Karla Weller - Diagnosis - Heart Attack

At that point, a nurse asked me to take home Gerd’s golden necklace with the Jesus pendant which I had placed over his bed earlier. But I wanted to leave it right there since Gerd had worn it around his neck for years. He had bought it in Mexico a long time ago and never taken it off since. Two weeks later, the chain had disappeared and no one knew where it had gone. May it bring its new owner luck and protection!

Justin hadn’t visited his father at intensive care yet. He had fought so desperately to keep him alive during the heart attack, but still wasn’t able to face his father’s lifeless body in the hospital. Every night, Justin lay awake in bed and barely talked during the day. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw his father’s face in pain, fighting with death, and therefore he couldn’t get any sleep.

To improve the situation for everybody, I decided to get in touch with my daughter, Daniela, who was still in Chicago and asked her to fly home as soon as possible to join her brother visiting their father. That was the only chance I saw to bring Gerd back.

But first, Justin urgently needed help. He couldn’t handle the situation alone. He had already had too many sleepless nights. We made an appointment with Mrs. Sigler who worked as a shaman and had helped me personally deal with a life crisis before.

On a soul journey, she was able to discover that Justin’s personal spirit animal was a giant bear. Because of the shock he had experienced, some fear had settled in his head, which immediately dissolved when his spirit animal made itself known. Inner strength and self-confidence could once again blossom. The Archangel Raphael gave him Aesculapius’s staff and Justin would have to decide for himself whether to accept it or not. Being a helper and healer was his destiny.

On October 31, Daniela returned from Chicago and, as planned, the siblings visited their father in the intensive care unit for the first time. I waited outside. The three of them had such a special connection which I didn’t want to disturb because I knew if anyone at all could move Gerd to come back, it was his children.

Unfortunately, the desired success didn’t happen right away. After a few initial hesitations, the two of them spoke to their father as though he were awake. They told him of the past few days, how much he had scared them, how furious Daniela was that he hadn’t listened to her and consulted a doctor while there was still time to take action, and anything else they could think of at the moment. But Gerd didn’t wake up and didn’t give any other indication he even recognized his children were there with him.

Fourteen days after the heart attack, I was called into the doctor’s office. They had to cease artificial respiration, they explained, because if the tube remained in his throat for too long, his vocal cords would be likely to suffer permanent damage. And what would happen if the breathing tube was removed and Gerd would fail to breathe on his own? Should doctors perform a tracheotomy in a worst-case scenario?

Since Gerd had never filed a living will, I had to see a notary to obtain a legal permit from the authorities to make decisions on Gerd’s behalf.

Due to the life and death situation, the notary offered me an appointment the very next day and after a long conversation, issued the necessary paperwork which temporarily authorized me to order life support measures for my husband.

That same day, Gerd’s oxygen tube was removed and artificial respiration was stopped. I stood, spellbound, next to his bed and watched the procedure. Everything went well and Gerd was able to breathe on his own! Thank God! A first essential step toward returning to life had been taken.

From then on, Gerd was able to make loud noises, but they sounded more like a threatened wild animal than a human being. In retrospect, I think his consciousness returned successively, but he was completely terrified and distraught, still caught somewhere in between the worlds. The doctors didn’t know how to deal with him either, so whenever he became too anxious “for his own protection”, he was administered a drug that plunged him back into complete darkness. For the very moment, this practice was certainly a relief for everybody, especially for the people around him who were frightened by these primal noises. But not for the long-term, because this forced him to go through this semi-conscious state again and again.

We kept trying to think of ways to encourage Gerd to come back to life.

Meanwhile, we had burned a CD for him with a few songs that might mean something to him. There were songs he had loved to listen to the year before and songs he had sung loudly with his friends at a party at a soccer camp in Croatia. Somehow, we all saw that film scene in our minds when the hero suddenly opens his eyes because he hears a certain melody and the happy ending is in sight. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Still, I put the book “Stand up” from Boris Grundl on the shelf next to Gerd’s hospital bed. Only a few months ago, we had attended an inspiring lecture at which Boris Grundl impressively demonstrated how he had found a new and even better life when he became paraplegic, which he had initially felt was the end of the world. If Gerd woke up, he should be immediately reminded of that and realize that people can start over, especially after such a bitter twist of fate.

One day later, I wanted to visit Gerd late in the evening, but was not allowed to see him. He was very restless and was being treated by two nurses. I was asked to be patient and wait outside in the station’s waiting room. Unfortunately, this happened again and again. When Gerd grew restless, he was given another dose of a sedative that put him back into the artificial coma. So we could never tell how much of his unconsciousness was caused by the artificial coma. How strong were his will and power to return to this life? Where did one stop and the other begin? I was told this was best for him because such massive restlessness might additionally harm his psyche and he might injure himself thrashing about in his bed. To avoid injuries, he had been “strapped” to the bed when I came to visit quite often. Seeing him like that just broke my heart.

While I was waiting to be let into Gerd’s room that evening, the head of the clinic was still on his late ward rounds. When he saw me, he sat down with me in silence for a little while and finally told me he had recently lost his best friend to a heart attack. No one had been around to help him, so he had died alone, suddenly and unexpectedly. I could sense how it had emotionally affected the doctor himself when he asked how old Justin was that he had acted so prudently, thus saving his father’s life. It was very lucky for Gerd that he had and, yet, it was a huge strain on Justin to have seen his father fighting for his life. Regardless of how things continued for Gerd, I couldn’t allow Justin to blame himself for not having done enough. In fact, his behavior had far exceeded what was humanly possible!

Despite all this, Gerd’s condition didn’t allow for a prognosis, the doctor said, so we had to be prepared for anything at any time.

Shortly thereafter, the doctor accompanied me to Gerd’s room. “The walk from the entryway to the hospital room is always hard because I never know in what condition I would find my husband in,” I remarked. But today, I could hear Gerd screaming in despair from afar. Although he wouldn’t say any recognizable words, it was clear he was terrified. He thrashed around in bed and made noises that sounded more like an animal than a human. I went straight to him and laid one hand on his forehead and the other on the back of his neck and whispered soothing words in his ear. Gerd quickly grew calm, his heart rate stabilized at a normal level and his body relaxed. The display on the vitals monitor returned to a normal curve. The Jin Shin Jiutsu “emergency current” was working and performed its miracle cure. When I turned around after a few minutes, I realized the head of the clinic was gone. He had watched from the door as Gerd reacted positively to my presence and interpreted this as a sure sign that he recognized me. The doctor then ordered that an early rehabilitation spot for Gerd be rigorously sought. The clinics in the vicinity that came into question were all full, but they eventually found one in the Bavarian Alps.