Lucky to be alive and Gods Hand

Lucky to be alive and Gods Hand.

I was out on a beautiful hot Sunday in the summer of 1993. We had my son's Vince  9 and Ted 4 my nephews John 11 and Nick 8.also a friend Danny. We cruised lake Michigan. It was so hot everyone wanted in the water so we stopped and swam off the boat to cool off a couple times. Latter we traveled down the Calumet River for a couple hour tour. The calumet is carved out as a partial canal. Smelly industry is on both sides the temperature on the river felt like a hundred and ten. All of us could not wait to get back to the cool breeze of the lake and swim. We got through the tributary of the Calumet and headed out about seven miles into clean fresh Lake Michigan water.

   Vince jumped in  just after I stopped then Danny, I tossed Ted in with Danny. I had a throable in the water. What was unknown is the wind on the  had changed on the lake in the couple hours were on the river. The current was going toward the southeast, but he wind was blowing from  the south to the north and the boat developed what is called sail. In these conditions the boat and the people in  the water separate from the boat very fast. A good swimmer has a hard time to make it back to the boat.

  I was on board, and immediately Ted was hanging on to Danny and were getting in trouble. I tried to prepare a line with a float, but it was too short to keep connected to the boat, so I jumped into help with Ted. Vincent was on the throw able. As soon as I got in the water I knew we were in trouble the boat was floating away fast.

   Nick and john were on board and thank God they stayed on-board. I hooked up with Ted and kept him up, while all of us were trying to hang on to this tiny throw able. Outlook seemed grim, and my thought was that Vince could make it with the throw able but not likely with Ted. I did my best to swim to the boat with Ted, but eventually became exhausted. I kept Ted up while I was under water. I had no strengh toswim anymore and eventually it was like I fell asleep under water. I succumbed to the peacefulness of being inside your mind under water. Nothing hurt any more . Things I thought were incredible like did I make a payment on my life insurance, or what kind of trouble would I be in with my wife if I drowned.

    The Boat was a 27 foot with twin 350 Chevy's  with in-board engines. I may have let the kids steer  but I never taught them how to start the boat or reverse it.

With Danny and Vince yelling at the boat Nick figured something was wrong  and convinced John we were not playing. John being taught on grandpa's outboard, figured out how to start one engine on the boat and shift it into reverse. This was no easy task and only one engine worked the power steering. Remember John was 11.

 John came straight back at the group of us propeller coming toward us.

   I came out of my underwater sleep when I heard the engine start. I remember thinking that I was already dead and that the prop won't hurt.

    John got the big boat close enough for us to grab the swim platform and he shut the engine off. After everyone got back on board I dragged myself up the ladder and fell onto the back deck.

   Danny and I,not openly religious got on our knees to pray, a sincere prayer of thanks. After we settled down, I drove the boat with some pain back to Burnham Harbor. I docked the boat and drove  home.

   After I got home to Willow Springs the  pain around my center intensified. It hurt so bad that I had my wife Judy drive me to Mc Neal Hospital, in Berwyn. At the hospital the doctors checked me out, and told me that I  got water on my lungs, gave me a shot of morphine and sent me home by 10pm. By 3 am the morphine wore off and the pain tripled. I had Judy drop me off at emergency. After I entered Mc Neal I laid down on the cold marble floor trying to turn someway to be comfortable.

   Being on the floor attracted the interns attention. Doctors finally did some scan and put me in intensive care for 4 days.

   Prognosis was that when I was sleeping underwater, my body started to shut down. This is called infarction. To keep the blood to your brain the body automatically shuts blood flow in sequence,  kidney first then liver then heart then brain or something like that.

   When the blood flow stops to part of the kidney it dies like a shriveled fruit, (according to the doctor) I lost probably about 25 percent in one kidney, I did have people stop by my hospital room to audit my near death experience.

   The experience always has been very hard to talk about let alone write. I learned  the info you learn in safety class can never replace real experience. When things go bad they happen so fast and there is very little time to react.

   It was a time in my life when even breathing was not my choice. To me the doctors were wrong , it was not infarction that hurt my kidney. It was God grabbing me by the kidney and dropping me back on board the boat,

   This was a life changing experience. I knew every day shouldn't be taken for granted. And I knew it wasn't my choice and "God Existed".