When Jesus healed a demon-possessed man, the man wanted to stay with Jesus. But the Lord said: “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him (Luke 8:39). I wasn’t exorcised of a demon, but I did experience a level of healing that I believe was supernatural. So here is my account of what Jesus did for me.
Around the first of July 2020 (during the COVID-19 Pandemic), I began having the worst, merciless, miserable headache of my life. The pain extended through both shoulders, and regardless of the doses of Ibuprofen I took, the pain would not subside. After a week of relentless pain which seemed to originate from my shoulders, I went for a deep tissue massage. When the therapist pressed her fingers into the aching muscles, I passed out. At that instant, I had a seizure. For the next five weeks, my only memories are being in a CT machine, an eternal ambulance ride, lying on an operating table next to a giant screen TV, and then coming to in a rehab center.
To the best of my understanding, I suffered a brain bleed from a ruptured aneurysm. The aneurysm was part of a Dural Arteriovenous-Fistula (DAVF) the diameter of a baseball between my brain and my skull. The pain I succumbed to was from the blood commingling with cerebral spinal fluid pressing against my brain. At the hospital, my Intracranial pressure exceeded safe levels (hydrocephalus). To relieve the pressure, doctors drilled a hole in my skull for an external brain shunt, which remained for eleven days. The next day, an Interventional Radio Neurologist (Dr. Robert Hixson) performed an endovascular embolization that partially sealed the fistula, but as he told my wife, it was up to my body to stop the bleed. On top of it all, I had aspirated and took pneumonia, so I also spent nine days on a ventilator. But after about two weeks of entering the hospital, the bleed stopped, the pneumonia cleared, and I began to recover.
I have no memory of what I just described, but in early August I started to wake up in the rehab center. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my wife could not be with me, at all, period. I was in a confused conscious state. I knew I’d had a stroke, but everything befuddled me. I had no idea how to use my iPhone. Even the wall clock in my room baffled me. It had three hands going round and round, but I couldn’t tell the time. The rehab staff started teaching me how to balance, to walk, to swallow, helping me to regain strength. They kept me confined to my bed except for physical therapy sessions.
A week or so into rehab, for a period of about ten minutes, I felt like my consciousness was being poured into my body. (I call this The Download because that’s how it felt.) Suddenly, I understood the clock. I picked up my iPhone, and I knew how to use it. I saw the date, and realized that I had missed several weeks of work and life. Closing my eyes, I visualized a keyboard and typed the alphabet in the air. I bawled like a baby. I immediately posted a selfie to Instagram (albeit with a typo). Regardless of the physical limitations resulting from the stroke, I felt that everything would be alright. Two weeks later I went home.
If that was all there was to the story, it would be amazing. A nurse recently told me that 50 percent of hemorrhagic stroke victims die before they get to a hospital. Another 50 percent die within two days at the hospital. The five year survival rate is around 26.7%. I have no physical or mental impairments; no personality change for the worse. Actually, in some ways I am better than before the stroke. I have precious few headaches, unlike the horrible ones I had before, and I am more creative and patient now.
Many people wonder how I got the DAVF. Was I born with it? The DAVF next to my brain likely formed through a traumatic event, a blow to the head. When I was three, I fell down a flight of hardwood steps, slamming my head on a concrete floor at the foot of the stairs. My Mother said I was unconscious for several minutes, but since I seemed alright afterwards and had a good checkup with our doctor, nothing was done at the time. That seems a likely explanation, but we’ll never know for sure this side of Heaven.
(As a bit of a public service announcement, a symptom of DAVF is the sound of your pulse in your ear. If you experience this, you should ask your doctor about it. A DAVF is much easier to treat and cure when there isn’t an emergency.)
So why did God allow this to happen, starting with my head-over-heels tumble down the stairs? I believe it was so God could show us kindness and mercy that we would otherwise not experience and to have the lifelong opportunity to give Him the glory! Consider the following:
- When I had the seizure, the staff at the chiropractic and massage could see I was in distress and called 911. If I had been driving, at my workplace, or in a store, I might not have received medical attention. I even could have caused a fatal accident. That, to me, is an intervention by a sovereign God.
- In talking to my wife about this article, she told me how little hope for me some doctors held out for my survival. I had the brain bleed and shunt in my skull to drain blood and cerebrospinal fluid, which filled bags for eleven days. Going on the ventilator for nine days with pneumonia just heightened the uncertainty of my future. In spite of Fort Sanders Medical Center being full of COVID–19 patients, I was regarded as the sickest patient in their hospital for a time.
- Partly thanks to social media, people around the world prayed for me, including around 400 pastors in India. I am insignificant, yet so many prayed, and God answered their prayers.
- As I already noted, I made an incredible, miraculous recovery, only something God could do. God touched my brain and stopped the bleeding, and He restored my knowledge and memory.
- Our family has experienced an outpouring of love and jaw-dropping generosity. The Lord works through His people, and it was a blessing to experience this kind of love.
- Thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act and banked vacation and sick time, I was able to miss considerable work.
Living with the AVF
To eliminate a Dural AVF, the preferred treatment is embolization. A very thin catheter is inserted into a vein in the groin and navigated through blood vessels all the way to the Dural Layer next to the brain. Once the catheter is in position, Liquid Onyx is injected through the catheter to fill in the vessels permanently, shutting off the flow of blood and effectively blocking the fistula. An interventional radio neurologist watches the progress of the catheter and the embolization in real time x-rays.
But something like an AV fistula can really be multiple fistulas with multiple pathways for blood to shortcut from artery to vein. The initial embolization in July of 2020 eliminated a section of the AV fistula structure, but in the ensuing months, I would have two more treatments; in the second, Dr. Hixson reduced the fistula to the diameter of a golf ball and cut off the aneurysm that bled the summer before. The third treatment was by Dr. Avery Evans at UVA. He used a pioneering technique that he patented using two catheters instead of one to block a stubborn and curvy vessel. Even after that treatment, another angiogram revealed a lone fistula pathway. Dr. Evans told me this was too risky to embolize. The path he would have to take with a catheter, were something to go wrong, could cause paralysis of facial muscles.
Fortunately, UVA also has Gamma Knife, a cutting edge treatment that converges gamma rays to stimulate blood vessels to scar inside and close down. So in August of 2022, they screwed a metal frame to my skull, and I was locked into a Gamma Knife machine for an hour while Dr. Sheehan carpet-bombed the remaining fistula.
Because it can take up to five years for the Gamma Knife treatment to obliterate a vessel, I am in a waiting game. The treatments I had greatly reduced the risk of another brain bleed. MRIs of my brain every six months are showing progress towards obliteration.
Deep Vein Thrombosis and Pulmonary Embolisms
Going through the stroke, recovery, and subsequent treatments would have been enough, but my slow climb out of rehab caused me to form blood clots in my legs—Deep Vein Thrombosis. A few weeks after coming home, a piercing pain struck my right lung, and in the middle of the night, it seemed to move to my right side. I was in so much anguish I could only take half-breaths. We called an ambulance. After some hours in the emergency room with tests and scans, they found my D-Dimer level over 3,000. I had blood clots in my legs and two in my lungs (Pulmonary Embolisms). Normally, a doctor told me, they would give a patient blood thinner medications to clear them. We told him about my DAVF and how I was at risk for another brain bleed.
Jumping to the end rather than offer another blow and blow account, dealing with the DVTs and the PEs was more grueling for me than the brain bleed because I was conscious for it all. Doctors inserted an IVC filter in my vena cava that was meant to catch more clots from my legs. But the filter shifted in the vein and failed to catch clots. When things were at their worst, I was taken to Fort Sanders Hospital again so Dr. Hixson could perform the second embolization. This time, he shut down the aneurism, at which point he felt confident that I could safely take blood thinners. This crisis, in all, drug out for about three months. After another three more months on blood thinners, safe removal of the errant IVC filter by Vista Radiology, physical therapy, and yet more sweet miracles, I had the stamina to climb a mountain trail in the late spring of 2021.
Pulmonary Embolisms are another high fatality medical condition. A doctor on my case explained to me that the reason clots kill some patients is that the blockage causes sudden pressure on the heart. With a vein partially or fully blocked, it works the heart into a frenzy and can lead to heart failure. I asked her why that didn’t happen to me. My echocardiogram revealed no stress at all on my heart. I had two such clots in my lungs. She explained that the body is remarkable and sometimes grows new pathways for blood to flow. I definitely take it as another work of God.
Thanksgiving
There are so many people to thank for their interventions and excellent care. First, Dr. Robert Hixson (Fort Sanders), who is such a good natured and caring individual, did two embolizations and several angiograms, all with great humor, competence, and perseverance. The man who taught Dr. Hixson, Dr. Avery Evans (UVA), nearly obliterated the fistula. I loved his bravado and the confidence with which he attacked my fistula. Dr. James Sheehan (UVA), made running a Gamma Knife look easy. There was a doctor in Johnson City who prayed in the room with me for healing of the PEs, and at the time, that meant the world.
So many friends and family helped our family through the long weeks in July when Kassi stayed with me at Fort Sanders. People we don’t even know prayed for us, brought us meals, and helped us financially.
Of course, and what this post is about, I thank God for my recovery from the brain bleed stroke and the degree to which I recovered. I was not left with disabilities, mental or physical. The challenges were hard, but He carried my family and me through them. As long as I remain on the Earth, I will live for God and proclaim what He has done in my life.
