You’ve Got a Pain in Your Chest

In 2004, Dave started having chest pains as he was walking back up the hill, home from work.

He used to walk up Welford Road, in Leicester and found he was having to stop several times because of chest pains.

After a while he went to the doctor’s and asked about it.

He spoke to a young Chinese doctor, who was also a Christian and he gave him a cholesterol test.

The doctor was a locum and went to speak to one of the other doctors and came back and advised him to change his diet.

A few weeks later a man from our church came to Dave and said, “I don’t know why, but God says you have a pain in your chest.”

In denial Dave said, “I haven’t and I don’t want to hear that from you!”

This guy was known for being accurate with his words of knowledge.

Dave’s dad had died of a heart attack when he was 49, when Dave was 21, so heart disease ran in the family.

After a while Dave hadn’t heard anything back from the doctor’s and was still having pains, so Jackie, a lady from church who was a nurse advised him to follow his appointment up with the doctor.

“You should go and ask them to do a treadmill test, they’ve left this for too long.”

So Dave went back to the doctor and told them he was still experiencing pain.

He asked why they hadn’t prescribed him with cholesterol tablets and if it was to do with money?

The Chinese doctor said that, yes it was, as the senior doctor had been trying to save money from their budget.

The doctor referred him to the Glenfield Hospital, who sent him a letter to schedule a treadmill test a couple of weeks later.

They did the initial treadmill test and told Dave that they would be in touch.

When the doctor looked at the nurse, he gave her a nod and winked at her, like a signal to speed this one up.

Within 2 weeks Dave got another letter to go for an angiogram.

Dave went for the test on the Friday before the August Bank Holiday and they did the test.

The weekend of the treadmill test we had supposed to be going to Cornwall to visit the Eden Project, but Dave rang me at work and told me that they were not going to let him come home.

As it turned out, he stayed in the hospital for a month, until he had been operated on and recovered, this was in August 2004.

Don’t Take the Stent

Dave was in the hospital for one month and so he prayed about his upcoming operation.

He soon had an appointment with the doctor who was going to operate on him and so he prayed beforehand.

God told him, “They’re going to give you two options between a bypass and a stent, don’t take the stent.”

When the doctor came, he was a very distinguished doctor, well known in his field, having written books about it.

He said to Dave, “You have 2 options, I can do a bypass, or I can do a stent, which would you prefer?”

Dave asked him, “What are the advantages of the stent?” and the doctor told him that it would give him ten extra years of life.

Dave then asked, “What is the success rate of doing a stent like this?”

The doctor replied, “Well, this would be the first time we have done a stent for this type of blockage; the blockage is 2 ways on an intersection, like a cherry stem.”

He told Dave, “We can try and do a stent and if you have a heart attack on the table, we can have everything ready to open you up and do a bypass.”

With this information and the word from God, Dave decided to go for a double bypass.

Nearly 20 years later he met a doctor who used to work in the same hospital in Leicester, in Fethiye church in Turkiye, who told him that the doctor who operated on him used to have the nickname, “Doctor Death,” as he did so many experimental operations!

God had steered him in the right direction!

The Red Carpet

While Dave was in hospital, he asked God about the outcome of the operation and God showed him a picture red carpet and a door slightly open, a long way away.

Dave knew that he was part of God’s royal family and death was still a long way off, but he was on God’s red carpet, so he did not worry!

Many people in the hospital were wracked with worry, but Dave was always laughing, and cheerful, joking with the nurses and the people in his ward, God gave him joy and inner peace.

There used to be a little charity shop in the car park and one day we bought a little bell, which he jokingly used to call the junior doctor, Charlie and called it, “The Charlie Bell!”

One weekend, we asked if Dave could go to church, but the doctors refused to let him go, as they said he had a six percent chance of survival if he had a heart attack outside the hospital, they told him, his blockage was known as, “The Widow-maker.”

However, this didn’t stop Dave getting up to all sorts inside the hospital, and he went to the cafeteria the night before his operation to get bacon sandwiches!

“They’re cleaning me out tomorrow anyway”, he said!

One week after his operation, he was released and he could already walk faster than I could, as usual!

This year it is twenty years since Dave had that operation, and hopefully there’s still some room to go on that carpet yet!

God has been faithful to us all that time and even sent us on new adventures to foreign climes!