The Vagabond. Frank Rautenbach

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СКАЧАТЬ surgeons later remarked how amazed they were by how stable my father’s condition had been up to that point, despite the series of quick-succession heart attacks, which had caused an enormous amount of damage to his heart muscle.

      Removing my father’s heart from his chest, the lead surgeon showed it to the operating team: everyone could see how severe the damage was. He described the left ventricle as a blob of jelly, with no resemblance to the muscle it once was. From a medical point of view, it seemed certain that he wouldn’t survive the operation.

      Apart from being kept alive by the heart-lung machine, he was as good as dead.

      Acting on a gut feeling, the cardiologist advised that they should proceed with the operation regardless. Bypass number one: an hour. After a few more hours, all three were finally done.

      Their next major task was to remove my father from the heart-lung machine and to let his heart take over the job of circulating blood through his body again. They persisted and fought for four hours.

      He flatlined several times – until, miraculously, the heart started beating on its own again.

      The doctors and the operating team were incredibly relieved when it started to stabilise into a normal rhythm.

      Later that morning my father started opening his eyes as he came around. The supervising nurse immediately attended to him. She later told my mother that he was smiling and remained very calm as he came to. It surprised her because patients are usually very stressed when they wake up after major operations. He then made gestures with his hands, indicating that he wanted something. She finally figured it out. He wanted to write something.

      They got him a clipboard with a piece of paper and a pen. He couldn’t sit up and was in considerable pain from having his chest opened. He had numerous drips and pipes attached to his body. He also had an endotracheal tube, for breathing, going down his throat, which prevented him from speaking. He lay flat on his back and, with great difficulty, attempted to write.

      He’d write a single letter at a time and then the nurses would tell him what they thought it was. If they guessed correctly, he’d move his head slowly nodding, yes.

      In the meantime, they had called my mother to come back to the hospital. She had stayed up the whole night and was trying to catch up on some sleep that morning. She was relieved to see my father awake and present. She looked at the note he had written:

      ‘Pray for my R-leg. I saw Jesus angel. Wednesday 5 am.’

      She was intrigued: he claimed to have seen an angel! But also, he had spent more than 14 days in the Intensive Care Unit and there was no way he could have known what day it was let alone a reference to what time it was. It would be another four days before they finally removed the oxygen pipe from his throat.

      He told them that once the anaesthetic was administered he blacked out and obviously had no idea what was going on. He then heard a loud and violent sound. Like a lightning strike. He said he could clearly see himself lying on the operating table. He then realized that he was no longer in his body.

      He looked up and saw a very tall being in front of him. He guessed about nine feet tall. He said the being was dressed in bright white clothing and had a beard. He had a resemblance to the Jesus he remembered from pictures in his children’s Bible when he was a child.

      So, he asked, ‘Jesus?’

      The being replied, ‘No, I am not. I am an angel from Him and I’ve come to tell you that you are going to live.’

      My father being a doctor and knowing how grave his situation was, simply said, ‘Thank you.’ He then said he had no idea why he asked the next question, but he asked the angel, ‘What time is it?’

      ‘The angel replied, ‘It’s Wednesday morning, 5 am.’

      After that, he said it was like a curtain came down, like in an old-time movie theatre, and he blacked out again. The next thing he remembered was waking up and gesturing to the attending nurse for something to write on because he was concerned that he was going to forget what had happened to him.

      When the doctors and the other operating staff heard his account of what had happened, they were amazed.

      The anaesthetist confirmed that it was exactly 5 am when they managed to stop my father’s heart to perform the bypass procedure. The lead surgeon had stood with my father’s heart in his hand and made the decision to continue with the operation – even though they knew that there was not enough healthy heart muscle left for my dad to survive the operation, let alone make a healthy recovery.

      In the weeks that followed the operation, the cardiologist performed my father’s final postoperative examinations. The results astounded him. After running the usual battery of tests, he couldn’t explain the elevated functionality of my father’s heart.

      He threw his hands up in the air when the test results indicated that my father’s heart was functioning at the same level as a very fit athlete. It made zero sense from a medical point of view. It certainly made no sense to him, either. The only explanation he could give my mother was that they had witnessed a miracle.

      My mother, backed up by thousands of prayers from their church community and friends around the country, had walked up and down the corridors outside the operating theatre all night, praying and singing all the praise songs and Psalms she knew. She’d had a showdown with the spirit of death that night. She was a warrior and wielded the sword of God’s Spirit and his mighty Word. She fought with everything she had, for my father and for us as a family.

      She trusted that God’s Spirit in her was greater than the shadow of death that hung over my father. That day another part of God’s Kingdom manifested on earth as it was in heaven. As a loving wife and mother, she had prayed with all her heart, and the doctors did everything that was medically possible. But it was God’s amazing grace that brought it all together.

      He had breathed his breath of life into my dad’s heart at 5 am, 11 October 1989.

      It could’ve so easily been the date he died.

      Etched in my memory is the first Sunday that my father went back to church after his operation. I don’t think I had ever experienced an atmosphere so heavenly and pure in my life.

      The church was packed as we walked in as a family. Just over a thousand people filling every available chair. As we moved down the centre aisle, people quickly started noticing who it was.

      Their beloved physician was back.

      Everybody stood up. Some were clapping. Some were putting up their hands in the air, many were crying. Tears of gratitude filled men’s eyes. Spontaneous shouts of praise built into a crescendo of worship and thanksgiving that went on and on. The atmosphere was electrifying, like people really believed that nothing was impossible for God.

      It was like the veil between heaven and earth was drawn back for a moment, God’s presence filling the room. Every song that was sung had another level of meaning and was pregnant with the expectation of what God could do.

      A few months later, the pastor at the church gave my father the opportunity to share his story with the congregation. I had never seen the church so full. Even some of my Catholic and Jewish friends were there that night. Everyone wanted to hear this miraculous story. People were standing at the back and sitting in the aisles and on the floor. My father spoke well. Afterward, many people СКАЧАТЬ