It was hard. It was awful. I was home with children who needed me and I was so distraught that I had nothing to give. There were problems with the kids. Of course there were problems. The kids had gone through a lot. A LOT.
After moving back to Maine I realized I would have to go to work. I had no training beyond high school, so I applied for government help. They put me through some job-training courses and then opened the way for me to take a college-level computer technology course.
When I got the phone call from CETA, I argued with them. I had no idea what a computer was. Bob was into electronics and I knew that I had absolutely no intention to get into anything remotely connected to electronics. "Sorry," they told me, "this is the only opening we have. Take it or leave it. Oh and another thing, if you decide to take it, you'll have to be tested and you'll be competing with 30 people for a seat in the 16-student class."
I was just overwhelmed. Hadn't I gone through enough already?
At the time I was attending another home fellowship group, so I ran to them begging them to pray with me that God open another door, because no way was I interested in studying computers. They did pray with me, but CETA did not open any other door. My mother talked to me about it and told me to at least give it a chance. I didn't want to. The very thought of it made me sick inside. "Electronics? Are you kidding me?" "You don't know that it's electronics, neither of us has any idea what a computer is. Just take it, it's the only door open, you have no choice."
So the Lord dragged me, kicking and screaming all the way to that college. You could easily have seen the scud marks from my shoes as he grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me there.
Little did I know ...not only was I going to love it, but from that time on every job I would ever have was going to be on a computer. It became my life. I got one at home and when I wasn't working on a computer at school, I was doing so at home. It changed my whole life.
But ...
There were still troubles ahead. Bob had set things up so that I could lose the house when the kids left at age 18. It was quite by accident that I found this out. I searched the Lord's will and he directed me to fight it. I did. And I won. But it was the most horrendous battle I'd ever experienced in my life. And it took its toll on me.
One day I was sitting at my computer at work, and suddenly I felt weak. I asked the girl I worked with to get me a candy bar from the machine. She did. I felt weaker, so I asked her to get me some water, and she did. Then I collapsed. There was a man in the company who was also an Emergency Medical Technician, so my boss called him in. He took my vitals and loaded me into his car and headed for the hospital. On the way, he judged that I might not make it to the hospital so he stopped at the fire station and they put me into an ambulance, then sped me off to the hospital. And thus began another sojourn through hell.
I remember the nurse in the emergency room calling the doctor and telling to get here immediately because my heart was failing. I don't know what the doctor said to him, but the nurse yelled at him loudly, "Get here fast! NOW!"
They did all kinds of tests, but nothing revealed what was happening. So they admitted me into the hospital. I was to spend the next six weeks there. I continued to have these attacks, and they just couldn't find out why. One evening, my father came to visit and he brought my youngest daughter with him. While we were chatting, I went into one of those attacks. They had me hooked up to monitors in the nurses's station, and a nurse came running. She told my father and daughter, "I'm sorry but you'll have to leave." I will never, ever, as long as I live, forget the look on my young daughter's face. Absolute terror.
During my stay, one of the doctors asked me if I had a will. I said no, of course I don't have a will, I'm 37 years old, of course I don't have a will. "You'd better make one," he said.
Funny, I had a peace I couldn't explain. I had no fear of death. I don't know if it was God's peace, or if it was just that I was in such a fog that I didn't realize what was happening.
Finally, the doctors had done every scan known to man and could not find out why these attacks were happening. Then my primary care doctor said he wanted me to go to the psych ward for testing. I absolutely refused. I am NOT mentally ill, and I will not subject my mind to the "New Age" stuff that those doctors peddle. The doctor argued with me, and walked out dismayed. The next morning when I woke up, the Lord Jesus was there next to the window. "I want you to go there," he said. I was so shocked I couldn't answer. Finally, I said, "You WANT me to subject myself to that????"
So when the doctor came in again later, I told him I would go to the psyche ward. And off I went. It was as awful as I expected. All the New Age stuff about self esteem and pride and all that garbage. They put me through a battery of tests of every kind, and my mother was there when the top psychiatrist in charge came in to give me the diagnosis. "You have no mental illness," he said. So we cannot shed any light on why you keep having these attacks. We have to put you in a category we call "Atypical," meaning we have no answers but we have to come up with something for the records.
There in my hospital room, I wrote a letter to the author of a book I had read on people who need deliverance from demonic spirits. I told him I'd beg, borrow, or steal to get to Texas where he was if they would receive me and help me. He wrote back that he had trained a man on the east coast, near Boston, and suggested I contact him. I did. They told me to come. So my mother and I drove to the Boston suburbs and we were received by this minister and his assistant. Hours. Hours. More hours. Nothing. No success.
That night my mother and I went to the mall because she wanted to get a book to read. While she was looking for a book, --- this was SO God, I felt myself being taken over to a section and picked up a specific book, and in that book I saw the story of a woman who had the EXACT same symptoms I was having. I mean ....EXACT! Your body goes cold. Your intestines demand to be emptied. Your vision blurs. Your heart starts into arhythmia, and you have an INTENSE sensation that you're dying. I could not believe it!!!!
I went home and made an appointment with that psychiatrist. I had bought two copies of that book, one for me and one for him. I went into his office and threw that book down noisily onto his desk and said, "THIS is what's happening to me!!!" He picked up the book and remarked that he had heard of this doctor and agreed, this was nothing more or less than acute panic attacks. Life-threatening panic attacks. Real panic attacks that cause all kinds of disasters in your body while they are happening. He ordered a test to "prove" that I had had sufficient trauma to actually change my biochemistry, and perhaps that would show it to be true. Of course the test came back positive. My biochemistry had been damaged by too much trauma. He prescribed medication for it and the attacks stopped immediately. Had I not gone the whole route when the doctor wanted me to go to the psyche ward, I would never have found out that I do NOT have ANY mental illness, but I do have a trauma-induced biochemical disorder that can be treated with the right medication.
As I went home and thought this whole thing over, a memory came to mind. During the first week of my hospital stay, they assigned a male nurse to stay with me because they didn't know if I was going to survive the next attack. I described to him exactly what was happening, and I asked him, "have you ever seen anything like this in your career?" "Yes, ma'am," he said. "On the fields of Vietnam.
Well, at least I didn't come home in a body bag.
