My wife succeeded in getting me to a local emergency room at Springhill Memorial Hospital. As she was talking to the receptionist, I remember sitting in pain when another, stronger twirk struck again. I remember saying loudly, “Someone, come get me,” and had a vague awareness of being taken from the waiting room into a hospital examination area.

Suddenly, I was seeing angels. Everything was white, white as cotton. I saw white steps, and I saw myself walking up those steps. As I was walking up those white steps, I began seeing angels. There were four of them. They seemed to be flying; I was walking. Two of the angels flew to my left side and two to my right. Gently, they began pushing me back down the steps.

I heard someone say, “He’s back.” Then the nurses were telling me, “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

Some member of the hospital staff told me that my pain had been caused by a-fib. The stated diagnosis the evening I arrived there was heart attack with double pneumonia.

For two months I was at Springhill Memorial, sedated and on a ventilator. I was pretty much paralyzed for two months. While there, I had a tracheotomy and was hooked to a ventilator…just lying there, pretty much paralyzed. I was just lying there and developed bed sores. And, I had a seizure. Later, some of the people there told me they thought that I was leaving, a gentler word they used for dying.

I was transferred from Mobile, Alabama to a hospital in nearby Pensacola, Florida. I was put on dialysis and told by a doctor there that I could possibly be on dialysis for the rest of my life. I was there for two months and was given fourteen pills every day, day and night, waking me up. After about five sessions of dialysis, the doctor told me that my kidney was doing real good. After a month and a half, I needed no more dialysis.

I came home to Mobile from Pensacola weighing only 103 pounds. After being home maybe a week, I fell into another seizure and was taken to the Mobile Infirmary. I was there another two months. While there, I had a mild stroke.

That being said, I’m a very blessed person. On my own, I’ve modified my diet. I work hard. And, I thank God every day. Now, I’m doing great.

I have continued to remember being on the white stairs with angels. I didn’t feel anything; they were just there.

I asked the doctors how long they worked on me when I had lost consciousness in the emergency waiting room. I was told that one lady was doing compressions for about seven minutes. She gave up, and the guy next to her stepped in. He started pumping. I didn’t feel it because I was out—pretty much gone, seeing the light and the angels. I was looking at the angels coming down, at the whiteness, at myself walking up those stairs. I was not seeing the whole body. I saw my body, but I could see straight through it.

I was away from work for a year. I spent six months in hospitals, two months at each of three different ones. My wife was with me every day. She brought me food that I could and would eat. I had to be taught to walk again. The minister’s wife at the church where I worked called me a miracle child.

Now my heart is good. I take only one blood pressure pill a day. I’m back working at the church. And when people ask, I tell them about the angels who escorted me from death back to life.