STRESS TESTED
I recently went to the doctor to have a cardiac stress test. The goal is to clearly establish that what I am being tested for is NOT what is causing my problem. They call this diagnosis by elimination, a medical sub-specialty I am becoming quite expert at.
There is something daunting about a stress test. The goal is to put you on a tread mill and increase the speed and incline until you either reach a preposterously high heart rate or you go into cardiac arrest, whichever comes first. The sight of paddles on a nearby table is not as reassuring as perhaps it should be under the circumstances.
Standing (or rather walking as fast as your legs can go) on a treadmill with an IV in one arm, wires strapped to my chest and a blood pressure cuff on the other arm, I couldn't help but ponder my own mortality.
Twice I have felt with absolute conviction that I was going to die. The first time was in Vietnam when a B-52 strike came a little too close to where I was standing. I remember so vividly the moment that this enormous cacophony of destruction filled the air around me.
I was so sure that I was going to die that I just stood there waiting for the shrapnel to tear me to pieces. For that one moment when I felt suspended between here and hereafter, I was filled with a calmness and acceptance that is hard to understand or explain.
The other time was in an automobile accident. I had done something stupid and found myself squarely in the path of another car going about 40 miles per hour and aimed straight at my driver’s side door. I had maybe a tenth of a second to process the whole thing before I began to fade to black. My body shut down that quickly, and if I had died in that instant I would never have felt it.
If I were ever pushed hard to come up with a reason to believe in a caring God it would be those couple of split seconds when I felt myself to be literally on the threshold of death when something intervened to take care of me, some deeply engrained set of mental and physical processes that had to have been programmed into life's basic wiring a long time ago, a gift passed on to us by our animal forbears.
If that was the handiwork of God, then I would have to say that in that instance at least, I could find something to believe in. Clearly life is meant to be a struggle, but in death there seems to be a final moment of peace, a final parting gift if you will, one that is truly a moment of grace.
August 6, 2009
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