No one expected it when it happened.
The last time I saw David Burke, director of the theater department for 32 years, before his surgery was in class that Thursday. As we watched a movie for the class, he moved to the back of the room to sit on a sofa. This was abnormal behavior for him. He usually sat at the front of the class to experience the movie with us, and I thought he might be sick. Burke shared similar thoughts that day. He thought he was coming down with the flu, so when he got home, he took some flu medicine.
“I woke up Friday morning feeling great,” Burke said. “I thought, ‘oh, maybe it was just a weird bug or something.’”
There was no reason to assume it was anything other than a passing sickness. Not long prior to this, he passed a physical exam with flying colors. However, after lunch that Friday, his heart was pounding so fast that he couldn’t breathe.
He called his doctor. No answer. Thankfully, the doctor’s nurse called back and urged him to go to Convenient Care. Within ten minutes of being there, he saw the doctor. The nurse looked at him and said, “Unless you ran a marathon to get here, you need to go to the hospital right now.”
Burke was experiencing heart arrhythmia.
As he rode in the ambulance, with his heart vibrating in his chest, the lights in the ambulance went out. It was completely dark except for the faint light coming from the door windows. Burke shut his eyes and saw something he hadn’t seen in forty years.
In 1971, while Burke was a young man experimenting with drugs, he nearly committed suicide during a drug trip by jumping out of a window. His friend, who was in the room, saved him by grabbing his ankles as he jumped, but as Burke hung over the window-sill, he saw the essence of death coming for him. When he shut his eyes in the ambulance, he saw the same essence reaching out to grab him. Burke began to pray to God.
“I was giving everything to God,” Burke said. “I gave him myself, I gave him my family, I gave him my work, I gave him my church, I just started giving it all to him. I just said, ‘if this is my time, I trust You that You’re going to take care of whatever needs to be taken care of.’”
At that moment, a wave of peace came over Burke. It was a feeling of comfort and assurance, and soon after feeling this, the essence of death that had returned vanished from his sight. By the time the lights of the ambulance came back on, Burke knew he would be okay.
His heart wasn’t successfully regulated until Sunday morning. Then, a catheterization revealed something worse: 70% blockage in his widow-maker vein. He had to undergo open-heart surgery.
“It’s kind of a weird operation,” Burke said. “I didn’t realize everything that goes into it.”
I asked Burke what he meant by that. He explained that they cut you open, break your sternum, attach you to a machine that acts as an artificial heart, and cool your heart with a bag of ice in preparation to lift it out of the body. They then cut into the crease of your knee to get veins to use for the bypass.
“What?” I said. “That’s weird!”
Burke laughed and bent over in his chair. “I’ve got a nice scar under here as well,” he said as he gestured to the crease of his knee. He refers to the huge scar on his chest as “the zipper.” Lifting anything more than 10 pounds could damage the wiring that holds his sternum together.
His recovery was incredibly fast. Within five weeks, he was well enough to return to teaching class, and he has now started cardio-therapy.
“I think it is a great example of God’s abounding love and healing hand,” said Valerie Brewer, a student in Burke’s Films of Peter Weir class. “It’s great to have him back again.”
Burke himself has a new appreciation and thankfulness for life. Because of his many near-death experiences as a young man, he already had a thankfulness for life that surpassed most. He’s come close to death by nearly being shot by cops and paranoid druggies, and that helped him recognize and appreciate God’s grace in his life. But this time is different. Now Burke is more thankful for people, prayer and God’s grace than ever before.
“It has become knowledge,” Burke said. “Not just head knowledge, but heart knowledge.”
I smiled and jokingly said, “Literally.”
Burke’s face lit up with a wide smile as he chuckled, “Literally, it is. I’m thankful to have this heart.”
