Paul was invited back for the third time this year to speak to Vice Presidents, Directors, Supervisors, and other managerial staff of Spring Hill Medical Center. His message is powerful and helps people to deal with so much death and dying as is seen in the medical profession.
Doctors, nurses, paramedics, and allied health practitioners keep mental statistics on their own performance over the span of their careers. These well-educated and highly-trained professionals drop everything they are doing when the "code" is sounded over the hospital's intercom system or EMS communication network. They rush in to revive life to a body when the heart fails to beat. They pump on chests and blow into mouths to mimic what the body should be doing on its own. They push cardiac drugs into the bloodstream and apply electrical shocks to the heart muscle in extraordinary effort to save life. When all this effort works they put another notch on the staff in their medical caduceus insignia and wear a smile that lasts until the next code is called, at least that is how it appears outwardly.
Secretly, and very much inwardly, they weight the wins to the losses as if the dead themselves are grading their performances. Unfortunately, the losses far outweigh the wins. Baseball players get paid millions to play a game and are graded by batting averages, with greatness falling in the 0.300-0.400 range. A medical professional can lose one "game of life" and never overcome the loss. It is a heavy burden to carry that few understand outside the ranks of these professionals.
SHMC Retreat at Five Rivers facilities on the Causeway.
Paul shared how he, a former medical professional, laid on an ER stretcher surrounded by a team of experts desperately fighting the odds to "save" his life on February 12, 1990. This was a unique event as these expert medical professionals were all Paul's former students. He had trained the EMTs and paramedics that responded to his home address. He taught the nurses and physicians at the ER in specialty courses such as the American Heart Association's Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) course. The scene was extra tense as the student is not suppose to have to render care he or she learned from the teacher on the teacher in a real life scenario.
The environment was charged even more by an audience of onlookers who viewed the blow-by-blow account. These were former paramedic partners, EMTs and coworkers who taught emergency medical courses with Paul at the University of South Alabama. These medics had a radio relay set up that reached all the way to Baton Rouge to give former students now working in the field an ongoing report of outcomes from this therapy or that procedure.
Within minutes upon arrival at the ER, Paul viewed the ECG monitor and saw his heart go from a sinus bradycardia (slow heart rate of 32) to ventricular tachycardia (over 200 beats per minute). The team scrambled to combat this rapid increase in heart rate. His heart quickly converted to ventricula fibrillation (heart is electrically haywire with no pumping action)and the team prepared to give Paul electrical shocks to the chest equalling 3,000 volts of energy. The scene was intense as the drama unfolded.
I was registering Paul into the ER. My counterpart at my sister hospital where Paul was taken came and took me by the arm. I thought Paul was recovering and she was taking me back to see him. Instead, Suzanne detoured me to the "Grieving Room." As a nurse manager of an ER, I knew what this meant. That meant Paul had died and she had to break the bad news to me. I instantly cried out, "NO! NO! This can't be, I didn't get to kiss him goodbye!" Friends and family gathered in the lobby praying mightily to an awesome God to save Paul's life.
In the midst of all the surrounding chaos, Paul experienced the most awesome event of his life. He had actually welcomed death as the pain was too intense to bear. He shared with the good people of Spring Hill Medical Center that seconds after his heart went into ventricular fibrillation that his soul came up out of his "carcass" and that he could see his former students frantically working on his lifeless body to restore life.
Paul's soul didn't hang around to see the effort being expended. His soul quickly ascended through the ceiling of the ER into a vastness. But, before he arrived at the destination he was heading to, he found himself back on the stretcher of the ER. His heart had only stopped for 33 seconds, but it felt like much more time to Paul. The pain stopped immediately at death and this was an opportunity for him to get a second wind and gain the strength to fight death once more. Within a minute or two after returning to this life, the intense pain returned to Paul's chest. Two hours later, after much medical team effort, morphine, and cardiac medications, Paul's heart once again fibrillated and stopped pumping blood.
This time, once again, his soul ascended from his body. He completed the vast journey this time and wound up in the arms of a Holy God in heaven. He was bathed in a light that was too bright to describe with words. He felt totally healed, even to the point that his hair felt good (which he has never experienced before or after his near death). He never felt such love, security and comfort. He reached eternity. He saw life on the other side of death.
Suddenly, while still in the arms of Jesus, he once again found himself instantly back in the hospital and on the ER stretcher, but this time with an assurance that he would be just fine. He managed to raise his head and stabilize the frantic scene by exclaiming, "Guys, I'm okay, but you really need to calm down." The room cheered in laughter.
Paul was able to tell the medical professionals of Spring Hill Medical Center that he no longer tells anyone that he resuscitated over 500 people from death in his paramedic career, nor did he suffer the feelings that he lost thousands more people whom he did not resuscitate. The fact of the matter is that he didn't save anyone, nor did he lose anyone. Jesus made it completely clear that who lives and who dies was not Paul's choice but rather God's.
That freed Paul up from years of suffering inwardly from seeing so much death. Paul relayed to these medical professionals that the key to surviving the practice of medicine was not by judging their code performances on outcomes. If a person died, it was not their actions that caused it. Paul can prove that the drugs and defibrillations he received while he was clinically dead were not what restored his life. It was God's decision to allow these procedures to produce the results He wanted. God is in control of outcomes, not doctors, nurses, and paramedics!
Paul also shared that heaven is a place that he did not want to leave. For the first time ever, he really understood Philippians 1:21 "To live is Christ and to die is gain." Eternal life in heaven is not punishment, rather a reward. It is a promotion. Death of a Christian should be a celebration as nothing on earth compares to being in the light of a Holy God, bathed in an unconditional love that supersedes our understanding.
You could almost see the managers as they received comfort from years of dealing with death and dying. Paul ended by saying, "One day you may hear that I have died. Don't believe it, I've just changed addresses!"
Paul is completing his book, "The Joy of Dying" and will share to everyone all the exact details of this amazing day and his life after death.
Paul is also inviting everyone he knows, right now, to his funeral sometime in the future (date to be determined). Paul wants to put the "fun" back into funerals. He is planning his own celebration of life and promotion to heaven in death. He will break every tradition and make it a true celebration. If you know Paul, you know his love of food and it will be a major feast for one thing. He will also demand that no one leaves and follows a hearse to a lonely cemetary to see his carcass laid to rest (how morbid is that). He is not in that carcass that is in that casket, but rather his has transcended into heaven. Let the dead bury the dead. Those that are alive will stay behind at the church and truly celebrate Paul's life.
Since he knows himself better than anyone else, he plans to preach his own funeral. It is a top secret project that he is working on and even I cannot see the script he is writing. I do know that he wants everyone to know the truth, Jesus is alive and well and has prepared a place for them in heaven. He has been in the presence of Jesus, one-on-one on February 12, 1990. He knows God's heart and will share it at his funeral, whenever that may be. Know this, Paul Ezelle is living his eternal life right now. If you are around him, you will hear about his best friend, Christ Jesus.
Don't wait to celebrate Paul's life at his funeral. Call him today. He has time for you.
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