RPP+ Free Sample: Hanging Out with Dave Combs and David Pasqualone | E105

“Hey Linda, I’m a brand new man!” – Dave Combs 

Guest Bio: 
Dave Combs is a songwriter, photographer, successful businessman, and Amazon best-selltin author with four decades of experience writing over 120 songs and creating fourteen albums of soothing, relaxing instrumental piano music. His songwriting began with the now popular standard, Rachel’s Song. His soothing, relaxing music has been played millions of times worldwide on radio, satellite, and all internet streaming media and it continues to touch the lives of millions of people all over the world. He is the author of the new book, Touched By The Music: How the Story and Music of Rachel’s Song Can Change Your Life.

SHOW NOTES: 

• Website: https://CombsMusic.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TouchedByTheMusic
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-combs-62998a6
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/combsmusic

REMARKABLE LISTENER SPECIAL OFFER:

• Watch or Listen now to Dave’s Remarkable story for Free by clicking this link: Dave Combs | The Impact of Love, Music, & Rachel’s Song to Overcome the Effects of Divorce, Heartache, & Pain

CORE THEMES, KEYWORDS, & MENTIONS:

• bicycle accident, amnesia, 911, Apple Watch, iPhone, activity app, Greenway, subdural hematoma, bicycle helmet, brain injuries, TBI, traumatic brain injury, Linda Combs, fractured vertebrae, fluid on brain, playing piano, Rachel’s Song, aphasia, middle meningeal artery (mma) embolization, fluoroscope, power of prayer, healing prayer, “Are you a praying person?”

For more Remarkable Episodes, Inspiration, and Motivation, please visit https://davidpasqualone.com/remarkable-people-podcast/. Enjoy!

Transcript

Hanging Out with Dave Combs and David Pasqualone | E105 

A bicycle accident, amnesia, MMA, and how an app on a phone told the story. All this and much, much more right now.

Hello friends, I'm David Pasqualone and welcome to this new podcast, Hanging Out With David Pasqualone and Friends. This podcast is all about continuing the great conversations on our show where our guests come back and bring you additional value to better your life. We also have guests you've never heard of that haven't been on our show yet, or maybe you have heard of them, and they're going to bring you more specific professional content that you can apply today.

And again, Better Your Life. So check out this episode now, share it with your friends, and I can't wait to start hanging out with you and our guests.

[00:00:58] 4 INTERVIEW StArt around 23 seconds in HO E105 David Combs: Hey [00:01:00] Dave, how are you today? Well, David, I am doing pretty well today.

Thank you very much. And I'm glad to hear that. Ladies and gentlemen, Dave Combs you're gonna meet is a remarkable and extraordinary man. He's the author, composer, creator of Rachel Song? What's the correct term, Dave? It's Rachel's song, correct? And author. Author, no, it's a correct term. Are you a creator? An author, author, composer.

Author, author and composer. Composer of Rachel's song, right? And the author of the book, touched by the Music. Amen. Amen. And we've had Dave on the Remarkable People Podcast, and I'll put a link in the show notes. Go check out his episode after this for his full story, his autobiography. And you'll learn more about Rachel's song, and it's actually inside of the episode.

It's beautiful. But today we're doing a follow up. Dave and I were just hanging out, catching up last week, and I had no idea of what he's been [00:02:00] through. And you're going to be amazed. And it's fantastic not only to have you on the show, Because that's a privilege, but to know you're here with us still, even though attorneys far better with our Lord.

Selfishly, I'm glad we're here today together, brother. So at this time, man, share with the listeners and I what you've been up to since the show and what's been going on in your life. Well, David, you know, it's been over a year since we talked on the original podcast. I think it was June 13th of 2022. And it was a real honor and a privilege to meet you for the first time then on.

And I think we struck a friendship and that friendship was what. I prompted your call last week to check on me and I appreciate that very much. And little did you know what all had happened to me this year. This has been one heck of a year in my life in terms of my health. [00:03:00] Back in January, and by the way, I'm going to relate my story somewhat from the viewpoint of my wife, Linda.

Because what I'm about to tell you, most, most of which I do not have any memory of or recollection whatsoever, total amnesia. I had a bicycle accident back in January, and it was on an afternoon on Wednesday afternoon and I was riding out on the Greenway, which is close to our house. And I was about three and a half miles from home, and apparently, according to the data on my phone and my watch.

I had a serious bicycle accident and I will fast forward to after I got home. I walked in the door after my bicycle ride and of course my wife had no idea what had happened. All she had called me about 4. 24 in the afternoon and [00:04:00] which She woke me up, apparently, from my, I had been out cold on the greenway for over two hours according to the data, and she woke me up, and I rode back home, and of course I walked in the door from the garage, covered in mud, and talking kind of incoherently.

She looks at me, and I had a big pump knot on my head here on my left side, and she says, What in the world happened to you? And I said, I don't know. I have no recollection of what happened. In fact, she said why don't you go over here and sit down? You might be dehydrated or whatever. So she gave me some Gatorade and water and gave me the, the stroke test to make sure I hadn't had a stroke.

But I wasn't remembering things and I wasn't talking very clearly. And so you can imagine from her perspective, here she is with her husband, just walked in, covered in mud and in a [00:05:00] pump knot. What, what happened to him? What do you do? So, Linda being the good wife and caretaker she is, she immediately called 9 1 1 and had an ambulance come and get me and take me to the hospital.

And it was only at the hospital when she and the doctors were trying to figure out, well, what happened to Dave? You know, how, how did this happen? She had taken my watch and my phone to the emergency room. With her and they figured out from my, my, it's called an activity app. I had tracked my bike ride.

You know, when you start your bike ride, you say, start an activity of bike ride. And it tracks, it tracks your, or it gives you a map of where you went. It tracks your heart rate every six seconds. And your watch, my Apple watch [00:06:00] tracks, my. Activity level every, you know, constantly. And so they were looking at all this data in the operating room and what they came up with.

And I, and by the way, I have a chart printed out of some of this data and here it is. And what we'll do, Dave, just, you know, I don't want to cut you off. We'll take this chart and get a copy and I'll put it on your, on the website. So people who are listening to the podcast can't see it. They can log in and download it later.

Okay, well I will try to describe what we're looking at now, and then I'll send you the PDF of it later. Beautiful. Okay, so on this, this is a graph of the data that came off my watch and my iPhone. My heart rate from the beginning to the end of my bike ride, and up at the top here is a timeline of when my activity on my watch Said I had zero activity.

In other words, [00:07:00] I was immobile, not moving. So you can see I'm on the beginning of the ride. I'm 20 minutes into the ride and all of a sudden my heart rate goes from about a hundred all the way down to 42. Thank goodness it didn't go to zero, but it went to 42, which for me, that means I passed out. You know, when your heart rate goes down that quick, you're probably passing out.

And so I had, this is probably obviously where the accident, where I had my bike wreck and turned over. And so my heart rate goes down to 42. And my activity level is basically I'm laying on the ground motionless. And this timeline on the top here is two hours from, from two twenty something to four twenty something, is no activity according to my watch, I was not, my, my wrist was not moving, so I was obviously laying on the ground, out cold, and at four twenty four, [00:08:00] the, my, my heart rate starts back up, and according to my timeline on the phone call, Linda called me at 424, two hours after I'd wrecked and woke me up.

And as you can see on the, those of you watching can see the graph that my heart rate then starts going from climbing up because I got back up on my bicycle and rode three and a half miles. Back home, and I have no recollection of that. I have no idea how I got home. And, by the way, all this time I was laying on the ground on the Greenway, I was down at an isolated part of the Greenway, where no people obviously came by, or if they did, they just kept going.

But I don't think anybody came by and saw me, or they would probably have tried to assist me, I would think. So anyway, I rode all the way back home, three and a half miles, and got parked my, apparently parked my bike in [00:09:00] the garage, came in the house, and covered in mud. And so that's back to where Linda sees me for the first time, as obviously I'd had a bad, something bad had happened to me.

Yeah, and before you go on in the story, what was the peak? Because now you're... You're in a state of shock, amnesia, and I noticed that as you were going home, there was a peak heart rate that was much higher. How high did your heart rate get? That is up to about, oh, about a hundred, no, about a, back up to about a hundred, a little over a hundred.

That top peak is a hundred? Yeah, that's when my bike ride back home involves about two different hills that I have to climb to get home. And so when you're riding a bike going up a hill, obviously your heart rate is going to increase. And that's what happened here was this. I was almost home and climbing up that last hill.

And then coasting down the hill to get to the house here. Gotcha. Okay. I, but [00:10:00] knowing, knowing, I know, I know the story, how it ends. So I'm just thinking as your heart rate went up, man, it's God, because that could have caused damage alone. So keep going with the story. I don't want to ruin it for the listeners.

No, that's, that's fine. So anyway, here, Linda is, and the doctor are seeing that I have. Basically, without any knowledge on my part, ridden my bicycle after being out cold for two hours, I rode it three and a half miles, found my way back home, and the doctors and Linda look at each other and me and say, how, how in the world How?

Can this be? Because, you know, most, if you're out cold with a, as it turns out later, I had a subdural hematoma, which is a brain bruise and bleed inside the brain. Most of the time, you know, people would not be jumping up and getting on a bike and riding three and a half miles back home. So, my own answer is the good Lord was with me that [00:11:00] day.

He guided me somehow to get back home and safely and in, in the care of my wife Linda and then later the doctors. So that was the beginning of the day and at the hospital. They did, of course, x rays and CT scans and all that and discovered that I had a small brain bleed on my left side, because I hit on my left side, obviously, on the ground.

What I think happened was I just passed out on the bike. With my hands on the handlebar, I'm completely turned over and hit the ground hard with my, with my shoulder. I cracked my third rib, it turns out, and hit my head so hard that even the helmet bruised my, my head. If I hadn't had the helmet on, you and I would not be sitting here talking today.

I'd be. Somewhere else. But anyhow, the [00:12:00] the x rays and CT scans showed that I had a typical, you know, brain injury from a fall where you hit your head hard. And you know, I was beginning to come around and I was able to talk and, but I just had no memory of what happened. And they decided to keep me overnight for observation to see cause the brain bleed didn't show that it was, Really, it was a tiny one and it didn't show that it was fresh, only a tiny little bit of fresh blood.

So they, they did another CT scan later on and it had not gotten any worse. So the next day they sent me home and with the idea that we'll keep a watch on this and you come back in a month, we'll do another CT scan and follow up on this. And my, I want to make a point here that for any of your audience that has a fall of any kind.

In the house or on a bike ride or whatever, where [00:13:00] you hit your head hard. Don't take that lightly. You, your brain is a kind of, it's, it's what runs your whole body. And, and it's, it's floating around inside your skull, inside some. Some liquid inside the brain, so it's not fastened to anything. It's just kind of floating there in the fluid around the blank brain.

And when you hit your head on the ground or on a anywhere hard that your brain is basically jostled and in my case, it jostled so hard that it hit against the side of my skull and created what they call is a subdural, which means below the skull, subdural hematoma. So in other words, your brain has basically squeezed some of the arteries that are in your, in the outside of your brain and damaged some of them and or think of it like a bruise.

And so if you hit on your left side, it's [00:14:00] going to hurt the left side and then the rebound is going to bounce to the back to the right side. So you have potential of having damage in both. So anyway, I just want to make sure that people understand that if you ever have a fall, you need to probably go to the emergency room and have a CT scan done of your skull and your brain to make sure you haven't damaged the inside of your brain and skull severely.

Because it won't immediately necessarily show up. And that's the next part of this story. I came home on the day after my bicycle accident. And everything was fine. In fact, I did several podcast interviews over the next month and probably some of my best interviews I've ever, ever done, but, and I thought everything was fine.

And I was scheduled for a follow up CT scan a month later, middle of February. I [00:15:00] went back and sure enough, they, the scan showed that I had more fluid accumulated on my left side of my brain and my right side. But, they didn't show any fresh bleeding. In other words, they would actually jump on and do something if they saw fresh bleeding.

But in this case, they said, well, you're, there are no symptoms, you have no symptoms of anything. So, just, let's come back the middle of March and do another follow up CT scan. Well, here's another lesson that I learned. Brain injuries and trauma can manifest themselves Much, much later after your initial fall, about the 1st of March, which would have been about what, six weeks after my wreck, I noticed that I was sleeping much more than I normally do.

I was, you know, sleeping 16, 18 hours a day. And my strength [00:16:00] began to I began to get weak, let's put it that way. And I, I thought, of course, I thought something about it, but I, I didn't, I wasn't aware how serious it might have been. And so it progressively got worse. My weakness got to the point on March the 12th, that Sunday morning, I was so weak.

That I couldn't get myself out of bed. Linda had to help me get out of bed and it wasn't from inactivity. It was weakness that was coming from my brain injury, it turns out. So I'll go into the kitchen to get some breakfast. And after a couple of bites of breakfast, I tell Linda, I don't feel so good. Well, those are my.

Code words for I'm about to pass out. And so she runs around, we have an island in the kitchen. So she runs around the island to catch me. And because [00:17:00] I am passing, and when I pass out, I just go crashing to the floor. And so she certainly did not want me to hit, go to the floor and hit my head on the counter or the floor, the tile floor or anything, which would probably.

Could have been fatal to me. So she rushes around and grabs me, and here I am, 197 pounds of dead weight for her, trying to keep me from hitting the floor and hitting my head. And bless her heart, catching me, twisted her back and she fractured four of her lower vertebrae and, and damaged some muscles as well at the same time.

So she injured herself trying to save me, which she did. Well, needless to say I was passed out and this time she called 9 1 1 immediately and they came to get me and take me back to the hospital. Well, she came back to the hospital behind, not [00:18:00] behind the ambulance, but a little bit behind it. And so when we got to the hospital...

They of course rushed me in to have more CT scans to see what was going on with my, with my brain. And sure enough, there was more accumulation of fluid on both sides of my brain. This time to the extent where if you look at it, The fluid that was on the brain was actually putting pressure and squeezing the brain.

You know, if you look at the slight cross section of the brain, you know, there's the skull and this fluid and then the brain's there. And normally the brain fills up most of the cavity. Well, this fluid had, was putting pressure on the brain on both sides to where it was, you know, basically making it smaller, putting pressure.

Well, I suppose that was what was causing my weakness that I had experienced for the past two weeks. [00:19:00] Yup. And that, I can tell you for any listener right now, Dave, who's had a tumor in the head or the brain or has had an injury. When I was 18, I was sick for years. I didn't know what was going on. And man, I'd be exhausted all the time, falling asleep all the time.

I'd go and like, feel like so weak. I couldn't, I couldn't lift like a hundred pounds, but then an hour later I could go run five miles. It was crazy, right? Or come to find out I had a tumor the size of an orange in my head and it was putting pressure on the brain. And people don't, the doctors don't understand.

The brain is like the least understood part of our body because it's something God so magnificently created. But there is something directly related, like you're saying, with swelling that your strength, your endurance, your just awareness, as soon as pressure is put on that brain, it starts like la la land and you had a [00:20:00] severe all encumbering, I can't even imagine what that felt like.

Yeah, and so that Sunday night once I got into the, of course that morning I went to the emergency room. Well, by that, that night they decided that they needed to get some of this fluid off my brain. Like they, I'm sure they removed the tumor from your brain, but they they needed to get that fluid off of there so that the pressure on the brain would be reduced.

So, at two o'clock in the morning, they did a procedure where they go in and basically get the fluid out of the brain. I won't go into the painful details of how it happened, but it's not a pleasant procedure. But they took 200 cc's of fluid out of the left side of my brain. Now, 200 cc's, now let's see, it'd be about almost a third of this bottle of water.

It's it's a, quite a bit of fluid. And that was at two o'clock in the morning, that Sunday night or Monday [00:21:00] morning early, and so the next day they did the same thing. Just as for people who aren't again, watching, that's like. A third to a half of a bottle of water, like an Aquafina bottle. Yeah. Right.

And also, if you put that much water in your arm or in your stomach, it'll bubble out because it's soft. So think about what Dave was going through. When you're going against bone, against that bone of the skull, it can't bubble out. So it was pushing in. That's crazy. Yeah, I could show you a picture of the CT scan and you can literally see where that fluid is pressed in and the outline of my brain is.

deformed by that fluid, so it's putting pressure in the wrong kind of places. And Monday, on Monday, they, they said, well, we need to get the fluid off of the other side of the brain. So they went back in and did the same painful procedure on my right side and took out a hundred cc's, about half what came out of the left side.

So I had a total of 300 [00:22:00] cc's of fluid taken off my brain. Well, the hope was that you know, that would solve the pressure problem on, on the brain and they, after a day or so of observing me following that procedure, they sent me over to the in house physical therapy unit at Baptist Hospital. It's a wonderful unit and they have a special floor That's nothing but brain trauma, so only 10 beds on that floor, and I was one of the 10, and it's for people that have had strokes and, you know, serious injuries and injuries like mine, and so the thought was that physical therapy would get me back to where I needed to be following the all those two procedures.

Well, they put me through three hours a day. At least of physical therapy recreational therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, [00:23:00] and all of those therapies during the day. And it was a slow process and my strength had really weakened quite a bit. So I, I, I needed a lot of therapy to get myself back to walking.

I couldn't walk very well. And one of the things that bothered me the most was I couldn't play the piano. My left hand and my right hand had forgot to talk to each other somehow or other. They took me to, they had a piano there in the, in the unit and I tried to play Rachel's song. I've played Rachel's song thousands of times.

I could not play Rachel's song like I should be able to play it. Well, that was really disheartening. And, but my physical part of it with the walking and getting in and out of bed and dressing myself, all that kind of thing was progressing okay. And this was about the [00:24:00] 25th of March, which would have been what about a week and a half after I got I had the feigning spell at home I suddenly, one night, on a, it was a Tuesday night, I think it was like the 25th of March, I couldn't speak.

I tried to talk to the nurse, and all I, all that came out of my mouth was was my, my vocal cords, I could think, I knew clearly what I wanted to say, and it was the strangest feeling, and for any of you folks who have ever had what they call... Aphasia or inability to speak. It is scary because you, you know what you want to say and you, no matter how hard you try, you cannot get your vocal cords and your mouth to cooperate and say those words.

Very, very frustrating. Well, that's, that got the attention of the nurse and she, they actually [00:25:00] called a code stroke on me, which got everybody's attention. They called my wife, this was at night, on Tuesday night, said, Linda, your husband has taken a turn for the worse and you need to come back in. Well, she got a friend to bring her, you know, she can't, she can't even drive at this point because of her back.

She has injured her back so badly that she had to have friends, which fortunately we have plenty of friends, drive her to and from the hospital to, to see me or be with me during the days for, for like two and a half weeks this happened. Well, that night she called her friend, our friend Garleen and said, I need to go back to the hospital.

I'll be right there. So she jumped in the car and took Linda back to the hospital. She spent the night with me and it was really, really scary. Well, the next day they had a consultation with the brain surgeons and I [00:26:00] was still having difficulty speaking. And the doctor said, you know, I have one. New Procedure, I Think Will Help Your Situation.

He said it's called, and you can look this up later, it's called an MMA embolization. MMA stands for Middle Meningeal Artery. Embolization, which is, you know, blocking or stopping the blood from flowing through an artery. And he said, this procedure has only been done since 2021, so it's brand new, and I think that will hopefully solve your problem.

And of course, Linda had to speak for me, and she said, well, let's certainly, let's do it. And he said, I think I can do this on Thursday around lunchtime. Okay, so that was the plan. And. On Thursday morning at 6 a. m. my night nurse came in the room and says, Mr. Combs, [00:27:00] wake up. Your procedure has been moved up to 7 a.

m. And the transportation people are coming to get you, to take you to the operating room. And she had, she called my wife Linda and said, told her where to go to the waiting room for the surgery. And so Linda was already up and about ready to come back anyway. And so she came to the hospital and then to the waiting room.

Well, by the time she got there, I was already in the operating room where they do the procedure. Now, this is one where they use a fluoroscope. Now, most of your audience may remember, some of you will remember, a fluoroscope is that machine that we used to have. Decades ago in a, in a shoe store where you stuck your foot underneath there and you could see the bones in your feet.

Well, today's version is an x ray machine that's on a gimbal that they can move it to any position and show your picture of what they're looking at live on a big high definition screen [00:28:00] like a television screen. And they can put dye in your arteries, and they can see exactly where the blood vessels are, and, and he said, what I'm going to do is go up through your ephemeral, femoral artery, and through your aorta, up through your carotid arteries, up into the skull, Through this meningeal arteries, you have two of those arteries in your, in your body, one to your left side, one to your right.

He said, that's where the leaking of this, the bleeding is taking place. And there are some tiny blood vessels attached to this. These meningeal arteries, where that's where the leaking is taking place. And we need to stop that bleeding or that leaking. So, in that room, I'm laying there with my head bigger than life on the screen on the TV.

And the doctors, there are like three surgeons there working on me. And they go up [00:29:00] and through my arteries, up into the brain. And they basically find the place They, they put a dye in the, in the blood so they can see exactly where the leaking is taking place. And they can determine, ah, right here is where we need to block it.

So it won't bleed anymore. Well, they did, they did five of these coils. The, the way they block it is there's a high tech device called a coil, and you can Google this later and just do MMA. Coil and you'll see what they look like. They're tiny little high-tech devices that they put on the end of this little g wire up into my skull, find the right place that they want to block the, the blood flow and turn it loose.

And this little coil uncoils itself and blocks the blood from flowing from that point forward. And so they went into my right side. Four times, and on my left side, on [00:30:00] that side, three times. So I have a total of seven of these high tech coils in my brain where they have blocked the, these little arteries in strategic places so they will not bleed or blood will not flow past that anymore.

Well, that took only 46 minutes for this whole procedure to take place. And here's the miracle part in my mind for that day. Now remember, up to this point, I had not been able to speak for the last day and a half, or maybe two days. No intelligible words coming out of my mouth. I felt the doctor take the catheter out of my groin area for the last time and I said, Hey doc, are you finished?

Clear as a bell. He looked at me and said, Well, yes, Dave, I am. And it went perfectly. You will have no more bleeding in those [00:31:00] he said, I put four over here and three over here. You have no more bleeding out of those arteries. And I said, that is miraculous. Thank you very much. And by the way, can I call my wife?

He had let me take, wear my Apple watch into the operating room. And so I raised my watch up to my mouth and I said, Hey, you know who? Call Linda Combs. And in about two or three seconds, Linda answered the phone. She was down the hall and I said, Hey Linda, I'm a brand new man. Oh, we were both so happy. I think she was probably crying and probably me too.

It was a joyous moment because I could finally speak. I mean, it was like instantaneous and I could not believe it. And I'm not sure the doctors could even believe it either. But anyway, they sent me to what kept me overnight for observation to make sure I'd the [00:32:00] mainly because of where they had to go in with the catheter in my groin area, they, that femoral artery is a big artery.

They don't want any bleeding to resume there. So anyway, the next day. They sent me home. They discharged me, and I got to go home the next day. My strength was beginning to come back. My balance was coming back. My coordination was coming back. And when I got home, I could play the piano again. My left and right hand were talking to each other again.

I mean, David, this was, it was almost a religious experience for me too. From going to where I thought I might spend the rest of my life, not even being able to speak or play the piano, to back to being the original Dave Combs that everybody knew. So it was, it was, that was miraculous. And I, I, I can't thank the doctors enough.

I mean, just think about if the fact that I was in a place where the [00:33:00] doctors were skilled and had been trained. In this brand new procedure, suppose I'd been somewhere else where they didn't have any idea what to do. I don't know what would have happened. So, God put me in the right place. He put these doctors in my path in the right place.

And here I am now, virtually 100 percent recuperated from that injury. Now, it took a while for me to get all of my strength back. And all my coordination and balance and everything, but it was pretty quick and it was quite a miracle. I'd say so, man. It's so awesome hearing your story and seeing you and I'm just blown away.

And you know, the big question is, are you going to ride a bike again? I hope so. I had I'm trying to, you know, the big problem is that it's almost like a P T. PTSD kind of thing with Linda. You know, she, just the thought of me getting on a [00:34:00] bicycle kind of sends her into a panic. And so I'm trying to help Linda and I, cause I'd love to go for a ride with Linda.

I guarantee you I will not be doing any bikes by my, bike rides by myself ever again. That was kind of a, in retrospect, it was in hindsight, that was a dumb thing to do. But I'd love to go on a ride with Linda on the Greenway and us go back together like we most did quite often, just that day she didn't happen to go with me.

But I want to tell you one other thing, because a lot of, all this process, there were tons of people praying for me. My brother had his whole church praying for me, and there's, there's a funny story around this, was my, my brother had kept his church apprised of my progress. They had a weekly newsletter, and, and he was...

They'd all been, I was on their prayer list and they'd been praying for me and finally [00:35:00] that Friday when I came home from the hospital, I called my brother of course and told him that I'm back to talking and I'm home actually. And so he was ecstatic too. And so he wrote for his church newsletter and he said on Friday.

My brother, David, went home. And that's all he said. Well, he goes to church Sunday morning, and some of the church members said, gosh, Don, I'm, I'm so sorry to hear about your brother. And he said, what are you talking about? You said he went home. And they had interpreted that to mean I had passed away and gone home to heaven, I guess.

So I said, I'm sorry, David. End He better be more specific what it means when he says his brother went home, but we got a good chuckle out of that. But the prayers were in my friends, my relatives, [00:36:00] and people who know me had been praying for me endlessly. And in the hospital, let me back you up to the days that I spent between that.

March the 12th and the day I went over to to the physical therapy and even there too. I was in my room one night in the brain trauma ICU part of the hospital and the orderly came in to clean my room. His name was Anthony and he was from West Virginia and he was a talkative kind of person and he and I got to carrying on a conversation and he finished cleaning the room and right before he left I said, Anthony, are you a praying person?

And he said, yes, sir, I am. I said, well, Anthony, would you say a prayer for me for my healing? He said, yes, sir. I'd be happy to. Well, he came over to my bedside, grabbed me by the hand and said [00:37:00] the most beautiful prayer for healing. I think I've ever heard. And I, I was just so moved and touched by his compassion and his, his religious faith and his caring for me.

And it was just, it was a very moving experience. And then again, the same thing happened again over in the stick center, which is the rehab center where I later was. My night nurse, sweet nurse, her name is Naomi. And She turns out, she's this tiny little lady, and both her grandparents had, were ministers.

And so I knew she was probably a religious person, but I said, Naomi, are you a praying person? Yes. Yes, sir, I am. She came over to my bed. I said, would you say a prayer for me? She came over to my bedside, did the same thing. She grabbed me by the hand, held my hand, and said another. Absolutely [00:38:00] beautiful prayer for healing for me.

And when she finished, I said, Naomi, you could teach a preacher how to preach. That was the most beautiful prayer I've ever heard and thanked her profusely. But those prayers meant so much to me. And I want to tell your audience. That you, when you lay your hands on somebody and say a prayer for them, that is powerful.

That is powerful. You read in the Bible how many people Jesus actually laid his hands on them and healed them. Well, it's almost like that. When you have somebody that you not just say a prayer for, but you touch them, you put your hand on their shoulder, you hold their hand, you put your hand on their head, whatever you do.

That is powerful, that there is something about saying a prayer for a person for healing. And in many cases I've heard stories of people that actually were [00:39:00] physically healed. All of us have heard the stories of the laying on of hands of some of these ministers that purport to be healers and that kind of thing.

But there is something to that. I felt the power of that prayer, of those prayers. And I felt the power of the prayers of the people who were praying for me. And I'm sitting here today, virtually 100 percent recuperated because I have been healed. And I attribute much of my healing Not just to the medicine and everything, but to the doctors and to the care and the prayers that I've had prayed for me.

Linda before my last surgery, when the doctor was in the room telling her what he was going to do, Linda looked at the doctor and said, Doctor, I don't know if you're a praying person or not, but would you keep my husband in your prayers for [00:40:00] a safe procedure and a good procedure and for healing? And he looked at Linda and he said, Linda, I already have.

In other words, he had already been praying for me. Now, this is, of course, Baptist Hospital. You'd think that in a Baptist Hospital, yeah, you would have all the staff and the members would be praying people, but it is true. And so it really meant a lot to me to know. That not only the staff, everybody that cared for me, and there were literally hundreds of people that touched my life over those six weeks.

And it's it's been a, an unbelievable experience for me and and a Testament to the power of prayer and to the miracles that still can happen today. Amen. And after the fall, how's Linda doing? Where's she at in this journey? She is a strong, strong person and she has a very high [00:41:00] tolerance for pain.

I don't know how she did it, but she tolerated her back pain the entire time I was in the hospital. Now, she did go that next week to urgent care and get x rayed and that's when they discovered that, yeah, you have four. Cracked vertebrae in your back. And she did go to the spine clinic and get some assessment of her situation.

But she said she told them, I'm not doing anything at this point that would keep me from being with my husband in the hospital. So every day. She was with me, and many of those she spent the night, and as if you ever tried to spend the night in a hospital with somebody, it's, you can't, you just cannot get comfortable.

Those chairs or recliners or whatever they have for you to sit in, they're not the most comfortable in the world. And with her back situation, they're I know that she was in severe pain much of the time, but luckily, she has, her procedure has been such that [00:42:00] she did not have to have any extraordinary injections or surgery or anything.

The, the doctors, spine doctors said that her spine is healing on its own, except that a spine injury, as many of you have, if you've ever had one of those, they take a long time to heal. So she is still recovering. From that she's much, much better than she was, but she's still moving kind of gingerly and, and you know, you don't wanna make any sudden moves or such that would injure or aggravate her spine.

But she is doing much, much better. And she's quite a strong, strong person, a strong lady, and I sure am blessed to have her around and, and she's quite a, quite a person. Amen. Well, for our listeners out there, You know the power of prayer. Dave just talked about the power of prayer. And if you can, if you will, let's pray for Linda.

Let's take time in our lives, you know, [00:43:00] when we shut off this episode before we get into the next action in our life. Let's say a prayer for Linda. Praise to God for His glory and His goodness in our lives. Bringing Dave so we can have this interview today and catch up with him. Now let's pray for Linda's back and just to be pain free and fully mobile as you guys get on a bike ride again.

Well, I'm, I'm really praying that we'll both be healed enough to where we can enjoy. Being together on a bike ride on the Greenway, there's really, it's a very refreshing being out in the middle of nature and fresh air and the, and the flowers, and there's a horse pasture next to the Greenway. We love seeing the horses.

Those kinds of things are therapeutic. And so I look forward to today when we both can get back to that. She has a three wheel black bike that she can ride. And. And I, I'm sure I can ride my bike again, but we'll be riding together in the future. Amen. And just, you know, we've talked about the Greenway the whole time.

We have listeners from all over the world. Where is the Greenway for [00:44:00] our listeners? Explain. Well, in Winston Salem, in fact in North Carolina, we have a network of greenway pathways that are designed for walking and bike riding. And near our house, and it's in a flood plain, right by what's called Muddy Creek, which is, it literally is a creek that floods and gets muddy when you have a lot of rain.

But the greenway runs about, I think it's, from one end to the other is about five or six miles. And then we're, from our house, I can get on the street and ride down to a connector that they built. from our neighborhood over to the greenway with a bridge over the creek. And so I can, we can literally ride about 10 miles without being on much on a public highway.

So it's a, it's a very nice 10 foot wide paved level greenway path that runs along beside the creek on the one side. And the other side is some woods, or in some case Pastureland for Horses, and it's, it's [00:45:00] quite a pleasant place to ride, and there's a network of those around North Carolina, and I'm sure most, a lot of states now have a green, greenway program to get people out into the outdoors and enjoy hiking or walking and bike riding on these greenways.

It's quite a, quite a positive thing for good exercise. Well, Dave, thank you so much. It's been awesome catching up with you, my friend. Any, and it can be on the topic or something that God just laid on your heart, but before we close this episode, anything we missed or any final words of wisdom to share with our listeners?

Well, first of all, and last of all, I guess, is I want to express my deep appreciation for your and my friendship and for your following up with me and staying in touch and friendship of, you know, friends are people that you, you choose to keep. And so. And my friend, you are a [00:46:00] keeper. So I want to thank you for being my friend and for allowing me the privilege of being a part of your wonderful podcast.

And I know you're touching thousands of lives through your podcast. And I thank you for that. And thank you for letting me be a small part of that. Thank you, Dave. Thank you. God be the glory. Ladies and gentlemen, we hope you enjoyed this episode. We hope it inspired you. We hope it reminds you to wear helmets anytime you ride a bike, and we love you.

Have a great day. We'll see you in the next episode. Dave, thank you again for being here, my friend. Thank you, David. It's been my pleasure. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we love you. Let us know if you need anything. Follow God. You won't have a better life in this world or eternity.