The Time Is Now

I have always had a slow heart, as slow as 38 beats per minute, but it didn’t seem to be a problem until I ended up in a Chinese hospital one day. One night the nurse came to take vital signs and when she read my pulse rate she actually thought I was dying. Anything below 60 bps is not good and when she read 42 that night she actually thought I was dying. It took me the longest time to convince her that I was ok.

There is a second problem. As early as my teen years my heart would skip a beat now and then. It didn’t seem to be a problem and life continued to go on, but now that I am a “little” older the skipped beats occur many times every day. Since life continues I simply learned to live with a few less heart beats.

Should I mention a third problem? As a younger person, stress and I were close friends and probably coming out of that was a growing high blood pressure and thus the need of a pill or two and now a third one; talk about being on drugs.

Not to bore you, there is a fourth problem. When I turned 70 and was having a routine checkup I was told I had a heart mummer. That got my attention because it indicated that there was a valve problem.

So I have four little problems and live life to the fullest and thought nothing of it until I prepared for my trip back to the states. I always record my blood pressure when I get up and when I go to bed and keep a record of it on my laptop by transferring the data to an Excel spreadsheet and plotting graphs. Three days before leaving China my pressure started going up and it kept going up. The day I called my heart specialist it had climbed to 187 over 97. Those numbers were serious and I knew it.

I am in the office and she is focused on my skipped beats and slow heart rate and for the minute ignores my high pressure readings. She tells me it is no longer safe for me to drive. If I should happen to have two skipped beats back to back, at 40 bps I would go for 4.5 seconds without a pulse, which would cause me to pass out. I was told I would need a pacemaker and it could be done Monday, possibly even on Friday. “Hey, let’s slow down a minute and let me catch up to what you are suggesting. I am going home to think about this and by the way I was told to come in because of my high blood pressure problem.” A medication adjustment was made – a third pill – and I was sent on my way with a stern rebuke to call on Friday to schedule a pacemaker insert.

I check with some family members and the advice was to do it now. I called on Friday and within a few hours I was scheduled for Monday at 1 PM. It is about an hour procedure, requiring an overnight for observation followed by two weeks of limited exercise.

Several people say I will feel much better after getting a pacemaker; like a new person. I felt like a new person when I accepted Christ into my life and by faith walk with him in obedience, but to feel like a new person when accepting a pacemaker into my life and having faith in it pales in comparison. A pacemaker cannot compare to Christ and cannot provide anything close in life to what he can provide. You see, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Gal. 2:20, NASB). I can truly say, “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 2:21, NASB). If a pacemaker will make me stronger and maybe live longer to do kingdom work then I guess I can live with it and trust Christ for my other conditions. I don’t seek this for myself, but to serve him more completely. That is what life is all about.