To make a long story short and to get to the point, I sat down and she drew 5 vials of blood. I had expressed to her that I hadn’t eaten that day yet. As she was drawing the blood one of my co-workers came up to my side and said, “Lori, you don’t look so well.”
I didn’t feel well. When the nurse was done she told me to give her a urine sample. I honestly don’t remember how I managed this, my mind was fuzzy by then. When I set the specimen cup down the nurse was busy drawing someone else’s blood. She looked at me and said, “Go drink a Coke.”
Okay, I went instead into my supervisors office and just stared at her. She was extremely busy but looked up at me. I told her I had given blood and didn’t feel well. She told me to go take a break and eat something. So I obeyed. I walked aimlessly into the break room and realized I didn’t have a quarter for the Coke machine. So instead I grabbed a piece of cake from the refrigerator and walked into my office. I was proceeding to sit down when suddenly I felt the room spin. I knew I was passing out. I thought, “Okay, I’m going to faint, so I’m going to just sit down on my chair and lay my head down on my desk and when I come to I will eat the cake.” That’s all I remember.
Meanwhile, my supervisor was in her office alone working. She said “something” came up to her from behind and she could even feel the breath on her neck and they said urgently, “Go check on Lori.” She looked around, no one had come in the office – no one was there. She thought, “silly, Lori is a grown woman, she is fine.”
Again, this time with more urgency, “GO FIND LORI, NOW!”
She said her hair stood on end -she audibly heard this and felt the breath and had an urgent feeling with it this time. She ran out of her office and looked toward the glass wall of my office and didn’t see me sitting at my desk. She asked if anyone had seen me and no one had. She ran to the restroom to look and I wasn’t there. She tore back around the corner to the showroom which was full of people by now and screamed, “FIND LORI NOW!”
She said she came on around the corner and glanced towards my office and saw my feet from under my desk – and saw that I was laying face down on the floor in a pool of blood. She screamed “CALL 911 NOW!” and ran to me.
She said I was turning blue and not moving – my face was laying in the pool of blood. My neck was bent odd, and she was afraid I had broken my neck. So she gently turned me over, and I took a breath. My lips and skin were turning blue. I wasn’t breathing and had she not found me – I would have died! God sent an angel to tell her to find me! I didn’t come around until the ambulance arrived – and they were rolling me onto a cervical board. They all thought I broke my neck. The ambulance carried me to the local hospital and they couldn’t help me, though they determined that my neck was fine, it was my jaw and chin that were broke.
Once at the hospital in North Little Rock, they told me my broken jaw required surgery – that they would have to wire my jaw shut and I’d be in the hospital for a couple of weeks, eating only through a straw. I started to get upset because I couldn’t afford to not work or be out of commission that long. But a peace over took me. As they prepped me for surgery and were about to put me under I prayed:
Jesus, please be with the doctors and nurses. Please heal me and make me whole again. I know I will be okay. Thank you, Amen.
I woke up what felt like a second later. My mouth was free! The doctor came to me and said “Lori, it was so weird, we got in there and your jaw is barely fractured, so we didn’t have to wire it shut. You can go home as soon as the anesthesia wears off”.
Praise God! Not only did I get to go home, the surgery done on my chin never hurt. I recovered very well and very fast. God’s love for me showed through the entire ordeal!
Bountiful Mom blog. http://www.bountifulmom.com