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Dead
Man Walking
By Bradley fralick, DMD
Dead man walking here! Some people I'm sure don't like
hearing that but only those unfortunates to be on death
row. And if you were on death row it would be unlikely
you're reading this.
One day, when I was just nonchalantly riding an inner
tube behind a ski boat with my son in my lap, on Lake
Clementine near Auburn, California, we were hit straight
on by another ski boat going the wrong direction on that
lake. I'm alive to write this now, but when the paramedic
pulled me out of the water he took my pulse and checked
for breathing. He wrote in the official report that I
wasn't breathing and had no pulse.
Maybe I wasn't breathing; I probably wasn't. Why else why
did they give me a tracheotomy, or "trache," as
other traumatic brain injury (TBI) survivors often call
these neat little scars we all have on our throats just
where the trachea is. Well, you don't have to be a TBI
survivor to have had a trache scar. But, getting back to
this dead man walking thing. I think that for a few
seconds at least, I was actually dead.
This is an odd theory, but a theory is all it is. It's
been my contention that I really was dead. It's just that
nobody could tell, and I was up walking around and
everything. I didn't seem dead, didn't look dead. But how
can you tell?
Maybe you could tell by the smell. However, have you ever
smelled a dead person, walking around? I've smelled it
when I was a resident working in the oral pathology
clinic at UCSF dental school. There, we would see many
HIV positive patients, with such ailments as sarcoma
this, or carcinoma that. In other words many of them were
dying of cancer.
I think it's been my spirit all along, the Holy Spirit
probably, that's been keeping me alive for some unknown
reason. Yes, I believe God for whatever reason kept me
from getting killed in that spectacular collision.
I also think it was the spirit, either my own indomitable
spirit or the spirit of God, which woke me back up to go
on with the rest of my life even though the Lord knew I
wouldn't enjoy too much living in this body having a head
that was broken. But He made sure somehow that I would
know He had some hidden agenda for me.
I still have big plans for the future, but I doubt if
I'll ever be in a situation again where my nose can
decipher the walking dead. Now I know that there are all
kinds of different ways to die. A person can be dead
emotionally, or morally. Sometimes it takes a
catastrophic event like my crash on the lake to see how
to be more alive.
So, my message to you: don't wait for the crash, no
matter what form it takes. Live today, and appreciate
what you have. Wake up to the spiritual self within
you. Don't be a dead man walking.
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