Just Some Thoughts

I often share the stories from nursing that are funny, and I realized the stories that touch me the most I often hold in. Mostly because they are painful. But it is these stories that God has revealed so much to me, challenged me, and touched me. So today I write my wondering thoughts ....
A few weeks ago, I was sitting at the computer at the beginning of my shift and heard a fellow nurse yell out for help. I ran to the room with adrenaline rushing through my veins. Ready for whatever was ahead...so I thought. I arrived to a patient's room, a young gentleman of only 53 years, who about a month ago had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. He had been in and out of the hospitals prior to that for multiple cases of pneumonia. He couldn't understand why he kept getting pneumonia and finally pressed the doctors to look in to it. They then found out he had a fistula (an opening) from his esophagus to his lungs from an advanced stage of cancer. So every time he ate, food would collect in his lungs and he would get pneumonia. A few days before this day he found out he was not a candidate for chemotherapy because of the many resistant bacterias in his lungs. He and his wife were not ready to accept this and wanted to return to their home state to see if another doctor would give him chemotherapy. Everything was set up to to get him home on Monday...this was Saturday. His son was at home preparing for his return.
My fellow nurse was panicking as she tried to suction him. Another nurse begin to bag him while I ran to call the wife. Silently I prayed for words as I dialed her cell. She was at a nearby hotel and I told her to come now. I returned to the room, where the respiratory therapist tried with little success to clear an airway. I stood at the foot of the bed rubbing his feet praying he hung on until his wife came. In the next few minutes I watched as he struggled to hang on. We lost his pulse for 13 seconds then he came back. Me and two other nurses stood there crying as we encouraged him to hang on as his wife was coming. She finally arrived. And I watched as a wife told her husband that she loved him, that his son loved him, and it was okay to go. He struggled a little longer then finally gave in. I wondered if he was looking at a glimpse of heaven or hell. I wondered if he was fighting because what laid ahead of him was the depths of hell. I wondered if he spent his whole life thinking he would get things right with God when he was old. That he had plenty of time to do that. Or had he always lived striving to serve the Lord and now was walking into the most glorious place of all. We often think we have soo much time to make our lives right or to share with others how great God is. But life is so short. One minute you feel fine and then in a short month you are dying. How many things do we do a day that are so meaningless when it comes down to the whole purpose of our lives. We need to start truly living now. Today. before its too late.