After my daughter, Michelle, accidentally overdosed on my husband’s blood pressure medication, I rushed her to the nearest hospital myself, bypassing the 911 system. But because the ER personnel didn’t believe that she’d actually taken the pills, they wasted every precious second I bought them. Within an hour, the hospital faced a dire emergency, and they weren’t equipped to handle it, so they phoned the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, who sent a medical team.
Because the ER staff had scattered to gather the medical supplies that Children’s would need when they arrived, Floyd and I were assisting the lone nurse with Michelle. She was getting combative and the nurse needed someone to hold her down while attempting to intubate her. So when the back door opened and Children’s Hospital personnel flooded the ER, Floyd and I stepped back out of their way to let them work.
It was like a scene from a movie. We stood perfectly still and quiet, watching them work, listening to what they said and fully expecting our daughter to die that night. They were so focused on Michelle that no one noticed us for nearly an hour. The doctor sent a nurse to request the rescue helicopter, but after placing her phone call, she reported that the helicopter was on another run. He said, “Well, go find me a helicopter. This child won’t make it if we have to transport her by ambulance.”
Floyd and I looked at each other, but we exchanged no words. Her life was in God’s hands. Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed unto men once to die…” Everyone has an appointment with death. If her time had come, I knew they couldn’t save her. If her appointment wasn’t tonight, God would intervene. Either way, it was in God’s hands, and falling apart in the emergency room wouldn’t change the outcome. So I chose to trust God.
The hospital managed to get access to a helicopter and they air-lifted Michelle to Children’s, where they worked through the night to save her life. They admitted her to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital around 4:30 the next morning in critical condition. It took four days for those 22 capsules to pass through her system. She was in the hospital for a week.
Reflecting back on that situation, I recognized the hand of God.
- Michelle was a hypochondriac who loved to cry wolf. If I had ignored that particular cry and put her to bed, she would have died in her sleep.
- Had I been out for the evening, Floyd would have ignored her complaint and put her to bed.
- If I had put her to bed earlier or the symptoms hit her after she had gone to bed, she would have died.
- If I had panicked and rushed her to the hospital without first trouble-shooting the problem, she would have died while the hospital tried to find out why her blood pressure was falling.
I had no doubt that God alerted us to the crisis, kept us calm, and gave us the wisdom to evaluate the situation quickly. It helped that Michelle was still coherent and could show us what she had taken. Because I clearly saw God’s intervention to save the life of this little girl, I expected her to make a miraculous recovery. And she did.
For the complete account, read “Another Day, Another Challenge.”