Miracles

 (Note:  I am migrating some old posts from a previous blog to this site note the dates published below. As you can see, Blake is doing very well.  Finishing Law School this next week.)

 

Posted by Mike Bennion on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 2:22:10 AM

     Six weeks ago I was on a hike in Zion canyon with my daughter Liesel and son-in-law Blake.  We were climbing a steep, sand covered ridge, into a box canyon.  I wanted to show them the incredible echo.  A shout there bounces off the red sandstone cliffs and echoes 11 or 12 times.  One shouted song becomes a choir of angels.
    My slightly over middle aged lungs were protesting fiercely as we climbed two steps forward, only to slide back one, in the sand.  But  I was determined to reach the top.  Liesel finally said:  "Dad, we're tired,   we'll wait here."
I pushed on, reveling in my superior strength.  I had just walked two 20 somethings into the ground!
    Two weeks later Blake was in the doctors office, having a cinder removed form his eye after a 4th of July fireworks show.  He and Liesel mentioned to the doctor that Blake was short of breath alot.  Everyone thought he had asthma.  The doctor thought maybe that was the problem too, but at their insistence , he listened carefully to Blake's heart for ten minutes and finally said, "I think I hear a murmur, we'd better get an EKG."
The EKG confirmed that there were indeed serious problems with Blake's heart.  Further tests confirmed that
Blake's had mitral valve stenosis, a blockage of the mitral valve, probably caused by an undiagnosed case of rheumatic fever, as well as an aortic valve that was regugitating 50 percent of the blood that should flow through it.  Blake and Liesel's lives changed abruptly that day.
    My smugness about our hike turned into deep concern at the news.  My wife left to go to them to help prepare for the surgery that needed to follow.  I was left home to care for a dying dog (see "Shakey was a dog")
and finish up some projects at work, and to worry.  Friends of many religious persuasions prayed for our kids.
    I left last wednesday, to go north.  Blake was to have surgery on thursday morning.  Upon arriving in Provo, Utah where the kids are attending school, at BYU, Luisa and I went to two softball games that Blake and Liesel participated in.  Blake played like there was no tomorrow.  He would come in from running the bases, white-faced and gasping like an octogenarian.  I hoped he wouldn't have a heart attack on the spot.  He left the game with abrasions on his shins from sliding into base, and the team ready to play in the finals the next day.
But Blake would have a final of his own the next morning.
    A worried dream-shattered sleep ended at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday morning.  We drove to the Hospital by 6:00 a.m. and met Liesel and Blake's mom and grandma.  Liesel had just bid goodbye to Blake as he was wheeled through the doors of the surgical section and out of her sight.  She looked pale and drawn.
    We were shown to a waiting room.  We went and found some breakfast and soon a kind nurse in scrubs came to take us to a private waiting room and to explain that she would be our information source.  She said that she would come hourly or as circumstances required to give us updates on the progress of the surgery.
With that she left and we began the long wait.
    Perhaps an hour later I left the waiting room to stretch my legs.  I walked through the revolving doors out into the bright sunshine of an August morning.  I stood by the sculpture of a father playing with his two sons.  Suddenly I was warmed by an inner sunshine.  I felt a profound sense of peace descend on my mind and my heart.  I knew as surely as I have known anything that we had nothing to fear.  The surgery was going to be successful.  I returned to the waiting room, now accompanied by the continued warmth of this knowledge.
    I hadn't been back more than a few minutes when the nurse, returned with an update:  "They have opened, and they have him on the Heart/Lung machine" she said, "and they have started to work on his heart."
Tears sprang to Liesel's eyes.  She told me later, that the whole absract concept of Blake's surgery had suddenly become horribly real.  In her mind's eye, she saw her husband, of  less than eight months, senseless, on the operating table, with his chest pried open and his heart stopped. 
    A quiet voice inside my heart said, "You have a gift to share with your daughter,  you have peace.  Give her some.  I laid my hands on her head and gave her a blessing.  I told her that God had told me that everything was going to be "wonderful"; that Blake would come through this trial and live and recover.
    Good friends provided company, empathy and food throughout the day.  The kind nurse came hour after hour with increasingly good news.  Then the Surgeon came and spoke with Liesel.  He was tired but very pleased.  Things had gone as well as they could have possibly gone.  They were able to repair, rather than replace the scarred mitral valve, and the aortic valve was replaced with a cadaver vlave, rather than a mechanical valve. This meant the Blake would not have to take Cumidin (sp), the blood thinner that would have limited his physical activities.  The Doctor said that the aortic valve was "a perfect fit--like it was custom made for Blake."
    A nineteen year old boy died in a car accident this week.  His parent's brave decision to allow their son to become an organ donor, gave Liesel and Blake a second chance at life.  There aren't words enough in my language and warm thoughts of thanks enough in my heart to tell those good people, who are grieving while we rejoice, what it means to us that they made such a courageous choice at a devastating time.
    Later in the afternoon Blake's family gathered around his bedside in the ICU.  He looked like he had been run over by a truck, and the nurse said he was probably in more pain than he had ever felt.  But the nurses said that in comparison to most of the patients they saw in ICU, Blake looked very good.  They said it was a pleasure to take care of someone so young and otherwise healthy.  Blake's Uncle Evan and I placed out hands on Blake's head and gave him a blessing.  God told Blake that he would only have the pain required for him to learn what he needed to know, that he would "run and not be weary and walk and not faint"  and that he would live to see his grandchildren and great=grandchildren.
    Twenty-four hours later he was out of ICU.  Today,  four days after open-heart surgery, that his doctors described as a "once in a career surgery", Blake was released form the hospital.  Yesterday, I watched with joy as he and Liesel looked adoringly in each other's eyes and kissed.  Their soft ball team won the intramural championship on the evening of Blake's surgery, and brought Championship Tee-shirts to the hospital.  The shirts were hard won, but represent a far greater victory.
    We had friends who spontaneously dropped everything, to give us a place to stay, food to eat, and words to comfort us.  they cried with us, laughed with us, prayed for us, and rejoice with us.  And they are just one wonderful part of the miracles, that point us to the greatest miracle of all:  Eternal life, the greatest of all the gifts of God.