burnt
Well-known member
Even though we seldom think of it, life is uncertain at best.
Yesterday my 66 year-old brother-in-law was going about his carpentry job as he did any other day when he developed a pain up one arm. He called my sister, his wife, to see if he should be alarmed by this. Her opinion would count because she's a nurse in the-state-of-the-art cardio unit in the hospital nearby. She ran some questions by him and he seemed to think it was nothing and went back to work.
A while later, his co-worker stopped by their house and asked how he's doing. What do you mean, she says. Well they took him away in the ambulance he said.
Someone on the job didn't like what they saw and called 911. Turns out that on the way to hospital, several city blocks away, they determined that this one needs to go in NOW for surgery and when they got there the theater was cleaning up after the last one of the day but the surgical staff was still all there. He had an immediate triple bypass and is in recovery.
Jim is a tall, lean, athletic man who always took good care of his health, the last one you'd expect to have heart trouble. But there he is. My sister said it was kinda different being on the receiving end of the care system on the floor where she works rather than the one in uniform. She's the best nurse in the world.
Anyway, it made me think of what the Psalmist David said when being chased by an enemy - "...There is but a step between me and death..."
We never know when it will be over for us on this side. Jim got another chance. But his brush with mortality seems to take the urgency out of what I had considered to be my busy schedule.
Yesterday my 66 year-old brother-in-law was going about his carpentry job as he did any other day when he developed a pain up one arm. He called my sister, his wife, to see if he should be alarmed by this. Her opinion would count because she's a nurse in the-state-of-the-art cardio unit in the hospital nearby. She ran some questions by him and he seemed to think it was nothing and went back to work.
A while later, his co-worker stopped by their house and asked how he's doing. What do you mean, she says. Well they took him away in the ambulance he said.
Someone on the job didn't like what they saw and called 911. Turns out that on the way to hospital, several city blocks away, they determined that this one needs to go in NOW for surgery and when they got there the theater was cleaning up after the last one of the day but the surgical staff was still all there. He had an immediate triple bypass and is in recovery.
Jim is a tall, lean, athletic man who always took good care of his health, the last one you'd expect to have heart trouble. But there he is. My sister said it was kinda different being on the receiving end of the care system on the floor where she works rather than the one in uniform. She's the best nurse in the world.
Anyway, it made me think of what the Psalmist David said when being chased by an enemy - "...There is but a step between me and death..."
We never know when it will be over for us on this side. Jim got another chance. But his brush with mortality seems to take the urgency out of what I had considered to be my busy schedule.
