Call an Ambulance!

Simon Heal, Queensland, Australia

In 1991 while I was boarding up the loft of our home, I felt a sharp pain in my left eye. The pain, which felt like a splinter, soon spread throughout my head. I continued working until the discomfort forced me to my bedroom for rest.

As soon as I lay down, however, the still, small voice prompted me. “Get up,” the Spirit said. “Don’t go to sleep.”

As I pondered the warning and thought about what I should do, I decided to get one of the tablets my mother took for migraine headaches. I walked to my parents’ room and found the tablets, but as I began to open the bottle, the voice came again: “Don’t take one of those.”

A short while later, the voice came a third time: “You need to phone for an ambulance—now!”

I had never phoned emergency services before, but I immediately called. An ambulance soon arrived, and two paramedics put me on a stretcher. The last thing I remember was that they asked me my name. Then the lights went out.

Later I woke up in the intensive care unit at the hospital. I was still weak and under the influence of anesthesia, but I remember feeling hands on my head as my father and my bishop gave me a blessing. I heard the words “You will be restored to health, as if nothing had happened.”

After three days in intensive care and four additional days in a hospital ward, I was finally able to return home. Only then did I learn that I had suffered a brain hemorrhage. The surgeon who operated on me later told me that I was “just a click away from dying” and that I would have died had I taken a migraine tablet.

Today I am fit and healthy, thankful that the Lord guided my thoughts that day. I have been sealed in the temple to my loving wife, and we have five wonderful children.

I thank my Heavenly Father and my Savior, Jesus Christ, for the miracle of life. I strive every day to make the most of the time They have given me, and I gratefully remember the protecting influence of the voice of the Spirit.