My wife, Sahar, and I were married in August of 2003. We had a beautiful marriage and I was so grateful for my loving, doting and sweet wife. After a difficult first marriage and breakup, Sahar was like a dream come true.
Six months after we were married, in March of 2004, I told Sahar that I was behind at work. I would need to put in some overtime on Saturday. As I worked that day, I was using a drill and it suddenly twisted oddly, placing pressure on my shoulder. My shoulder immediately began to hurt. I used the drill all the time, so I didn’t think anything of it. I thought the strange bucking of the drill was just a fluke thing. I kept working, hoping the pain would subside. As I kept working, the drill twisted oddly again, causing my shoulder to hurt even more.
I was supposed to work for half a day but at ten thirty my pain was becoming an issue. I decided to go home, not aggravate my injury further. My boss agreed.
When I arrived home, my wife was surprised I was back so soon. I told her what had happened. She put some ointment on my injured shoulder to bring me some relief. The concoctions did seem to help me feel better.
That evening my sister, Mariam, and her husband came for a visit. They learned about my injury. Being born again Christians, they both told me that they would go home and pray for me. Although I had gone to church as a child and young man in Syria, a traditional Orthodox church, I had never attended church in Canada and I was not a believer.
The next morning, on Sunday, I was in so much pain. The clinics were all closed, so I asked Sahar to take me to Rocky View Hospital, to emergency. I knew I needed to be seen by a doctor.
When we arrived, I was taken to a room where we waited for the doctor to come.
The doctor entered, a woman. She looked at me, her eyes narrowed critically and she said, “What are you doing here?”
“Excuse me?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I injured my shoulder at work yesterday and I’m here to get an X-ray, find out what’s wrong.”
She said, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You need to go home. You’re trying to take advantage of WCB.”
WCB is the province of Alberta’s Workers Compensation Board. When there is a work injury, you can receive a doctor’s letter, submit it to this board and you will receive money to compensate for time off while healing.
“Excuse me, Doctor. I’m here. I injured myself at work. I would have gone to my family doctor, but all the clinics are closed today. That’s why we came here. I just need an X-ray because I am in so much pain, I can hardly breathe sometimes.”
“Okay. I’ll send you for an X-ray, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you.”
She sent me for that scan. The results eventually came back.
The doctor entered the room and showed us the results. Pointing to the X-ray image, she said, “See? There’s nothing wrong with your shoulder.”
“Really?” I was shocked because I was still in so much pain. I asked, “Can you give me some pain killers for the pain?”
She said, “No. There’s nothing wrong with you. I’m not going to give you anything.”
This doctor was so vicious and unkind. We went home and I was in so much agony. I couldn’t even move my arm anymore; there was so much pain.
On Monday morning, I called in to work to tell the manager my situation. He suggested that I take the day off and go see my own doctor. My family doctor confirmed that I had injured myself. He suggested that I stay home and relax for a few weeks first. Then, after I’d healed a bit more, he would schedule a round of scans.
My agony just kept increasing. I couldn’t go up the stairs anymore without aggravating the pain. Sahar made up a bed for me on the main floor on the couch. We managed to get some pain killers from a friend who was a doctor. That helped to a degree.
We were only married for six months. Sahar was looking after me, bathing me, brought me a container for peeing into and taking care of all my needs. She was being a queen in my life, so giving and loving. Sahar was the perfect wife and I treasured her.
Over a month passed as I was healing. My sister, Mariam, came over to see me. She said, “I knew you were injured but I didn’t expect you to be that bad.”
“Well, it’s been very bad.”
She asked, “Can I pray for you?”
“You know, at this point, anything right now will help.” I was crying from how painful my shoulder was.
Mariam prepared some oil, warming it up a bit. She said, “I’m going to anoint you with this oil and pray for you.” While she was praying, she leaned down and whispered in my ear. “You know what, Jack, it’s much easier if you ask God to heal you.”
At that precise moment, I remembered a promise I had made to God about a year before. After my first wife, our difficult marriage, our divorce and my following depression, having to share custody of our son, I had asked God for something. Not that I really believed in him, but my sister challenged me a year earlier. So, I tested God with a request. I had prayed that if he would give me a good wife, I would give my heart to him.
Now, while Mariam was praying for me, that promise came rushing back. I had not followed through with that promise. I had not given my heart to the Lord, even though he had given me the most amazing and loving wife.
The last month and a half of my injury time flashed through my mind in an instant. Sahar, my new wife, had been taking such good care of me. She was almost like a slave in the way she was tending to my needs. We had six months of a beautiful start to our marriage. She was the perfect wife and now this, weeks of her tenderly taking care of me. I could feel how much she loved and cared for me. I started to cry.
My sister asked, “Why are you crying?”
I told her about my prayer to God and how he had answered me. “I just remembered it all now.”
Mariam said, “This is amazing. God answered your prayer.”
“Yes. I am ready right now to give my life to Jesus. I made this promise and God gave me the most wonderful wife, everything I wanted.”
“Okay. That’s amazing. Can I call my pastor to come and talk with you?”
“Yes.”
So, the pastor came. He was an Egyptian pastor in an Arabic church. He led me in a prayer to receive Jesus. Sahar also received Jesus as her Savior. We were both starting a new adventure together.
He asked me, “Have you ever read the Bible?”
“No. I’ve never read it. My family back home had one, but it was only collecting dust.”
“I’m going to give you a gift. Here’s a Bible, read it. I’m going to come tomorrow and you can ask me questions. Ask me as many questions as you want.”
For about two months, he came every day to speak with me and answer my questions. During this time, my shoulder started to get better. Sahar and I began to learn more about Christianity.
Around this time, I suggested, since my shoulder was getting better, that I should sleep upstairs with her again. She agreed and she prepared our bed in our room.
I was upstairs with her and realized I’d forgotten my pills downstairs. I told her I’d go get them. As I was descending, on the third last stair, it felt like someone grabbed my leg out from under me and I fell hard on my hip. Since my arm was still tender, I didn’t grab onto the railing and I fell hard on the same side. All my weight went down on my hip.
Sahar came rushing and asked what had happened. I didn’t want her to worry so I just got up and said I’ll be fine. I felt a bit of pain but I thought it would go away in time,
The next morning, I couldn’t walk anymore. I was in too much pain. But I had to get back to work already. I arrived limping and my boss asked me what was wrong with me. I told him about my fall on the stairs.
He laughed and couldn’t believe it. “First your shoulder and then your leg. This is crazy! Just go home. When you get better, come back.”
At home, my pain increased more. I couldn’t do the stairs anymore, so Sahar prepared the sofa as a bed for me again. The pain in my leg was far worse than the pain I’d had in my shoulder. It was so painful, it was unbelievable.
My ex-wife came to pick up our son Alex for her week of taking care of him. She saw how much pain I was in and asked why I didn’t go to the hospital, get an X-ray.
I told her about my last encounter with a doctor at the hospital. I was sure they would treat me the same way and I didn’t see the point of going.
She said, “You know, if you call for an ambulance, they will have to admit you.”
So, I did that. I called for an ambulance. They took me to Rocky View Hospital again. We were placed in a room in the emergency area. When the doctor entered, I was devastated. It was the same woman doctor again. The one who had treated me so viciously before.
She said, “What are you doing here?”
“I just fell in my house and injured myself. I can hardly walk and that’s why I’m here.”
“I told you. You are trying to abuse WCB. You just want to go back to WCB. I’m going to discharge you and send you home because there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Please, can you do some X-rays to see if there’s anything wrong. I’m in a lot of pain.”
“No. There’s nothing wrong with you. You are going home. I’ll go do the paperwork. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
When the doctor left, I turned to Sahar and said, “Can you close the door.” It was a very small emergency room, but it did have a door.
She did that, sat down beside me and I said, “We need to pray.”
This was the first time I had prayed as a Christian. “God, I don’t know what’s going on. I know I gave you my heart and my life, but what’s going on? Why are you doing this to me? I asked you to be with me but you’re not showing up. How come? What’s going on? I’m asking and begging you to help me right now.”
We were both crying over the situation. Our tears dried up, the door opened and a doctor entered. But it was a different doctor.
This was another woman doctor, but she had a big smile on her face. “Hi. I’m doctor Tammy. I’m here to admit you to the hospital.”
“What? Doctor, what’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“What about the other doctor?”
“Don’t worry about her.”
“Okay.”
They admitted me to a room. A new doctor, a male doctor, came into the room and arranged for X-rays, a CT scan on my hip. I asked him to also do a CT scan on my shoulder. I explained what happened to my shoulder. I wanted them to check to make sure it was okay.
The scans showed that I had dislocated my hip and broken my collar bone. I was shocked that the broken collar bone had not shown up on that first X-ray the initial doctor had ordered months ago. I suffered so much because of that. The new doctor also took blood samples to make sure everything was okay.
An hour later the male doctor showed up, I forget his name. “We tested your blood and we saw something unusual in the results. I want to be clear with you. This is very rare; we haven’t seen this show up in a blood sample before. Just to be sure, we’re going to take another blood sample. If the results come back positive, you’ll see me tomorrow. If it’s not positive, I won’t be back and everything is good.”
“Okay. Should I be worried about this?”
“Don’t worry about this now. Let’s wait until tomorrow.”
The next day, the doctor entered my room and said, “Jacob.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’m here.”
“That’s not good.”
“No, it’s not. But you are lucky.”
“Why am I lucky?”
“You came to the hospital at the perfect time.”
“Why?”
“We found a virus in your bloodstream. We haven’t seen this virus in Canada for the last one hundred years. I’ve studied it in university when I did my training, but I’ve never actually seen the virus. It’s amazing to have you here. The media would like to talk to you about it.”
I said, “I don’t want to talk to the media about it. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want the cure.”
The doctor said, “You came at the perfect time. If you had not come when you did, this virus would have eaten your heart muscle and it would eventually have ended in you having a heart attack, maybe a month or two down the road. Often this virus is not caught in time. People that have this will die of a heart attack and no will realize what truly was the cause. Only a blood test reveals this virus at work.”
“So, what are you going to do about this?”
“We are going to hook you up with IV’s and run strong antibiotics through your blood stream for the next fifteen days to kill this virus.”
So, that’s what they did for me.
One day I asked a nurse, “There were a few doctors that attended me in Emergency. The second doctor that saw me, Doctor Tammy, where is she?”
The nurse said, “Who?”
“Doctor Tammy.”
“We don’t have anyone by that name.”
“What? She came into my room, she had a ponytail and a smiling face. She introduced herself as Doctor Tammy.”
The nurse looked confused, shook her head and said, “We don’t have any doctor by that name.”
“How did I get admitted?”
“I don’t know. We just received the paperwork ready for you to be admitted.”
The pastor came to see us and we told him about the strange encounter with Doctor Tammy, a doctor that did not exist.
He said, “You know what? Jack, God just sent you an angel.”
“Wow. And you know that the admittance form didn’t have any doctor signature on it. I asked the nurse and she said there was no doctor’s signature. They just admitted me based on that form.”
This information was very shocking for me. As I was being treated with antibiotics, I thought back over everything that had happened to me. God began to show me how he was involved in my life and that he was caring for me.
My first injury and intense pain drove me to seek help and I went to the hospital. The devil, speaking through that first doctor, told me to go home, that there was nothing wrong with me.
Weeks later, God allowed another injury, sending me back to the hospital. He knew about this deadly virus and wanted me to get help. Going back to the hospital again, the same doctor told me to go home, that nothing was wrong with me. The devil was intent on trying to kill me.
God intervened, sent an angel, Doctor Tammy, to admit me to the hospital. Blood work was done and the deadly virus was found. God sent help and spared my life.
My wife and I were the only two who saw Doctor Tammy. If it had just been me, I may have doubted that it had actually happened. But Sahar saw Doctor Tammy too. There were two witnesses to this amazing event.
At that moment, as I realized what had happened, I said to God, “From this moment on, I’m giving you my life, I’m going to live for you, I’m going to glorify your name. I have a beautiful wife, you spared my life and everything’s going amazing. Thank you, God.”
Submitted by: Jack Nachef
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Once we get to Heaven and God shows us a reel of our life, we will discover how many times we were rescued, protected or redirected by supernatural means. What a divine privilege it is that, during our time on earth, God gives us snapshots into the supernatural realm, unusual happenings that announce that Heaven is present and involved in our lives.
For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
Psalm 91:11
If you would like to share a personal story of supernatural protection or angelic activity in your history, please reach out. Private message me on Facebook messenger or email me and I will explain the details. I would love to share your testimony on my blog as an encouragement to others. As it says in Hebrews 3:13 – Encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today’.
Also, you are welcome to share this story with your friends and family, or with anyone who needs some encouragement.
