My husband, Jonathan, relays to me that I told him my heart was racing. He told me to just go lie down on the bed, and he would come check on me after getting the baby. When he checked my heart I had no heart rate, and I wasn’t breathing on my own. He thought maybe I was having a seizure. He didn’t know exactly what was going because I’d had a C-Section, so he thought maybe it was due to that. He immediately took me off the bed onto the floor and called 911 while beginning to perform CPR.
When the Paramedics arrived, they took me into the living room and began working on me. They couldn't figure out what was going on. They just knew I was clinically dead for almost twenty minutes because I had no heartbeat and no oxygen flowing on my own. They began to shock me in attempt to restart my heart. They did that four times with no change at all. During that time Jonathan was feeling helpless, not knowing what to do. He felt like he should go get his Bible and anointing oil and pray over me before they did anything else. So he laid the Bible on my feet and prayed a simple prayer, “God, Your word is life. We speak life into Meredith. Your word can break the chains that the enemy is trying to bind her with.” The very next time the Paramedics shocked me they got a heartbeat.
There was a tear in the main artery of my heart, which had caused my blood to clot, causing a massive heart attack. My family was told that if I did survive, which was very unlikely, I would have severe brain damage, or at worst, be brain dead. My family and our church denomination began to pray. We’ve had reports of people praying for me from all continents except Antarctica.
The second day after the heart attack, my husband and my mom drove home from the hospital to get some clothes. On the way home, the Lord gave my husband a Bible verse. It says, "Come and let us return unto the Lord, for He has torn but He will heal us. He has smitten, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us. And on the third day He will raise us up.” (Hosea 6:1-2) My husband came in the afternoon of that second day and said, “I need you to squeeze my hands.” He then came to my side, and I squeezed his hand. Then he went to my feet and he squeezed my feet and said, “Can you feel this?” and I would flicker my eyes a little bit. That was the first sign of any response. Of course I was on a ventilator and had a feeding tube, so I was unable to speak.
On the third day they planned to remove the feeding tube and take me off the ventilator and some of the medications. They told my family, “She won’t be able to speak at first. It might by up to seventy-two hours, if she speaks at all, because of the severe brain damage.” As soon as the nurse took the ventilator tube out of my throat I said, “Thank you so much for taking that tube out of my throat.” Everybody was astonished. The Neurologist came in and said, “I don’t know what has happened, but she does not seem to have any brain damage.” In fact, he released me on the fourth day.
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