LETHAL INJECTION

A True Personal Story

LETHAL INJECTION

In 1992 we were living the dream on our picturesque forty acre ‘ranch’ near the charming and historical town of Snohomish, Washington. We had two tiny tykes at the time (Joshua and Joel), one dog, two cats, the occasional coyote and of course, a collection of horses. One day we found a darling little kitty abandoned at a rest stop on the freeway. In its own kitty language it was begging us for a home, so we adopted it and dubbed the new kitty ‘Rest Stop’. It seemed that our life would never be complete without our beloved animal friends, so we almost always had an abundance of horses, cats and dogs. Amazingly, considering the complex dynamics of the various inter-species relationships we had going on, we generally got along just fine.

Most of our property was in pasture, much to the delight of our horses. The view from our kitchen windows was a pleasant pastoral mini valley, decorated, of course, with our beautiful horses. One downside to all that grass was that if one was prone to allergies, it wouldn’t be a hayride (sorry for being a bit corny). As Julie (my beloved wife) seemed to be particularly susceptible to such issues, she was anxious to find a solution to her constant allergic maladies.

After dealing with these challenges for years, she finally found a doctor that claimed to have a protocol to mitigate the allergy mallergy (my newly invented word). How totally outta-sight was that! No more sniffles. No more congested days. What a relief this was going to be! This was like, totally rad. When the day came for her appointment, with great eagerness, excitement and anticipation, she made her way to the clinic. The protocol involved injecting her with a mild dose of ten of the most likely allergenic substances. Five would be injected on the inside of each arm.

When she came home from the clinic she showed me her arms. Several of the injection sites had swelling while the others did not. Those swollen injection sites strongly suggested what she was allergic to, primarily certain grasses. Once she met with the doctor to review her results, as part of the treatment plan, she was provided with four vials of the specific immunotherapy mix that was customized for her. Although I’m sure she was already knowledgeable, she was instructed as to how to self-inject the serums.

With cautious excitement, she then began the weekly scheduled self-injections. It soon became apparent that this system actually worked. And it worked quite well. Bravo for that! She was happy. I was happy that she was happy. She was happy that I was happy that she was happy. And so on, and so on. In fact, she was so happy with the results that, because I had a few allergic symptoms as well, she suggested that I might want to have a go at it. I wasn’t so sure about that.

Finally, I relented and acquiesced to the vastly superior wisdom of my wife. She’s quite together at most health-related issues, so along with it I went. Just as she had done, I scheduled an appointment at the clinic, and at my appointment was given the same ten injection protocol that Julie received. Afterwards, I studied each of my arms with great fascination. Sure enough, several injection sites displayed swollenness, a bit like mosquito bites, indicating that I indeed had some allergies. Like Julie, these also included certain grasses, which grew all around us. Literally enveloping us. In fact, the bales of hay I often handled in the barn were likely culpable.

We often had the hay cut from the grass on our own property. Once it was mature enough to cut, the farmer would bring his mower and tractor in and mow it. It was quite entertaining to watch. Then after a couple days, after it had a chance to dry, he would come back with his tractor and a bailing machine and, of course, bail the hay. It felt pretty cool being able to grow our own hay. We felt like real ranchers. Sort of. Admittedly, we weren’t cowboyish enough to wear cowboy hats or cowboy boots. But still.

The next task was to gather up all the bales of hay, likely over a thousand bales, and haul them to the barn. All of this had to happen before the famous western Washington rain came, which usually meant you had a weather window of less than a week. The bales weren’t remarkedly heavy, but nevertheless it was a substantial amount of work. We would stack them nearly to the roof of the barn, maybe fifteen bales high. It was muscle-building exercise to carry the bales up each step of the previously laid bales. No wonder I became such a spectacular specimen of manhood (if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge for you).

Now back to my highly compelling allergy story. The doctor prescribed me a similar four-vial set which contained my unique customized immunotherapies. The reason for four vials is that each vial is consecutively stronger. In other words, you start with vial #1 and after your body has built up a certain level of immunity, you move on to the vial #2, which is ten times stronger than the vial #1. The next one is again, ten times stronger. The last one (vial #4) is essentially one thousand times stronger than the first one in the set. All very exciting stuff. Especially for me, being the highly evolved math nut that I am.

Because I couldn’t bring myself to self-inject, Julie was happy to do it for me, becoming my beautiful personal nurse. This then became a wacky, weird, wonderful, weekly ritual for us. Something exciting to look forward to each week. So romantic too. But for some reason one week we spaced out and missed our weekly injection. This was a bit of a concern to us as it is supposed to be administered weekly, or your body might have more of a reaction to the injection. Not to worry though. Shouldn’t be a problem. It was only one extra week after all. I mean we’re healthy, tough people. Really cool and good-looking too.

Julie deftly took care of her self-injection and then grabbed the vial from my kit. Just like a well-trained doctor, she took my left arm and administered my shot. Even though we were a week late, I was happy that we were getting it taken care of. It was really nice to know that the allergy immunotherapy was working really well.

But…

I thought I felt a slight flicker in my eye. Humm. Interesting. Just the tiniest little flicker. What was that? Then, after a few moments, it seemed as though I felt a subtle throbbing in my head. Subtle, but I didn’t think I was imagining things. Maybe I was. I wasn’t sure. Again, interesting. What the heck? What was happening here? But then the slight flickers and subtle throbbing started to slowly evolve into a plethora of strange bodily manifestations. Now I knew I wasn’t imagining things! What the heck was going on? Weird things were happening to my body, and it was starting to escalate. By the minute. This was too strange for words. To be honest, it was starting to get a bit scary. And things didn’t get better. They got worse.

By now it felt like my eyes were getting ready to explode out of their sockets. My heart was pounding harder than I had ever recall experiencing before, conjuring images of a bass drum gone wild. It was quickly becoming a frenzy. Julie grabbed the case of my immunotherapy vials and took a look. “Oh no!” she yelled. “I took the wrong vial. I took the one from the wrong end; the strongest one!” Which, as I previously mentioned, was a thousand times stronger than the one I was supposed to take. A thousand times stronger. On top of that we were a week late. That makes it like, two thousand times stronger!

Oh boy. This was crazy! What should we do? My bodily reactions were growing stronger by the second. It felt like a volcano was erupting in my body. Panic was attempting to flood my mind. This was an emergency! An honest-to-goodness true-life EMERGENCY!! This was totally new territory for us. I felt like I was heading for delirium or a convulsive seizure. Like my body might just shut down. Not exactly the morning of peace and tranquility I had in mind.

Quick to judge the situation, Julie decided to inject me again. This time not a careful, thoughtful injection, but a strong forceful plunge with the syringe. This time in my thigh, with Epinephrine. “What are you doing?” I yelled. “This should help,” she answered without much confidence in her voice. In reading her facial expressions I could tell she was as near panic as I was. What now? Do we call an ambulance? What should we do?

We were about to call 911, but as the minutes ticked by it seemed as though the multiple symptoms might possibly be leveling off. Possibly. My head was still throbbing to no end. My heart was still about to burst out of my chest. But at least it didn’t appear to be getting worse. In fact, maybe, just maybe, things were starting to settle down a bit. It was hard to tell. I was hopeful…

Fast forward to the next day… I looked as though I had been hit by a truck. My face was totally bloated out and discolored with a variety of bruises. My body couldn’t figure out what was going on. Extremely wasted feeling. But the good news was that I was alive!! I was pretty happy about that. Who wouldn’t be? I came to the highly-evolved decision that it was probably not a good idea to take your immunotherapy at 1000 times the scheduled dose, especially a week late. I also decided that I had enough of this type of ‘therapy’. I’ll be fine with some sniffles from time to time. Thank you, Lord, for protecting me once again. Sorry to keep your angels so busy.

Critically reviewing this situation (hindsight is so perfect, isn’t it?), it’s probably a good idea to look to the Lord for answers. You know, ‘what would Jesus do?’ Is there a scripture that would be relevant to this situation? There ususally is. What comes to my mind is Mark 16:18, “if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them…” We should have decreed this over my body. Maybe we did, but if so I don’t remember. Although this wasn’t technically drinking something, it was still poison, and possibly deadly, in the dosage I took. I believe that we have the authority to speak these words to our body and expect to be protected. Next time I get injected with immunotherapy at 1000 times the prescribed amount I’ll try to remember this scripture.

Hey, if you enjoyed this story, even a tiny bit, it would be totally outta-sight if you would push the ‘like’ button. I get $1000 for every ‘like’. Not really. Just kidding (as I often do). Also, I would be honored if you would subscribe for more free weekly stories. Keep a look out for next week’s edge-of-your-seat story, ‘MY LIFE AS A THIEF’. Thank you and may God bless your day!

Photo by Ian Talmacs on Unsplash