Trigger warning: Medical imagery
One of the lecturers in several of the writing subjects I took as a part of my Master’s degree kept encouraging me: “Catherine, you need to write. Write about anything and everything, but make sure you write.” So when friends repeatedly suggested I write about this and share it publicly, I physically nodded ‘yes’, but inwardly recoiled—“no”. And that’s how it stayed for over two months… until this morning.
Like everyone else on the planet, my life has been big. Strange. Frequently weird. Often bewildering and constantly redeeming. One day I might write a book about it all, but up ‘til now, I didn’t think I’d be sharing this particular snippet of my world on this particular platform, but here we go.
(I needed to let the dust settle a bit with this one, and process it. And so it has and so I have.)
This year, the day after my birthday, one of my besties came to visit. She’d planned a weekend in Port Douglas (a beautiful location) to celebrate my day, and although her husband couldn’t join us in the flesh, he was there in text and photo.
The day began much like any other: decaf coffee, breakfast, car loaded, and I popped one of the pills I’d been put on by my doc over a month prior.
“Cath! Grab your swimmers, you’ll need them!” said my friend.
“Already on it!” I said. I grabbed two beach towels, shoved them into my bag and said goodbye to my cat who was in a snotty mood because I was leaving her behind.
“Bye River,” I said as I opened the front door. “Your sitter is on the way.” She stalked off, ignoring me completely.
I slipped outside, locked the door behind me, but stopped abruptly when my heart suddenly started to pound.
For a second, the world tilted and I felt I might faint. But then, just as suddenly as it had started, everything righted itself. “Weird,” I said, tossing my bag in the car.
“Let’s do it!” I said to my friend. Turning the key in the ignition, the engine ‘Hyundai-ed’ itself awake and I reversed down the drive.
“This is gonna be so much fun, Cath! I’ve got so much planned! Have you been on the walk up the hill outside Port Douglas? Oh! I was thinking we could maybe do a cruise again! Is there anything you’d especially like to do?”
“I’d love to go to the wildlife sanctuary, actually. Could we do that too?”
“Absolutely!” said my friend.
We continued to chatter, catching up on life, reflecting over past visits to Port Douglas, sharing what God had been doing in our worlds, and enjoying the scenery that seemed always to shift from tropical rainforest to tropical scrub, to scrub and then back to rainforest.
Wide open fields with lakes and dams shifted to tree-filled hills and windy mountain roads that framed stunning coastal views, which all eventually led us to the wildlife sanctuary at Port Douglas.
We got our tickets and decided to watch one of their bird shows to begin. Australian birds are so sassy. The attitude they throw out is hilarious—especially cockatoos and galahs.
As the end of the show neared, my heart started pounding again. I felt dizzy. Nauseated. I ignored it and continued watching. It was easy to focus on the birds’ ridiculousness instead of what was actually transpiring in my body.
The show eventually ended and we stood. I was behind my friend, so she didn’t see me almost fall back. “Must be blood sugar,” I thought.
“I think I need to get some fruit or something with a little sugar in it,” I said to my friend. “Or maybe a drink… I’ll be right back.”
As someone who has struggled with multiple autoimmune issues, it can be tricky at times to ascertain what is actually going on inside my body. In this instance, it felt a bit like hypoglycaemia, so I decided to order a small juice for an instant energy hit. Not the best way to go about it, but that’s all that was available. And as I waited, another tilt-shift hit.
“You ok?” said my friend. “You look pale.”
“Odd,” I thought. ‘Pale’ isn’t normal for me. My face is normally red. Or pink. Various shades of ‘bright’, but never really pale. “I think it’s probs just blood sugar,” I said.
“Here you go,” said the lady, handing me a juice. I sipped at it and felt a little better, and after a few minutes, off we walked again.
After some time at the wildlife sanctuary, we decided to leave and check in at our motel, after which, we walked to an amazing Mexican restaurant, where I had one drink to celebrate my birthday along with the best Mexican food I’ve tasted since I lived in San Antonio, Texas.
We literally had the best time that afternoon.
We shopped. We ate ice cream. We walked along the boardwalk, we had dinner, then we went back to the motel for a swim.
It was at this point that things took a sharp turn in my body.
While swimming six laps in the cold pool as my friend reclined and enjoyed the warmth of the hot pool, I stopped abruptly when I thought I felt an earthquake. It felt like the water was shaking all around me. I stayed very still, and then, to my horror, realised there was no earthquake. It was my heart.
My heart was beating so fast that I actually lost count of my pulse. “What on earth is happening?” I thought. “This feels really wrong.”
I got out of the pool and started walking across the yard to my friend and in the time between me climbing out of the pool and walking, a brightness filled my eyes and the sounds around me became super sharp.
I felt my spirit come out of my body and wrap around me.
(Yes, you ‘heard’ me.)
This used to happen a lot when I was a kid and also while I was living in America. The main difference though, was that my spirit didn’t used to wrap ‘around’ my body; it used to float ‘above’ my body.
Scientists or psychologists would label this as depersonalisation—de realisation disorder; others would label it as the initial stages of astral projection. On this particular night, I didn’t label it any of that.
As a child and a teenager, and while I was married, I was subjected to compounded trauma—as a lot of people have also been. The way that I dealt with those ongoing traumas, was for my spirit to leave my body so that I could not feel the trauma.
On this particular night in Port Douglas, instead of my spirit hovering above and behind me, it wrapped around my body (while entwining into Jesus) in a life-giving way that I’d never experienced before.
In that moment, the three realms that make up a human life—spirit, soul and body—became very real.
As I walked towards my friend, I felt no fear. Peace enveloped me in a way I have only encountered once before. There was no worry. No doubt. Just the firm reassurance that I was okay.
The tilt shift that had started, stopped. The dizziness stopped. My legs found new strength, and after rejoining my friend, walking up three flights of stairs to our motel room, and chatting for a while, the only problem that remained was that my heart was still pounding.
So the irony of the situation was that even though I understood my flesh was failing in some way, I was surrounded by peace.
We rested for about 45 minutes and I tried a few things that had worked in the past to bring my heart rate down, only this time they didn’t.
I began to realise that perhaps the medication I’d had, had complicated an already pre-existing medical condition, and that I should probably go to the hospital.
I messaged my friend who had moved out into the warmth of the balcony, “Heya! Could I please chat with you?”
She came into the room. I asked her to please drive me to Mossman Hospital because nothing was open in Port Douglas. She agreed, and for 15 minutes we were on the road. I was so aware and so peaceful, that I was able to navigate her to the hospital using maps.
We joked the whole way.
When we arrived at the hospital, I left my friend to park my car and I started walking across the grounds towards the entrance. By this time my walking had slowed a lot, as blood was obviously not getting to my extremities as it ordinarily would. Apart from that, I was clearheaded, and still full of peace.
My friend met me just as I arrived at the stairs.
“Oh great! More steps!” she said. “Do you need a hand, Cath?”
“I’m actually ok,” I said. And so up I climbed.
I could hear my breathing and it wasn’t normal. It was like I was unable to catch a full breath.
But the peace was strong and I had absolutely no fear.
We walked into the emergency ward and there was no one in the waiting room.
Odd.
The girl behind the counter welcomed me, put my finger in the heart rate monitor, then proceeded to conduct her intake.
“Name,” she smiled.
I answered.
“Date of birth”, she said.
I answered.
She asked a few more questions and then glanced over at my pulse which was reading at 250 beats per minute.
“Okaaaayyyy… you can come right through” she said calmly. Then she turned to my friend and said, “You can stay here for a little while and we’ll come and get you when we’re ready.”
I walked out the back with the nurse, who then proceeded to yell out sweetly: “SVT 250!”
“Shit!” I heard someone yell from behind me.
People came from everywhere. A full team assembled ahead of me in a room, wheeling in ‘this’ monitor and ‘that’ cart. And I thought, “Wow! whomever that’s for is in some kinda trouble! I’ll pray for them.” Then I rounded the corner into that same room and thought, “Ok! Apparently I’m praying for myself, lol.”
I had so much peace, that I couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about.
The staff asked me question after question, and I gave them answer after answer.
“Ok, we’re going to have to try a few different things to try to force your heart back into a normal rhythm. If we can’t force it back into a normal rhythm, we’re going to have to either shock it back, or give you some medicine that will temporarily stop it and force back.”
“Ok,” I said. And then I joked. And continued joking. And the staff kept looking at me as if to say “How are you doing this? How are you so calm?”
And the manoeuvres they tried? Hilarious!
They flipped my legs back over my head. They tried getting me to bear down. They tried massaging my carotid arteries. They tried hot and cold packs. Nothing was working and my pulse only went higher.
“SVT with complications”, I heard someone say.
After a few more moments, the team finished connecting what felt like a barrage of leads to me. Cannula’s were in; fluids were being hung. And the moment the cardiograph blinked to life on the screen, the room went super quiet.
They stared at the screen.
Then stared at me.
Then stared back at the screen.
One nurse whispered in a strange tone, “No freakin’ way! How’s that even possible?”
“Oh, so it’s good news then?” I joked.
“Did you say she walked through the front door?” the doctor said, ignoring me.
“Yep! Just walked right through the front door!” said my admitting nurse.
“Seriously?” said the doctor, looking at me. “You walked through the front door?”
“Seriously,” said the nurse for me.
The room stayed quiet for a moment longer, and a second GP came in. “Catherine, did you say you were on _?”
“Yes,” I said.
“How long have you been taking it?”
I told him.
“Who was your issuing GP?”
I told him.
“Has this kind of thing happened to you before?”
“Yes,” I said. “But not while on medication, so my heart was able to return to a normal rhythm.”
“Okay, Catherine,” said the doctor. “I’ve spoken with the cardiologist, and he says that because none of the other manoeuvers have worked, we need to push a some medication called Adenosine through one of your cannulas to momentarily stop your heart and force it back into a normal rhythm. If that doesn’t work, we will have to try shocking your heart.”
“Ok,” I said, fully engaging with peace. “No problem.”
They looked at me like I was some strange life form that had fallen from the sky. “It’s ok to be scared,” said a nurse.
“I’m really not afraid,” I said.
They brought the Adenosine into the room, and two nurses came along either side of me. One rubbed my shoulder and the other cupped her hands around my face and told me to focus on her. “Sweetie, this is gonna hurt like hell… I’m not kidding, ok? I don’t want you to get a shock at the pain you will feel. It’s gonna hurt okay Catherine? Like really hurt! I’m being serious… Just keep looking at me, ok sweetheart? Just look at me.”
This was the point at which the ‘three realms’ came into focus in the most practical of ways:
Realm 1. My spirit. I had absolutely no fear. My spirit was entwined with Jesus, thus the peace He was imparting inside of me made the commotion outside of me feel insignificant.
Realm 2. My soul. I had an invitation to step into fear, because the soul consists of the mind, will, and emotions. But I chose for my soul to defer to the truth of what was transpiring in the spirit.
Realm 3. My flesh. My flesh put on a good show. It freaked out every which way. Limbs flailing. Heart failing. But this was not the truth of the matter. The truth was transpiring in the spirit.
The only realm that mattered in that one moment was the realm that was bringing me life: the spirit.
The doctor counted down: “…three, two, one…”
He pushed the medicine into the cannula.
The nurse held my face in her hands: “It’s gonna be ok Catherine; it’s gonna be ok. Look at me!”
A sudden onslaught of pain ripped through most every part of my body.
I couldn’t catch my breath.
But my spirit was at peace.
“Look at me, sweetheart! I know it hurts! It hurts like hell! But it’s gonna be ok. It’s gonna be ok—only about thirty more seconds…” She kept on cheerleading.
I could feel my body freaking out, but out of my mouth came a joke.
A what now?
A joke.
It was hard for me to maintain decorum when verses from the word were lit up in my spirit in the best ways, like: “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” “And the peace that passes all ‘understanding’ will guard your ‘heart’ (flesh realm) and ‘mind’ (soul realm) in Christ Jesus (spirit realm).”
At that moment, I couldn’t hear anything except those words. And I couldn’t feel anything except peace. And the pain that had been exploding through my body left completely.
“Ten, nine, eight, seven…” the nurse holding my face was counting down to when my heartbeat should kick in again, and the pain I should’ve been feeling would likely subside. “It’s ok, sweetie! You’re almost there…”
The cardiograph blinked back on and after a few seconds of silence, a more ‘normal’ rhythm tracked on the screen, but I was still tachycardic: 137. Not too bad.
One of the nurses clapped, and the main doctor breathed out a long, “Phew”.
As they continued to take my blood pressure, they realised it had skyrocketed during the whole ordeal-/over 200 for many hours that night.
Some of the staff began to leave the room. “Can’t believe she just walked in!” said one. “I wouldn’t have believed it either, but I saw it happen,” said the admitting nurse.
The remaining nurses hooked me up to a magnesium drip and watched over my blood pressure, keeping me in for observation overnight.
By the time morning arrived, I was still tachycardic with high blood pressure, so to resolve the problem until I could see a specialist, they decided to put me on beta blockers.
Meanwhile, my poor friend had had a lot to process in a short amount of time during all of this. Not only had I messed up out weekend (which she wasn’t worried about), but she’d seen the staff come running when I’d entered the ER. She’d waited while they’d worked on me out the back. She’d prayed along with several other friends as the night had progressed—I am very grateful to her and to them!
So, fast forward to the following morning and the doctor who had looked after me the night before came to speak with me. He spent about 10 minutes telling me about the heart; he drew a diagram of the different ventricles; explained to me what a super ventricular tachycardia (an SVT) event was, and how my SVT had been complicated by the medication I’d been on and the drink I’d had, which had turned what ordinarily would have been a somewhat easily resolveable situation into a potentially deadly cocktail.
“I actually thought you were going to die last night,” he said. “This was your cardiograph when we took a copy of it this morning. See how the heartbeats are regular and it’s going up, down, da,da,da,da?”
I nodded ‘yes’.
“This was your cardiograph last night…”
The cardiograph was all semi circles and arches. “Oh my gosh, that looks alien!” I said.
“That’s why we couldn’t work out how you’d walked through the front door, or how you were speaking with us coherently, or how you were even joking. Not only was your pulse registering at 250, but you didn’t actually really have a pulse—you had a flutter. Your heart was fluttering. Most people who come through our doors with compounding issues like yours, usually come through on a stretcher unconscious. As I said, at one point I felt for sure you weren’t going to make it, but you did.”
For the next few weeks, I couldn’t get away from Romans 8:1-11, which says:
‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you[a] free from the law of sin and death…
Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life[d] because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.’
I feel this revelation and delineation of the three realms during such a practical series of moments will always stay with me. But more importantly, it is my hope that you find His peace and that it stands guard at the doors of your hearts and minds no matter the situations or circumstances you might find yourselves in as life moves forward.
Much, much love,
Xx
