Knit together

We were at my sister Elaine’s funeral when I got the text message.

The doctors wanted us to leave and come to the hospital immediately and I was expecting to hear that it was the end. My wife Christina had been in the hospital for weeks waiting for a heart transplant and she was doing poorly. The doctors were trying to keep her stable, but each day she was slipping a little more.

It’s funny how calm our kids Meagan and Jack were during this drive – watching their aunt’s funeral on a phone in the car. There was a sense of “we will accept and take whatever comes.” Part of me thought that this couldn’t be the end. But my job is planning and organizing construction projects, so the pragmatic side of me was trying to organize a way for my family not to go through two funerals back-to-back. Could we postpone Christina’s arrangements to have the funerals more than a week apart? That’s what I was thinking.

Christina has had a weak heart for a very long time, starting with symptoms when she was pregnant with Jack. Her condition was a hereditary degenerative heart condition called Phospholamban Cardiomyopathy. Her brother George had passed away at 48 from complications with the same disease. (See “Dutch hearts, greater risk” by Angela Reitsma Bick for more information on a rare Dutch gene linked with Phospholamban Cardiomyopathy.) The frailty of Christina’s life was always in our minds, especially after she suffered a stroke in March 2023. The damage was minimal, but it was a reality check as to the severity of her condition. Her weak heart was forming clots and becoming even weaker.

In God’s hands

When we finally reached the Cardiac Care Unit that day in early November, 2023, we heard people in the hallways whispering, “that’s the family. They’re here.” When we entered Christina’s room so did a dozen or more nurses, doctors and staff. The doctor approached me and said Christina’s heart was on the brink of total failure; we had three minutes to say what we could to her before surgery. The surgery was news to me! I thought this was good-bye!

We spent our three minutes in intense prayer, thanking God and asking him to take care of Christina and be with the doctors. The operation, which installed a BiVAD pump to assist her heart, went well but left her in unbelievable pain. The next day Christina’s sizable extended family gathered to pray. It was evident that a heart needed to be found soon if she was going to survive. The transplant coordinator told us that Christina was now number one on the recipient list in the entire country. Wow, not quite the list you strive to be first on.

It was so hard to pray for a heart, considering that someone has to come to the end of their life to enable Christina to continue to live hers. No person is more important than any other.
The next evening, Christina’s heart went into a threatening rhythm called Ventricular Tachycardia, racing over 200 beats per minute. The ICU team sprang into action, and I had to leave the room. I called Christina’s cousin at the prayer meeting and told them about the situation.

I prayed hard myself, and finally the doctor called me back in and said they had shocked Christina’s heart seven times with a defibrillator but were unsuccessful. “We were not able to save your wife,” he said flatly. “Without the pump we put in yesterday, she would be dead.”

My thought now was that this was up to God and God alone. There was no other hope but to hope for a new heart.

Waiting for a heart

Days passed. Each day seemed heavy. We prayed and prayed, and we felt the prayers of others being said for us. I always thought this to be a little untrue when people said they could feel the impact of people’s prayers, but now I know it’s true. When a community is loving and supporting you, and you can only groan yourself, your spirit knows you are being supported.

The situation was difficult. For Christina to live, someone else had to come to their life’s end. I don’t remember how we prayed for this exactly, but I believe we left it to God, for, as I said, we felt Christina’s life was no more important than anyone else’s. This was the trust we had in God.

One day Christina turned to me and started to say what I had already been thinking. This was not going well; she was trying her best, but she wasn’t sure how long she could keep this up for. Maybe three more days, we both agreed. My brave wife completely surrendered everything to the hand of God her Father. She put her life, and the unity of our family, in God’s hands. When Meagan and Jack came in, she told them that, no matter what happened, she knew we would be OK; God would look after us. She told them how she loved them and they meant everything to her, but God is going to make a decision for her life and we must be strong and accept it. What a conversation to have as a mother. Her depth and strength amazes me.

Lifted up in prayer

That night in our hotel room, a Saturday, we heard that two groups had planned prayer time for the following evening. How beautiful. Then at 11:30 pm, London Health Services called and said that the offer of a heart had become available; they would operate tomorrow. Oh, what a phone call! I told the woman who had called that we had been waiting for this call for 19 years and thanked her profusely. After hanging up, for the first time through all of this I finally broke down and told the kids, “Mom is getting a new heart tomorrow.”

We prayed hard. First that God would be with the heart donor’s family and the grief they were facing. We thanked God for the selflessness of the donor, who had signed a card to allow their death to restore someone else’s life! We called Christina and prayed again together as a family.

The next day, November 19, 2023, the whole ICU and staff were so excited for us. As it turned out, the family had planned another prayer vigil and our church had planned a prayer service which were now both at the same time as Christina’s surgery. How satisfying it was to tell the surgeon that almost 200 people would be in prayer during the operation. The food, cookies and kindness from our family, friends and church community were appreciated. But more than anything else, their daily, weekly and continuous prayers upheld us.

Our family believes that Christina’s story happened in such a way to give God all the glory. As Paul puts in his letter to the Corinthians, God’s grace is sufficient for us, and his power is made perfect in our weakness. Therefore we should be glad for our weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest in us.

The operation was a success – a miracle, actually. In essence, she was dead, and now she was alive. Afterwards, Christina went through months of appointments and physio, which were not always easy. But she has been restored to us.

Every day since then has been a gift.