Ralph's encounter with the "Widow Maker"

Setting the Stage for the Encounter

Approximately one week before my birthday celebration, I enjoyed a lunch date with my friends and fellow professors at the College where I work. We had a great meal and shared enjoyable conversation. On my birthday, my son, Thomas and I went for a drive and shared a great lunch of Peking Duck down in Maryland.

On my birthday itself, our energy level was a bit low. One factor was that my wife of thirty one years had died just over one year ago. The restaurant where we went for the Peking Duck was the one where my wife, Thomas and I had shared many meals in the past. Although we enjoyed the Duck, Thomas and I felt the loss of Cecilia.

I was also at a crossroads in my life as to the goals that I wanted to pursue. A contrast[i] had been developing at the college where I am the chairperson of the business department, as well as, teach courses in psychology, growth and development, and ethics and the law. The administrative part of my job was “justifying” the quality of the department via paperwork. I knew clearly that spending a great deal of time on “justifying paper work,” was not my area of joy. There were other administrative changes that were being implemented that I also did not like. I knew that my mission is to help people move past obstacles, expand and live life with joy. The path to achieve my mission was not clear, however. This lack of clarity indicated that the contrast that I was experiencing, while an intense source of stress, was not sufficient yet to make me embark on my new path.


The Encounter

Two days after my birthday, the “Widow Maker” invaded my space. I say invaded but I wonder how I attracted the “Widow Maker” into my life. My son and I were at an animated movie. I started getting pain and couldn’t get comfortable in the theater. I didn’t want to recognize the “Widow Maker”. I chose not to feed the negative emotions of fear or the negative consequence of some heart attacks, namely death. After arriving home, I took some herbal foods that I knew were targeted for the heart and began feeling better. I began visualizing my heart and body as healthy and strong. I went to sleep. When I awoke, the pains returned, I was concerned but uncertain what to do. I am not a fan of western medicine. The thought of going to the hospital was not prominent in my mind. I still believed my heart and body were healthy and strong, yet the pain was indicating something needed attention. On a feeling level, I was prompted to call my friend Magdy, who is a doctor. I woke him up early on a Sunday morning and described the pain. He told me to go to the hospital to be evaluated. He knew the “Widow Maker” had arrived.

Being who I am, I chose not to call the ambulance and go to the ER of one of the three nearest hospitals to my home. I chose to go to a Community Hospital on the south shore of Long Island which is approximately thirteen miles from my home (the two closest hospitals were less than ¼ mile from the house ~ the third hospital was within a few miles). Craziness? Perhaps. I chose to go to the Community Hospital for two reasons, number one, I trusted Dr. Magdy and knew that he would help me obtain the care that I needed. Second, I had the faith that I would be okay and that the staff at the Community hospital would provide the best and most caring interventions that I needed. We had prior experience at the hospital when my wife had been sick.

For my son, it was the third time we had to go to the Emergency room of this hospital, twice for my wife and now for me. The second trip to the hospital ER with my wife was a horror story. She was very sick and died in the hospital. Despite whatever worries that he might have felt, Tom remained positive and quickly got me to the Emergency Room. The potential for a multiplication of negative energy, fear, grief, depression were not given space to grow by neither Thomas nor myself. Both Thomas and I remained positive despite the seriousness of what I was experiencing, and the memories of Cecilia’s last trip to the ER.

Once at the hospital, the ER team quickly worked on me with a variety of tests. Dr. R., a cardiologist, a colleague of Dr. Magdy, was called. The staff in the ER knew the “Widow Maker” was in my body. Time was now a critical factor. An interventionist doctor was called. The interventionist and his assistant (a nurse practitioner), coordinated with Dr. R. and the ER staff, but they knew the clock was running. They were concerned about the life threatening dimension and the possible increase of damage to the heart muscles. Two arteries were blocked, one of whom was the “Widow Maker”. The blocked main artery earned the name the “Widow Maker” because it is a main artery and when it is blocked it usually takes the life of the person while they sleep. The doctors were also concerned by the delay of my getting to the hospital, approximately 15 hours from the time the “Widow Maker” arrived and started to present pain. The Teams’ goal now was to unblock the arteries and insert two stents. Once the plan was established, we were rolling. As the Interventionist wound the tube through my arteries and into my heart, I was talking with him and we were sharing stories, while he watched the progress of the tube that he inserted on a large LCD monitor.


Summary:
The Good news: the arteries were now open and the stents are in place.


The 50/50 news: Damage may have been done to the heart muscles. It will take 6 weeks to 6 months before they know the degree of recovery.


Prognosis: We work on healing and we wait.


Plan:
· Use common sense with diet
· Exercise
· Allow the heart to recover from the shock of the attack ~ apparently the shock was a major one and the heart slowly recovers
· Cardio Rehab where a doctor, nurses, and a therapist teach me exercises to help my heart recover and stay healthy.


Critical time periods:
· 1st outpatient checkup, ten days after discharge
· First six weeks after initial checkup
· First six months after initial checkup


Reflection:

My dance with the “Widow Maker” was brief. I will not ask the “Widow Maker” for a second dance. The time from the 19th of September until now, 18 days later, was an incredible journey. The long and short of it is that I could have passed from the physical/spiritual dimension to the totally spiritual dimension about 18 days ago.

I am grateful to my son Thomas, for giving so much of himself during this crazy adventure. I am grateful for the support of all my family and friends who expressed their concern and prayed for me. I am grateful for my friend Dr. Magdy, Dr. R., the interventionist and his team, and all the doctors, nurses and the support team at the community hospital for helping me through this difficult time. I am grateful for Al & Jenny taking the time from their hectic schedules to bring me Malaysian food with spicy sauce while I was in the monitoring unit. The laughter and stories that Tom, Al & Jenny and I shared that night were very healing. The food and spices were also great.

Now my task is to learn from my encounter with the “Widow Maker” how to focus on achieving my own desires and joy, as well as is to help people move past their obstacles, expand and live life with joy.

I will pursue my desires in many ways, through my blog, through my website (hopefully by end of year), by writing and presenting workshops on emotional energy on the different levels that I’ve experienced it. For sure, the reason I survived my dance with the “Widow Maker” had to do with my positive emotional energy, focusing on the positive dimensions of a healthy body as opposed to the negative energy possibilities. I was able to link with the creativity of the spiritual emotional energy dimension to create a continuation of my experience in the physical dimension. I also know that I have much to do with my time on this planet. The medical crisis intervention done by the professionals dedicated to overcoming medical problems on a physical level was also a significant factor during this crisis. I will talk more about emotional energy on different levels and how to use this energy in a positive manner in future blogs.
As I continue my healing journey I will update this blog.



In the above article I am describing my own experience. I am not prescribing my actions to anyone else. The art of working with positive emotional energy involves seeing what is not physically seeable and requires the self to take full responsibility for their life and their actions.

I hope you enjoyed the article and welcome comments or questions that you might have.


© Ralph M. Ferraro 2009

[i] Contrast is explained in the works by Hicks~Abraham and their Law of Attraction books and workshops. Anytime we experience an event, the event helps us to develop a contrast. The Contrast is either liking where we are and what we are doing or not liking where we are and what we are doing. Our liking or disliking where we are or what we are doing is part of our emotional guidance system to help us determine whether we are in alignment with ourselves and in alignment with Source Energy or not. When we align with our self and with Source emotional energy, we experience the Joy of being alive and fully present to our experience.