This is it. The end.
That’s what I was thinking 2 weeks ago as my throat was rapidly swelling shut and we were speeding through the curvy roads to the nearest fire station and paramedics.
45 minutes earlier I had been outside on the golf cart picking the first blueberries of the season when I was bitten several times on the chest and stomach by a sweat bee. They hurt, but weren’t anything too serious so I took a Benadryl and moved on with my day. I later found out that something else bit me on the back of my neck. As I sat there talking with my friend (who by the way it turns out God so neatly arranged to be here) my ears started itching and my face turned hot. Within 2 minutes my ears had completely swollen shut and my face had started swelling and breaking out. Within 5 minutes of when my ears began itching, my throat was rapidly swelling and had halfway closed up. This is when I started to panic and we decided to go get help.
The fire station was the nearest place with medical treatment-15 minutes from my house. I had never had an allergic reaction like this before, so I didn’t have an Epipen or anything to help the situation. When anaphylaxis gets going at the rapid rate it was going in my case, you have minutes to get help before you die. As my throat was already halfway closed off by the time we had reached the end of my driveway, I had to start considering that there was a very good chance that I wasn’t going to make it to help in time. So I sat there trying to keep calm while thinking about what it was going to be like to die and if it was going to hurt and what it was going to be like…would I kind of just loose consciousness and never come back? And what was my reality going to be like after death? I just had no idea. I couldn’t even begin to imagine coming before God.
At that point, while my friend is putting Nascar to shame on these curvy country roads, all I could do was pray the only 2 things that my brain was capable of thinking: that my throat would stop swelling and that we would make it to the paramedics in time. It’s a crazy thing, and maybe you think I’m a little nuts or wasn’t thinking clearly, but I am 100% certain that from that moment on my throat immediately stopped swelling-even though the reaction continued to spread at an alarming rate all over my entire body. All I can say is this was God because I have no other explanation for why I even made it halfway to the paramedics alive.
We make it to the fire station and they put me in the back of an ambulance and hook me up to all of these gadgets that monitor blood pressure and oxygen levels (which by the way just happened to be 100% blood oxygen and perfect blood pressure the entire time even with my airway being partially obstructed and my entire body reacting violently to this venom. My blood pressure and heart rate should’ve been way up with this type of reaction….again no explanation and all God). After a fun ambulance ride, oxygen, a breathing treatment, epipen, steroids, pepcid, and a few hours hanging out in the emergency room, my entire body was back to normal and I got to go home alive.
This whole thing was scary, absolutely absurd, and I was not expecting to die that day, but it easily could have happened and by all medical knowledge, I should be dead. More than anything, I think it is an awesome story because it’s so easy for me to look back and see God, literally see God moving and acting and providing even in the little details. My friend just happened to be at my house, providing someone to drive to the paramedics. My throat inexplicably stopped swelling and allowed us to make it to help in time. My oxygen rate and blood pressure were never affected even though they should have been. I’m not dead. It’s insane and it’s awesome and God was right there the entire time. It may not seem like too big of a deal to anyone else, but knowing that I came so close to dying out of nowhere and to be sitting there thinking about death because it was about to be a reality, it’s huge and I’m not going to get over it anytime soon. I can’t help but think that this is what God does, He snatches us from death and gives us life. One minute, you are dead and then in your hopelessness Jesus is there and He offers you life through His death. And to know that even as I faced death, I had no doubt about where I was heading is a pretty cool thing too. To witness such a moment of God’s grace and His power over all things, over any circumstance-it was truly one of those “aha” stand in awe moments. God showed up and He showed up for me. That is why I will travel all over the world, living out of a backpack in a tent with a bunch of people I don’t know with no plumbing or comforts – just for the opportunity to speak of the goodness of the God I serve. He is the one true God, He loves you and me, and He brings us from death to life. This is it.
