Podcast Introduction

Steve tells why there were some missed episodes.

Transcript

Hey there, this is a special edition of the Lifespring family Audio Bible. This is going to be different than all the past shows, literally every show I’ve ever done ever the almost I don’t know, 3000 or so shows that I’ve ever done on any of the Lifespring family shows.

As you probably know, I missed the last couple of shows. And I wanted to let you know why. For those of you that get the Lifespring family newsletter, you already have a little bit of a an indication as to what happened because Kirsty sent a email out this morning to let you know. Thank you, Kirsty for doing that. I appreciate it.

So I have had atrial fibrillation for years. For those that don’t know, atrial fibrillation is something that happens to the heart, where the heart rate goes, just crazy. In my case, it’ll go as low as 45 and up to 190. And it’s just all over the place. It doesn’t happen often. But when it does, it just wipes me out, I have to sit down I have to rest. And normally it’ll resolve itself in is usually six to eight hours, something like that. And I just have to let it pass.

Now several years ago, about three years ago, I had to have three stents put into my heart and a stent is a little tube that they put into some of the, depending on how many they put in, but they put these things into arteries in your heart to supply the blood to the heart muscle. And I had some blockages it as it turned out, that caused me to have chest pain, even when I would walk as little as 100 yards. And that really scared me at one point. I used to take walks all the time around the neighborhood here and it got so that I couldn’t take my walks without pain. And the lovely lady LeeAnn said, you’re going to the doctor for this, we’re not going to mess around with this anymore. And I’m the kind of guy that I don’t like to go to the doctor, I’m like a lot of guys, I guess. And that’s the last thing I want to do is go crawling to a doctor.

But anyway, she made me go, which was good. So when I went in, I told when I went to the doctor and I told them what was going on, they said, well, let’s do a stress test The stress test they wanted was the kind where you get up on the treadmill, you know, and they put all the leads on your chest so they can monitor what your heart is doing. And the first time I went in to do this, they take your blood pressure before you do the test. And they put the blood pressure cuff on me and took a reading and they said we’re not doing this because if we do this, you’re gonna have a stroke. That’s how high my blood pressure was. So they gave me some blood pressure medication, we got the blood pressure taken care of. And they said, Okay, come on in. And we’ll do the stress test. And this was when, like I said, I couldn’t even walk 100 yards. So I started doing the stress test. And after about 20 seconds, they said stop, we’re not going to complete it because they didn’t like what the EKG was showing.

So a day or two later, they said, You need to come in and we’re going to do surgery, the least that we will do is install stents. And the most, it could be that we’re going to have to do bypass surgery.

So let me stop this part of the story here and tell you that my family has a history of cardiovascular disease. My biological father died when he was 65, after having had a triple bypass at 55. He came from a family of five sons and one of his brothers was only 48 When he died from a heart attack, so I have bad genetics, when it comes to cardiac health. My genetics are not good. So anyway, they took me in for surgery to see whether I was going to get stents or whether I was going to get bypass surgery. And they were able to do the stents in, and when they put three in and when I got out and the doctor came and talked to me after I you know it was in the recovery area. He said that the artery that they called the Widowmaker was like 99% occluded it was blocked. So it was good that this was done, otherwise I would not be sitting here talking talking with you today. I would have followed my biological father at about 65.

And, of course, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But the lovely lady LeeAnn doesn’t really like that thought, for me to be going at this age anyway.

So anyway, the other night, I was at home, and I had to do some cleanup on the floor. And I was up and down, cleaning the floor up and down. And it really kind of winded me and pretty soon I could tell that I was having another AFib… I don’t call it an attack. What’s the word? I can’t think of the word. Anyway, I was having a fib again. And I can tell because, you know, all my strength just goes away. And I get short of breath and the whole thing.

So I sat down, and oh, a couple of minutes into this episode. There you go. This AFib episode a couple of minutes into it. I began to have chest pain, with pain radiating up the sides of my neck. And this was something new. I’ve never had any pain associated with a fib.

Well, LeeAnn was still at work at this time. And I figured I’m just gonna sit this thing out like I always do. Well, when she got in, when she got home, a couple of hours later, I told her what was going on. I said, you know, I’m kind of having some chest pain. They’ve got the neck thing going. And she said, we’re going to the ER. And I didn’t I didn’t argue.

So we went to the emergency room here in town, Kaiser Permanente. I can talk about Kaiser, but I won’t. We get into the ER. And of course, when you go into the ER with chest pain, they take you right in, it doesn’t matter how crowded the ER is, they make room for you. And they took me in and put me on the EKG. And soon they took me into a room in the ER and laid me down and they took some blood and things like that. And the cardiac guy that was on the ER duty that night said we need to hold you overnight. And by now it’s about 1130 or so at night, we need to hold you over overnight because we need to do more tests which in the middle of the night, they don’t do the tests that they want to do. So they said we’ll get your room, we’ll send you up to a room and you’ll be good.

Well, it took about 18 hours before they got a room for me and I’m right across the the nurse’s station. It’s a very busy night. It’s noisy, it’s not a place where you could get rest. So in that 18 hours that I was in there, I slept maybe three hours, they finally got me to a room. And they said okay, we’re going to do a test called a lexiscan. But today, they’re all booked up in radiology, which the Lexi scan is a type of test where they first give you a drug through your vein. And they put you on this table. It’s kind of like a CAT scan table. But it’s not a CAT scan. But this thing comes up and goes around you and they look at, I don’t know what they’re looking at. They’re looking at your heart, I guess. And then you go back to your room for a time. And then you go back down later, where they inject your your veins with a chemical that makes your heart just…I don’t I don’t know what the chemical is. But it’s like adrenaline on steroids. Your heart just goes crazy. You get short of breath. They’re doing this instead of the kind of a stress test where you get on the treadmill. Because you know the heart isn’t in good enough shape to do a treadmill. So they do a thing where chemically they make your heart do what it would do if you were on a treadmill for five minutes. And man when that chemical first hits you and it begins to have this effect on you. It’s it’s kind of like a panic attack. And the nurse that was in there said look when this hits, think just about your breathing, concentrate on your breathing. And I found out that why he said that. If I concentrated on my breathing, I was able to make it but it was really a strange feeling. The heart just….it was terrible. So anyway, after they do that, you’d have to then go have a meal. And then after you have your meal, a few minutes later, they take you in and they they put you on that table again where the CAT scan type thing scans your heart. And what they’re looking for is to see if you have any blockages in your heart and I was really pretty convinced that probably I was going to have some new blockages and I was going to need surgery again. But the good news is I didn’t have any new blockages.

Now, in the ensuing time from the time I checked in until this test took place they were adjusting my medications, trying to get my heart to calm down. And I, remember I told you normally it would resolve itself within six to eight hours, my heart would get back to normal. Well, it wasn’t. My heart was hovering between 100 and 120, which wasn’t as bad as it had gotten up to like 180 or 190, then it wasn’t going way low like 40. My normal resting heart rate is about 59 to 69. That’s my normal resting heart rate. But it wasn’t doing that. But they finally found a drug that that stabilized the heart, I was having no more chest pain. Everything was fine, I felt fine laying in the bed. So after the test, they found out that there were no new blockages and they decided I was okay to go home with a new list of medications and an additional medication. And they took another one away.

So the good news is I’m home.

Oh, I forgot to mention, after I checked into the ER shortly after I checked into the ER nurse came in and took a COVID swab in my nose. And you remember I got COVID after the first of the year when I was on my vacation with LeeAnn. But I’ve been asymptomatic now for at least a couple of weeks. So I was surprised when it came back positive. Personally, I think that there was… I know that it was a PCR test. And I believe that they probably are spinning up those tests. I don’t know if you know about the PCR test, but they they take your sample, and they put it through some sort of a cycling or a spinning type process and are cycling, I don’t know if it’s a spin or… it’s called a cycle. The guy that invented the PCR test said number one, you don’t want to spin much more than about 28 cycles if I remember the number, right. But he said this PCR test was never meant to do testing, the way they do it for COVID. What they’re doing for COVID is when they want the numbers to go up, I’m going to be honest, when they want to scare the people more, when they want to have more cases, they up the cycles. So the guy that invented the test said you can find anything you want to find if you up the cycles enough. My belief is I’m not COVID positive but because I still have some COVID in me, because I had it recently, it came back positive. So of course, when they found out that I was COVID positive, they treated me like I was a leper, everybody that came around had, you know, the hazmat suits on and the whole nine yards. It was ridiculous. So anyway, but I’ve been like I said asymptomatic for at least a couple of weeks.

Anyway, I am still feeling weak. I think that’s mainly from laying around in the hospital bed for two or three days. But when I went out for a walk today, I could only walk a short, short distance. I think it’s just because my my muscles have atrophied from laying around, not just the last, you know, couple of days in the hospital, but while I was sick with a COVID I couldn’t do anything I was laying around there too.

So anyway, let me look at my notes here. Be sure I’m not forgetting anything. I have some bullet points here.

We’ve missed three episodes of our regular Bible reading. We’re gonna make up those three shows in the coming weeks so that we don’t get behind in our completion date. We missed an episode on Psalms which is easy to make up since the Psalms we missed are only a little over a minute long each. We were supposed to start Proverbs chapter one, or we were supposed to read chapter one this week we’re supposed to start Proverbs is what I was gonna say we’re gonna do chapter one. Now Chapter One is only about three minutes long. So we’re going to do that one with a next proverbs episode, which is supposed to be chapters two and three next week, those chapters two and three are only a total of about five minutes. So we’ll just throw chapter one on there and we’ll be good to go on that. Now, the long one we missed we missed Jeremiah 47 through 52. That is just just the reading is 38 minutes. So what we’re going to do is we’re just going to do those chapters next week, we’re going to do Jeremiah 47 through 52 next week, and we were supposed to start Lamentations on that same day of the week. Next week. Lamentations, we were going to do the whole thing next week, which is five chapters. That’s about 19 minutes, the reading portion. So what we’re going to do is break up into two different weeks break that reading up into two. I’ll read the first two chapters of Lamentations in addition to the regularly scheduled Ezekiel one through six. And then the following week, we’ll finish Lamentations in addition to Ezekiel 7-12. And those days will be longer than normal, but not terrible. And we will I missed in there where we’re going to do Jeremiah 47 through 52. Yeah, so yeah, Jeremiah is going to be next week. And then the week following, we’ll start Lamentations and break that up so that it works out. So that the, the shows are going to be a bit longer than normal, but we’ll be caught up in about two to three weeks on that day of the week.

Now, I’m very sorry for the interruption in the schedule. And I hope you’ll hang in there with me.

Now, I’m going to be making a change in how I do the show going forward. I’ve been neglecting my health. And obviously that has not worked out very well. I’ve prioritized studying for the show. And I’ve not been doing my daily walks, which I really have to do, especially when you’re as old a guy as I am, you got to do something to keep things going.

It really has not been at all unusual for me to spend up to eight hours a day getting the show ready for you. And I just can’t do that anymore. I have to listen to my body. So I’m going to try to spend a maximum of three hours per day on the show. Now, with the Lord’s help, I think I can still study enough to bring good content to you, I’m just not going to be able to go down the rabbit holes that I usually do while I study.

Now please, please, please, please, if you’re unhappy with the content, please let me know. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. But I need to know if you think that it isn’t working. I honestly want to bring to you the best content I can. Content that makes you think and helps with your walk with the Lord. Please promise me that you’ll let me know how I’m doing. Please don’t just stop listening. You are my family. And we need to communicate. So please.

So that’s all I have for the show today. Other than we’re going to do a prayer section here in a minute. But as far as me talking about what’s been going on with me, I don’t like talking about myself that much in case you hadn’t noticed. But I wanted you to know what kept me away from the microphone, and how I’m doing.

I love you. And I thank you for the support.

So prayer. Sean of San Pedro wrote me a couple of days ago He said, Hi, Steve, we’ve been on alert for Howie to come straight home from the hospital for several days now. We just heard confirmation that he’s coming home today, and should be home around 5pm Mountain Time. (Now this was the day that I went into the hospital. So he should be he’s home by now.) Sean continues. Brittany (who is his wife), Brittany and I drove out last night and are at his home working remotely. (So what that means his Britney’s his wife, they drove out from San Pedro to Phoenix where Holly and his wife, Anne, who we’ve heard from on the show, where they live, and Shawn and Brittany had been working remotely at their home waiting for Howie to be sent home. So he continues now. Sorry for all those side trips here.) We had to deliver a walker and had pretty high confidence he’d get out but we weren’t exactly sure. We’re so thankful that how he’s coming home. Praise God for keeping him alive and granting him healing. (Yes. Praise God.) Thank you for your prayers and support.

He says there were so many wonderful people on staff at the hospital that did great work, too. So that is a wonderful praise. And what’s really cool is Sean told me that when how he was leaving the hospital… Yes, yes, he how he has left. I remember this part of the communication from Sean. The people that worked with Howie all stood at the doors as he was leaving just greeting him and wishing him well and they really made him feel loved. And so I don’t know what hospital in Phoenix it was, but kudos to those guys.

Alright, now I also heard however, from my friend Mark on the same day that Sean wrote, his friend Keith wife, Marsha lost her battle with COVID. Remember that she’d been in the hospital with COVID for about a week when they put her on the ventilator. And Mark’s report says Hi Steve, Marcia passed away this morning. Around 1:02am There was too much damage to her lungs from the virus. Keith said to tell you thanks for the prayers. Please pray for the family at this time.

So we need to pray for them. The good news is that both Keith and Marcia do know the Lord. So that is definitely a great praise.

Now I have a report on Kathy, remember Kathy and Del. Kathi was at City of Hope today. She had blood work done. They gave her some cancer drugs. They’re adjusting her pain medications. Because remember, she has that cancer in her shoulder blade, scapula. They had some pretty bad snow last week, which put them behind schedule on her treatment, they’re supposed to go in once a week, but because of the snow, they couldn’t get down the hill. So that being a week behind kind of messes with their, their treatment, her shoulder, she still is having some pain. They think though, that it’s probably not the cancer that’s causing the pain. Specifically, the humerus which is the big bone, your upper bone in your arm, the top of that there’s a ball on it for the shoulder, in when Kathi moves her arm forward and backwards, she has pain and they’re thinking that there’s something on that that ball part on the humerus. So they’re going to have X rays next Monday to see what’s going on there. And then they’ll devise a treatment plan, probably surgery to take you know, there must be some roughness on that bone there, the round ball. So there’s that. Oh, her numbers, the cancer numbers are coming down, which is good. So we just want to pray that that will continue.

Now last week, we also prayed for longtime Lifespring family member Jeffrey, about his dad who’s in the hospital with pneumonia. Jeffrey reports that his dad is improving. The X rays are looking better. So that’s a praise.

And then last and definitely not least from my perspective, we did get the biopsy report on the lovely lady LeeAnn. It came back negative. So praise the Lord. We’re, especially me, especially I’m praising the Lord. I think I was probably worrying about it more than she was. This is a tremendous load off of my mind to be sure. Yes, we trust God. But I’ve lost some some very dear people in my life to cancer. And that’s just something that scares me. Sorry. from a human perspective, I just don’t know what I would do with that. Without her, and I pray that I never have to find out. These are tears of joy and happiness. Sorry.

Let’s pray.

Our heavenly Father. First, I want to thank you for your love and for your care. You are so very, very good. And you are our rock. Thank you for the negative biopsy report for LeeAnn. You know how much I rely on her. And I thank you for bringing her into my life and that she’s not gonna have to face cancer at this time. Obviously, we don’t know what’s ahead. And we know that with you, we can face anything. But thank you, Lord for this result now.

And God thank you for bringing Howie back home. This has been such a long road for him and for the family. And I know that they’re rejoicing that he’s out of the hospital. I pray that you will now continue his healing and bring back his strength to what it was before he got sick. Thank you for the medical staff and for the care they gave him bless each one of them, Lord.

And I pray for Keith and his family. Be with them, Lord and comfort them. I know they love Marsha, and they’ll miss her so very much. But knowing that she’s with you is a great help and I pray that they’ll feel your comforting presence as they begin to live life without her. Strengthen Keith, especially in this time when he’s alone. Help him Lord to feel you there by his side.

And we thank you for the good report on Jeffrey’s dad’s pneumonia. Please continue that healing and bring him back to complete health.

We pray for Kathi and thank you for the staff at COH and the great care they give her. Continue to give them wisdom as they continually have to adjust her meds and her treatment. Thank you for the tremendous witness she is. Through all these years of health challenges, she has always trusted you. Bless her and Del, Lord. You’ve not given them an easy life, and I know they have treasures waiting in Heaven. Be with them, and bless them. 

And lastly Lord, I thank you for the ls fam, and for hearing their prayers on  my behalf. I ask that you bless them, Lord. And where there are needs in their life, I ask that you meet those needs, whatever they are. Health, job, finance, relationship…whatever. You know each one, you love each one, and there is nothing that you cannot do. We are so thankful, and so mindful of your love and care.

I ask God that you would restore my strength and help me to do the things that you’ve called me to do, including this show. You know I want you to use me to bless the Lifespring family. So please show me how I can better manage my time so that I can accomplish the things that I need to do.

We worship You, Lord, we praise You. We thank you for the praises that we’ve heard today. And just ask one more time that you would be with those that are hurting.

I pray this in Jesus name, amen.

Sorry for the emotions guys. Got to be real with you.

That’s gonna do it for today’s show. I’ll be back tomorrow with a regular show, Lord willing, we’ll get back on schedule. And we’ll be back to the regular format as far as I know. I love you guys. Thank you for your prayers and for being there. My name is Steve Webb. Bye 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Support

Please remember that this is a listener supported show. Your support of any amount is needed and very much appreciated. Find out how by clicking here.

When you buy through links on this site, we may earn an affiliate commission, and you will earn our gratitude.