11.04.05

Above and Beyond

Posted in Uncategorized at 12:56 pm by Dee O'Neil Andrews

by: Dee Andrews Those of you who are regular followers of my blog, “Finding Direction,” know I had to have rather “emergency” open heart by-pass (five of them!) surgery in early March 2004. My husband, Tom, came home from work one afternoon after I’d called him telling him I had indigestion really bad and made me go to the hospital emergency room to see about it. I didn’t want to go, but he insisted, which, as it turned out, literally saved my life. I wasn’t in the middle of having a heart attack, but was on the verge of having a fatal one they discovered upon doing a highly risky angiogram (due to my having been diabetic for 34 years and having had three strokes, already, etc.). Within a few hours, before I could even begin thinking about (blessedly) the ramifications of what I was about to undergo, the heart surgeons performed the five by-passes and gave me, what I considered to be, a “new” heart and life. It was a tough time. Very tough time. I had a series of very serious complications following surgery and was in the hospital for well over a week the first time. I couldn’t even begin to have visitors for several days, but friends and family were great, sending me absolutely stunning flower arrangements, cards galore, prayers in abundance and much love. In thinking about it all now and trying to relate to anyone the signifcance of all I then experienced, how I felt throughout all that was happening and what other people’s loving actions toward me and for me truly meant to me is still difficult. But I have tried to do so because I hope what I have to say will encourage others to know better how to be of true help and support to those in similar circumstances. So, on the first anniversary of the date I had the surgery this past March, I wrote about that night on my blog in “Out of the Darkness . . . .” I also wrote a bit before, but want to expand here, about the loving actions of a couple of dear friends, one of my shepherds at Tammany Oaks church and his wife, David and Becky Gilbert. I want to do that because what they did for me while I was in the hospital twice, nearly the entire month of March in 2004, went way above and beyond anything I could have expected or even thought of, but which meant the world to me at the time. And, I mean, the world I was in, which was confined to a room alone in a hospital, mostly in I.C.U. with I.V.s running everywhere, for weeks. I was in the hospital in Slidell, Louisiana, while the church and David and Becky are in Mandeville, about 20 miles west, both on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. David worked in New Orleans and, like most everyone else on the north shore, was a long distance, couple of hours a day or more commuter and very busy man. But, the first thing David did for me when he found out I was in the hospital was to take the time to find out that the hospital I was in had a service whereby outsiders could directly email notes to patients in the hospital which the kind hospital volunteers would bring around room by room. And he sent me several emails written early in the mornings directly to me in the hospital offering written prayers, scriptures and meditations for me and on my behalf. They were wonderful. Then he came by on his way home from work in New Orleans, way out of his way to go to his home and family, to visit me several times. One morning in particular, after I’d been in there way over a week the first time and had had a really bad night, he emailed me the words to one of Zoe group’s songs, “He’s Always Been Faithful to Me,” which were just so encouraging and meaningful to me that morning because I was not doing well. But what David and his wife did next really struck me. I was so taken by the words to the Zoe song that I called Becky later that morning long distance at work in Mandeville (where she’s our church secretary) to tell her to tell David how much the email had meant to me. I also told her I didn’t know the tune to the song and was having to make up one in my head, but had “found” the tune from an old time hymn that fit so was singing that to myself, so it was working out well for me. Well - that wasn’t enough for Becky. She got in her car during her lunch hour and drove 30 miles over to the hospital to see me just to sing the song for me so I could hear the tune! We sat together in my hospital room with her singing a hymn to me with me trying to follow along. It was wonderful! Is that Christian love, or what?! Then, when David found out how much I liked the song, he ordered the CD for me, went out and bought a little portable CD player and brought it to me when I was back in the hospital the second time, just two days after I’d come home, when I was still not doing well at all. I listened to that CD over and over each dark, lonely and painful night the remainder of the time I was in the hospital and it brought great comfort to me. The doctors were giving me some medication through an I.V. in my left arm every four hours that was very painful. Very painful. And, being able to listen to and concentrate on that Zoe CD and think about God’s love and David and Becky’s - and others’ - love was about all that kept me going. It was a very difficult time made immensely better by their acts of kindness. So that’s why I’m writing about them today, nearly two years after, because they were true “grace notes” in my life in a time of great need and have been over and over again, since. We can all do the same things. We can witness to the significance of others’ lives and be there for them in many, many ways. We just have to think about it and act upon our thoughts, as God would have us do. That is how I want to live. How about you?

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