My Re-entry To A World I Did Not Know
After heart surgery, I re-entered a world I did not recognize
Let no dreams disturb your rest
I was a sick child but no one knew it.
My heart was broken…
I always knew there was something wrong with my heart.
I do not know how I came by this knowledge.
My family never knew I was ill.
They had never been told of an anomaly. I had never been diagnosed or been privy to any whispers regarding my health.
Yet there was a ‘knowing’.
A knowledge I could not shake.
It teased me incessantly from the edges of my subconscious mind. It sought to enlighten me, but my consciousness was in deep repose.
So I let it slumber.
To those around, I appeared the epitome of health.
Tall, lean with beautiful skin and bountiful hair.
While my younger sister suffered constant maladies, I was never sick.
Yet somehow I knew my health was lacking, that something was wrong. Though I did not give it too much thought.
Dis-ease whispered its secrets in the stillness of night.
I prayed with a child’s innocence asking God to protect me. Though I never told anyone of my fears.
Growing up in a village in South America, we jumped, ran, rode bikes, climbed trees, and stayed physically active all the livelong day.
I kept up athletically with the other kids.
Life was full and life was good.
Until the day it wasn’t.
It was during my 17th year, I had gotten my first job. I needed a physical and I went in for an examination.
The doctor that examined me had a very odd look on his face. He listened to my chest several times but did not relay any concerns to me.
Though I could tell something was puzzling about what he heard in my chest. He did not say anything, and I did not ask.
I did not want to know.
I soon dismissed the encounter and continued with my life.
A heart broken
Ten years later I learned that my heart was indeed broken.
I was diagnosed with Patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). PDA is a congenital heart defect generally discovered in the early days or weeks after birth.
The ductus arteriosus is a normal part of maternal-fetal blood circulation and is slated to close 24–48 hours after birth. All babies are born with this opening between the aorta and the pulmonary artery.
If it stays open, it is called patent ductus arteriosus and usually requires medical or surgical intervention.
My PDA went undiagnosed until I reached the ripe old age of twenty-seven years and I was now pregnant with my first child.
During my eight-month of pregnancy, I began to feel short of breath. I allotted the discomfort of having a short torso and a growing belly.
I took it easy for the rest of my pregnancy and delivered a healthy child.
My labor however was quite rough and lasted two and one-half days.
One night about my sixth or seventh week post-partum I was startled awake by a racket within my chest.
My heart was beating out of control. I glanced down to see my clothing vibrating rapidly in tandem with my raging heart.
I was scared!
I felt sure I was going to die, right then.
I had always appeared to be so healthy. I had never been ill or hospitalized before, except to deliver my baby.
I knew I could not allow panic to initiate the fight or flight response. The release of the stress hormones and adrenaline would speed up my heart further.
So I stayed as calm as I could.
As calm as I could be while my runaway heart propelled me into a future of uncertainty and an all too familiar relationship with the emergency room.
That was the first night I went to the ER.
I have no memory of what tests were done but I can vividly remember the way the doctor made me feel.
I will never forget the emergency room doctor who came in to speak to me and give the diagnosis.
With a straight face and a manner of one bored out of their minds, he told me, “you have a hole in your heart and will need surgery”.
This was delivered to me without preamble or empathy, it was as if he was informing me I had a pimple or something similarly benign.
This was my life and this doctor acted so uncaringly.
I remember the shock and horror that leaped into my chest.
Now I went into full panic mode — surgery!! Not on my heart. I felt sure this was it for me.
But surgery I needed and two weeks later, surgery is what I got.
After the surgery, I remained in the hospital and three days later I was ready for home.
I sat ready with the red pillow heart held against my chest. On it, the words “broken hearts are mended here” across both sides.
My ride arrived and my heart and I were wheeled out front of the hospital.
I exited the artificial lights and was welcomed with the beckoning warmth of the sun.
Time is what I needed now, time to mend that which was broken.
A funny thing happened on the way home
After we left the hospital, we began taking the local roads towards the highway.
I was seated by a window, I had my nose pressed up against the glass, partly because I felt so weak and because I was aware I could have been in the morgue instead of in the sunlight.
I soon became overcome with a feeling of being brand new in a world I had not been in before.
I found myself looking this way and that in awe.
This world was new to me, like I had never been here before.
I was a stranger in a world that had always been my home. I sat there watching the trees, the sky, the city and just feeling so overwhelmed. Seeing the sights for the first time.
I was feeling very grateful to be alive, yes. But a more encompassing feeling was one of newness. I was unfamiliar with the world I now found myself in.
There settled upon me a strange newness.
I felt I did not know this place as I had never been here before!
It was the same new feeling I had had when I first came to this great country from a village in South America.
Though now I felt the newness with even more intensity, more wonder, like that of a child.
I was awestruck at its beauty and grandiosity. This was God’s universe and I felt very small.
Manhattan was bright and bustling and here I sat with my mouth hanging open vainly trying to take it all in. Looking upon the passing landscape with increasing awe and wonder.
My mind said I had never been to this place before. That I was a first-time visitor.
Note that I had been there countless times, I had walked those streets frequently in times past shopping and sightseeing, yet today I felt I was a stranger to this place. I was peeking through unfamiliar eyes at a world I had never before seen.
I knew who my family was but this world I had never seen.
I was overcome with emotions and I began to cry, though at the time I did not tell why I was crying.
My family, I’m sure thought I was just happy to be alive. And I was.
But there was something more…
I had been reborn, renewed, somehow, in ways I will never be able to explain.
We finally arrived in Brooklyn. I settled into a routine of sorts, though my recuperation was not as easy as we first imagined.
My road to wellness was potholed with deep frustrations, setbacks, fear, and frequent trips to the doctor.
Throughout it, all God was my rock.
For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.
— Leonardo da Vinci
Over the years I have pondered and revisited the newness I felt that day, I keep returning to the same answer.
During that time of recuperation, I had many spiritual encounters.
I even heard the voice of God (I never use alcohol or drugs and I was not taking any pain pills).
I saw the Holy Spirit come into my room and touched me, infusing me with renewed life, electricity, energy, peace, and joy.
I was healed in body, mind, and soul after the Holy Spirit visited me one day in March of 1997.
I am persuaded that I had either died during my surgery or had somehow penetrated the veil between life and death.
I believe I died during the surgery and what I experienced on my way home from the hospital was part of my re-entry into the world.
Did I receive a new spirit during my surgery?
Did my spirit’s re-entry into the physical body give rise to these “new” feelings, like that of a newborn?
After all, to perform cardiac surgery, the heart must come to a complete stop. A heart that is not beating of its own free will is a form of death in itself even if one is kept alive by artificial means.
Through more than two decades after that experience, I have analyzed this experience many times.
I will never know for sure, but I know what I saw, and felt in my soul.
I know I have a connection to the Divine, better, different than I had before. I can sense His presence and I can hear His voice.
I did not feel brand new before surgery, and I have never had it since.
I had always felt at home in this time and space except for that time when my spirit re-entered this plane from somewhere far beyond.
This is a true story. No part of it is fiction.
Here is another such story if you are still curious…
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