left out of the marvelous life which He promised us in eternity.

We drove home from church that evening through northeast Terre Haute, not far from the Paul Cox airfield. From the window of the car I saw a light in the sky descending toward that small airport. Remembering my father’s sermon, I wondered, “Could that be Jesus coming back? Was I ready for Him?”

It was a plane coming in for a landing, but my mind remained stimulated. Later, lying in bed in the darkness of my room that night so many years ago, I found myself repeating the words of a prayer I had stopped saying years before:

Now I lay me down to sleep;

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The third line then began to bother me: “If I should die before I wake. . . .” Could this happen? If so, would I miss out on all that the Bible promised? “I’m not ready to die,” I thought to myself.

I jumped out of bed and went to my parents’ bedroom door. Their light was out. I knocked anyway. “What is it?” my father asked sleepily.

I was embarrassed, then blurted out the first words that came to mind: “I’m not ready to die.”

Instantly both parents were wide awake. In his sensitive spirit, Dad knew exactly what to do. He took me by the hand and he and Mom led me down to the living room.

“Betty, are you ready to commit your life to the Lord Jesus?”

I nodded.

I knelt between my mother and father in front of our three-cushioned brown floral couch, one hand in Dad’s, the other in Mother’s. “Lord, I accept You as my personal Savior. I surrender my life to You for You to do with it what You will.”