Meet Chad

Chad Hymas

3 hours ago

19 years ago while in the hospital trying to breathe in my condition was like deep sea diving with a leaky air hose. Then insult is added to injury. They reverse the process, so they can vacuum out mucus from my lungs. They use a forced water vacuum system – sort of like the one used to clean your carpets.

The nurse pushes a water tube inside the breathing tube that is already in place. Without resistance, it slides down my throat and into a lung. The nurse turns on what feels like a fire hydrant and floods that lung with warm sterile water. She then reverses the process and sucks out the water along with all the junk that has collected in there over the last few hours. My eyes beg for mercy – to no avail. As I contemplate all my past sins in preparation for sure death from drowning, she floods the other lung.

Every three hours, I drown – literally, horribly, drown. Can you imagine a couple of gallons of water being poured into your lungs? It exceeds your worst nightmare. Repeated four to eight times a day, this procedure is as necessary as it is miserable. The pain and panic of drowning is not reduced by my numbness and paralysis. I feel every bit of it. I am positive I am going to die. I really would die if it took any longer than it does. I believe it. My body knows it.

My brother Brian is in the room one afternoon when the nurse instigates this procedure. As she floods the first lung, my body suddenly convulses and goes into involuntary spasms. It is exceptionally painful, even today, when these spasms happen. It is actually more like pressure – huge pressure – a monstrous vice clamping down on my chest. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. My body becomes an alien creature out of control.

After the procedure, I am traumatized, in residual pain and panic – harboring real fear for the next time this will happen – which will be in another three hours. Brian is as traumatized as I am – maybe more so. Witnessing a loved one’s pain is usually far more difficult than dealing with your own.

The procedure lasts less than a minute, but it is pure Hell.
Hell is sometimes essential to healing.

Brian goes to the nurses’ station and pleads with them to give me something to relieve my agony and panic. They gently explain to him that, although this procedure is an awful experience, it is too dangerous to drug me. I am barely alive, and they can’t risk taking me down any further. I am near the bottom already, and at the very bottom lies death.

Brian returns to my room, lays his head on my shoulder and weeps. If I could stroke my brother’s head or pat his arm to show how much I appreciate his being there for me, I would. My brother’s love and compassion calm me more than any medication could. ... See MoreSee Less

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Chad Hymas

1 day ago

The first police officer reaches under the one-ton bale of hay and attempts to lift it off of me. Of course, it doesn’t budge. He grabs his flashlight and shines it under the hay into my face. I blink. He yells over his shoulder to his partner, “He’s alive! He’s alive! Help me move the hay.”

Even working together two officers can’t move it – not a fraction of an inch. A thousand pounds each? Of course they can’t move it. “Cut the strings,” I whisper. My voice is weak. They can’t hear me.

I am not going to last much longer. If they will just cut the strings, the bale will break apart, and they can drag me out of here.
“Lift, Joe, lift!”
“Just cut the strings,” I mumble, “Please cut the strings.”
“C’mon harder.”
“It’s too heavy! We can’t lift it. We gotta go for help! Hang on Chad, we’ll be right back!”

I am alone again in the growing darkness. Wonderful painless, peaceful, irresistible sleep beckons. I struggle to remain conscious. One. Two. Three. Four… Where are they? How long does it take for police, fire, ambulance, to arrive? Where is the Coast Guard? Where are the Marines?Where is that one old farmer with enough common sense to just cut the strings?

The desert air grows chilly as the sky darkens. I grow weaker. Dizziness overcomes me and I begin to drift off into that gray space somewhere between the living and the dead.

Help finally arrives. One of the police officers bends down so I can see his face. “Hold on! A fire engine is here. There are six men aboard.”
I do the math. Two big, strong cops and six burly firemen must move a ton of dead weight off me. That’s two hundred forty five pounds each. No way can they possibly do that – but somehow, miraculously, they do. A couple of neighbors who have arrived at the scene stand by to catch me. They lower my limp body to the ground where I lie in a broken heap.

Why didn’t they cut the strings? They could have saved a long, tortured hour. How heavy is hay? A piece of hay is about the weight of a feather. How many pieces of hay does it take to make two thousand pounds? Lots. That package of sixteen bazillion individual pieces of hay wrapped in a gigantic bundle is a crushing weight. But separated, it would have been nothing.

I feel bad saying this, because it makes me sound ungrateful – and I am very grateful to the guys who saved my life that night – but there is a point to be made here, isn’t there?
Is it too big?
Is it overwhelming?

Cut the strings – just cut the strings!

Are you buried under crushing burdens? Projects that are too huge? Schedules that are too complicated? Maybe you are trying to do too much at once – trying to do everything instead of doing something.

Cut the strings and cut yourself free. Do one thing at a time – and get it DOne. Move “out of the strain of the doing into the peace of the done.” ... See MoreSee Less

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