Delivered from death

The picture is amazing, that there are some people it has already been sealed and stamped they will die; but God looks down, hears the groaning of such a one and decides they will not die. This is the story of my eldest brother. He is 78 years. He became ill in Kaduna and the doctor there did his best. In fact I rushed to Kaduna to see him and we agreed to bring him to Nnewi where I work as a cardiologist.  My sister advised however that the journey might be too great for him and we  stopped at Lagos and a pacemaker was inserted. He stabilised and came over to Nnewi for some months and again deteriorated. We moved him back to Lagos and got consultant cardiologists attending to him at the teaching hospital. They said the pacemaker was fine but that he had other problems.

Not satisfied with the outcome in the teaching hospital I inquired of any private cardiology unit in Lagos and was referred to a foremost private facility on the island, and later another specialist facility run by very experienced cardiologists with overseas collaboration. It was very expensive; in one of the facilities we spent at least a million naira a week!  Collaboration with overseas cardiologists confirmed he needed another pacemaker – a specialised one that could detect the need for defibrillation and automatically shock the heart to working again. It was ordered from South Africa. He deteriorated while we waited and was taken to theatre to urgently insert an available pacemaker. It turned out the current pacemaker was working against him and needed to be removed but of course he could not lie flat and the surgery was aborted. The ineffective pacemaker had to be inactivated as removal was now too risky. Finally I was told even when the new pacemaker arrived it could not be inserted. My brother had deteriorated to the point he was on continuous Dobutamine infusion. Attempts to stop it led to his renal perfusion and blood pressure crashing down. We had been to tertiary institutions, consulted with the finest cardiologists in Nigeria, collaborated with foreign ones, and they had done their utmost. Now he was being cut loose. That’s when God started. In all this I dreamt my brother went out to play with teenagers. In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep comes on men, while they take their rest on their beds; then he makes his secrets clear to men… Job 33:15, 16 (BBE) .

There was no choice but to wean him off the dobutamine. He hung on for an hour then for 12 then a whole day. Within a week he could lie down flat and we were discharged. He went back to Nnewi, living among his own with the bulge of the pacemaker a reminder of God’s power. For he hath looked down from the height of his sanctuary; from heaven did the LORD behold the earth; to hear the groaning of the prisoner; to loose those that are appointed to death Ps 102:19, 20(KJV). I called on the phone for him the other day and could not get him; he had gone out on a walk.

Prince Ele is a professor of internal medicine at NAUTH