Not your time to go.
Yesterday I met a guy outside the mosque. (a lot of stories in Ramadan begin with this).
His name was Mohammed and I overheard him talk about having had heart surgery.
I asked him how old he was, and while I guessed mid forties, he said he was 44 which was close enough.
Apparently six years ago when he was thirty eight he went for an x-ray to establish the exact size and position of a kidney stone that was giving him hell.
The nurse asked him if he would like to extend the area of the x-ray to include his chest and he thought, "why not".
She told him that it wouldn't cost him more, and his being trader had nothing to do with the fact that he agreed to the inclusion of chest area for the same price.
Soon the nurse called in all sorts of doctors and he was informed that his heart was enlarged due to a very rare condition, He had a tumor in his ventricle.
This guy went in for his kidney stones, and was told that he had a 40% chance of survival if he had the operation, to have the growth removed, and that was the good news.
His chances of long term survival were 0% if he didn't have the operation.
They couldn't operate on his heart because of his kidney stones and after having those surgically removed he was booked in to have open heart surgery.
Remember he was just 38 years old at the time.
Long story short he had the operation, and survived to tell the tale.
While in hospital, he was inundated by requests by scores of doctors who wished to study him and his condition. As he had, had no symptoms, they usually only got to see this condition in autopsies.
His was unique in that, having identified the problem early, without him having known anything about it, he was amongst a very small group of people to live past it.
The thing that struck me about the story was, that the nurse who asked him if he would like to have a bigger area screened.
She suggested a seemingly unnecessary procedure and ended up saving his life.
It was clearly not his time to go.
His name was Mohammed and I overheard him talk about having had heart surgery.
I asked him how old he was, and while I guessed mid forties, he said he was 44 which was close enough.
Apparently six years ago when he was thirty eight he went for an x-ray to establish the exact size and position of a kidney stone that was giving him hell.
The nurse asked him if he would like to extend the area of the x-ray to include his chest and he thought, "why not".
She told him that it wouldn't cost him more, and his being trader had nothing to do with the fact that he agreed to the inclusion of chest area for the same price.
Soon the nurse called in all sorts of doctors and he was informed that his heart was enlarged due to a very rare condition, He had a tumor in his ventricle.
This guy went in for his kidney stones, and was told that he had a 40% chance of survival if he had the operation, to have the growth removed, and that was the good news.
His chances of long term survival were 0% if he didn't have the operation.
They couldn't operate on his heart because of his kidney stones and after having those surgically removed he was booked in to have open heart surgery.
Remember he was just 38 years old at the time.
Long story short he had the operation, and survived to tell the tale.
While in hospital, he was inundated by requests by scores of doctors who wished to study him and his condition. As he had, had no symptoms, they usually only got to see this condition in autopsies.
His was unique in that, having identified the problem early, without him having known anything about it, he was amongst a very small group of people to live past it.
The thing that struck me about the story was, that the nurse who asked him if he would like to have a bigger area screened.
She suggested a seemingly unnecessary procedure and ended up saving his life.
It was clearly not his time to go.
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