In the Firing Line : (1) Heart Attack & Depression

11th May 2023. We know, as children of God, we have a formidable opponent in Satan, and that he attempts to nullify our witness for Christ, by tempting us to sin, then accusing us when we do sin, and by directing his fellow fallen angels to trip us up and generally nullify our testimony by all ways possible. What perhaps we don’t reckon with is his wish to destroy us physically, given the chance. We know this from the account in the most ancient Book of Job, in which Satan is given permission – for reasons known only to God himself – to afflict the righteous Job with a series of dreadful losses in his family’s lives, his property and his health. Knowing Satan would all too willingly finish the destruction off by taking Job’s life, God expressly forbade him to do that. We also read how Jesus disclosed to Peter that Satan desired to “sift you like wheat” – which sounds a physically painful experience, but he was saved by the Lord’s prayers (Luke 22:31).

In earlier years I had escaped danger to my life, first when removing the cover from a still live power unit belonging to my train set, then when Linda and I were nearly swept out to sea on the last day of our honeymoon by strong currents in shallow water. On the May early bank holiday weekend of 2003, Linda and I had checked in at the Hilton Hotel in central Cardiff, ready for the Annual Baptist Assembly. As we walked to and from the venue on that Friday evening I experienced an unpleasant feeling, as if my lungs were bursting, and not for the first time. The feelings returned on the Saturday morning, but – this being our first-ever stay at a Hilton – I was not going to miss breakfast! Not wanting an ambulance, I gave in to the receptionist’s suggestion of calling a taxi to the University of Wales Hospital (where my daughter Rhonda had been born thirty years earlier during our pastorate in the city). The mention of “chest pains” by my wife got me past the four hours’ wait barrier, and soon I was connected up and was told I was experiencing angina attacks. Time passed before I was then taken on a trolley to the Coronary Care Unit. Just as we approached its doors I experienced “the big one” coming on. Quickly I was through the doors and put on the nearest bed, where I was connected up to the equipment that delivered clot-busting drugs into my veins. After a frightening few moments when it felt like an elephant was standing on my chest, the crisis passed and peace returned. Afterwards, staff told me that my monitor resembled a fireworks display, as the heart attack sent the ‘rockets’ up and the drugs brought them quickly back down. I was told that the Unit had just introduced a new procedure – either an improved drug or a faster way of delivering it. If I was meant to have this, I was in the right place at the right time. Before long I was in the operating theatre where surgeons performed angioplasty and inserted two stents into my arteries – an operation I was able to view throughout on a monitor. (This is a very tricky procedure and can result in a torn arterial wall). A family from my former pastorate kindly put us up in their home for a short break until Linda felt able to drive me home. I will forever be grateful for medical science and its practitioners and carers, and believe God works alongside them, unlimited by medicine’s limits.

I had considered my narrow escape from death a miracle of timing, but the following August I was to discover how even greater the miracle had been. I had begun to experience some unpleasant sensations in my chest, and I went as an outpatient to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, which boasted a major Coronary care facility. I wasn’t looking forward to going on the treadmill, but on this one I would be connected up to instruments. When completed, the staff made this observation: “Mr Harbour, we know from your records which we see here that you experienced a genuine heart-attack a few months ago, but this trace we have just recorded from your exercise should show evidence of it. It does not”. A medical friend explained to me a couple of weeks ago that this was because the scar on my heart had completely healed over. I had not only cheated death – it was as if I’d never had the heart-attack!

Someone had told me it would take three years to recover from this experience. I thought they were crazy – I felt as right as rain after a couple of weeks, and returned to my pastoral duties. During December I began preparing my Christmas services. Having spent thirty-one years doing this sort of thing – sixteen of them in this very church – it would not take long. But as I sat at my kitchen table, I found that every time I began to put pen to paper, my brain would shoot off on a tangent. Linda began to notice things were not right, and informed my church secretary. On the evening of the next Sunday, I rang one of our local GPs – not my own but a man who sometimes attended my church with his wife and family. I apologized for phoning him at his home, off duty and shared how I felt. Wonderfully patient, Hans instructed me to see him in his surgery next day. There he would tell me I was suffering with Depression, not at all unusual for someone who had experienced a heart-attack. It was not the first time I had experienced Clinical Depression, but this was the more severe. It did indeed last three years from the heart-attack, when I returned to work full-time, following two previous attempts – the second of which was on a supervised part-time basis. Including the Depression into my account of a physical disease which nearly killed me is important, as mental illness can prove fatal and takes longer to heal.

When my church folk got to hear of the result of my treadmill test, one of them, Kathleen Putman, observed to me “God must have spared your life because He has some greater work for you in the future”. Did she realize then how prophetic her words had been? I saw her later and told her.