Thankful for another 10 years

Today could easily have been the 10th anniversary of my death. Instead, I had reason today to extend my celebration of Thanksgiving: I have lived another 10 years — and counting — beyond nearly suffocating amid an allergic reaction. It’s thanks to my mom, a bunch of doctors and nurses, a couple of Good Samaritans and, no doubt, to God.

And no thanks to nuts.

The walnut has been my arch-enemy since I was in diapers. My parents learned I was allergic to nuts when, as a toddler, I touched an unopened bag of walnuts and broke out in hives. As I grew up, any accidental ingestion of peanuts or tree nuts (that includes pretty much every nut that is not a peanut) caused me to throw up. In later years, my throat would swell up from any bit of nuts or peanut butter that snuck into my mouth. But it was always just a matter of discomfort or inconvenience.

Until November 27, 1996.

I was 15, a high school sophomore. It was the day before Thanksgiving, and my home-room class was having a little pre-Thanksgiving party that morning. While perusing the snacks that my classmates had brought in for the occasion, I came upon a homemade chocolate chip cookie that looked, smelled and even tasted harmless. By this time I knew the taste of nuts — it was the taste of doom. But in this case, it wasn’t until after I had eaten the cookie that I had any indication that something was wrong. My throat was swelling up and, after learning that the cookies contained finely-ground walnuts, I called for my mom to bring me home, at least for a couple of hours.

At home, what I had anticipated to be my usual upchucking expedition proved to be something worse. My throat continued to close up until it became difficult for me to breathe. Doubling as an asthmatic, I wasn’t entirely scared about this at first. But it was bad enough that I convinced my mom to jab me with my emergency epinephrine pen, and doing so meant we had to go to the hospital. My dad was going to meet us there. I fumbled to find some shoes that matched, threw on my Buffalo Bills jacket and got in my mom’s Saturn, not knowing I belonged inside an ambulance. The last thing I remember was my mom telling me that she was turning on her emergency blinkers as she drove down the street where we lived.

Around this point, as my mom has recounted to me, I stopped breathing. My eyes rolled back. I got pale and slumped over. And my mom turned into Supermom. Scared out of her mind, she raced down the icy roads from our suburban home into Green Bay while running stoplights and sounding the car horn. Finally, at a busy intersection a half-mile from the hospital, my mom could dodge traffic no more. She got out of the car and cried for help. A man and a woman got out of a nearby truck. The man, whom we would later learn was a former cop, pushed me upright and prompted me to gasp for what may have been my only bit of oxygen in the course of almost 10 minutes. He and his girlfriend waved off traffic and followed us to the hospital. He carried me inside, parked my mom’s car and brought in her purse. The hospital cut me out of my Bills jacket and began working to save my life.

When I regained consciousness, I was in the emergency room at St. Mary’s Hospital. There was a tube down my throat. My dad was holding my hand. Nurses and doctors were all over the place. There were flashes of pain because an excess of pumped-in oxygen had collapsed my right lung, and a tube had to be inserted through my chest. Eventually, my Grandma Gladys and Uncle Mark, who was in town for Thanksgiving, joined my parents. I had the benefit of three ministers in the room — my dad, my uncle and a Catholic priest who was in the hospital. I remember at one point hearing a doctor say, “He’s not going to remember any of this.”

Despite concerns that I would have suffered at least some brain damage, my dad picked up on some signs that I was OK. At one point when the tube was out of my throat, I correctly answered his questions of who and where I was and even identified the Miami Dolphins as my second-favorite football team (The Bills were actually my fourth-favorite). Once the tube was back in, I characteristically rolled my eyes when my grandma kept calling me Mark, as she has famously mixed up my name with that of her youngest son.

But the persisting danger of my condition prompted the hospital staff to call for a helicopter from Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Luckily, I began to improve shortly after. My dad made sure that the flight team would be taking me over Lambeau Field, and my mom, while starting to cry, sent me off while reminding me that she “loved me to pieces” and that I was her “favorite little face.” All I remember from the helicopter is a woman changing my IV. Suddenly I was in Milwaukee and was quickly comforted when my Uncle Tim, who himself had been hospitalized about two years earlier after a severe heart attack, arrived from nearby Waukesha to sit with me until my parents came. My folks spent the evening arranging for our church’s Thanksgiving Eve service to go on without my dad, and they watched “A Christmas Story” with me on the small TV, although I slept through most of it.

The staff at Children’s Hospital treated me like royalty. The nurses brought me a steady supply of Shasta Twist lemon-lime soda and, in the middle of the night when I was suddenly wide awake, discussed the surprise of Sherry Stringfield’s departure from “ER” (the first time). On Thanksgiving morning, they brought me pancakes shaped like turkeys. Later that morning, as my parents and I prepared to head home, I got my picture taken with the Flight for Life helicopter that had flown me there. Needless to say, once I returned to Green Bay and had dinner at my grandparents’ house that night, there couldn’t have been a more thanks-filled Thanksgiving.

As my fellow blogger, Aaron, explained today in light of his more recent brush with disaster, times like these make you really grateful for your fellow human beings. Ten years later, I am still so thankful to the folks at St. Mary’s and Children’s Hospital. To the members of my family who showed up to support me. To many others who kicked into prayer chains. To the teachers and staff at Bay Port High School who quickly responded with a new policy on students suffering from allergic reactions. To the couple that may well have saved my life — I finally got to meet the two at my high school graduation party. And most importantly to my mom, who has loved and supported me with all her heart and soul for so many years and on that day 10 years ago fought so bravely to keep me in the world she had brought me into. Since then, she has tirelessly devoted herself to making people aware of the dangers of nut allergies. I’m forever proud of her, and I’ll never be able to thank her enough.

And of course, God, thanks be to you.

That brush with death in November 1996 had a certain impact on me spiritually. At the least, it showed me a humility that comes with having your life in other people’s hands and ultimately in God’s hands. I don’t know that I would have come to Luther Seminary were it not for my against-the-odds survival. It seemed like God kept me alive for a reason, and I had a long time to think that over. On Thanksgiving Eve 1997, I took up an offer from my dad to pinch hit for him with a sermon of my own about my experience the year before. That sermon (which, believe it or not, was even longer than this blog entry) prompted many suggestions toward the ministry from fellow parishioners that stuck with me until I finally faced my call a year ago.

This Thanksgiving was probably the happiest I’ve had in 10 years. It was my first time back in Green Bay in four months. I got to see more family and friends in four days than I thought possible. And there was the realization that I now had a whole 10 more years of my life to be thankful for. There were so many things I would have missed: seeing the Packers win the Super Bowl … playing in an improvisational comedy troupe … speaking at my high school graduation … working for my hometown newspaper … meeting my wife. (I haven’t missed the nuts — I have successfully avoided them ever since.) I can’t put a price on those 10 years. It makes serving others as a pastor seem like the least I can do.