We met when I was 19, dated for two years, and were married in 2003. We now have five children. We’ve traveled so many places together. He is my bestie, my BFF, and the best husband ever! We’re also complete opposites and sometimes I wonder how we got this far.
One morning I woke up at 5 am and he told me he’d been up all night with bad heartburn. I gave him some Tums and then said, “Let’s just go get checked up at the hospital.”
He said he needed to eat something and he would be fine and that maybe he would go get it checked out after work.
I said, “Let’s just go and get checked up to be safe.”
Lately, there have been a lot of funerals of family members, our age, and they’ve been dying of heart complications. With that in my mind, I kept insisting that he go in.
After breakfast, he googled chest pain and agreed to go to urgent care. I chose to go to the urgent care that was next to an emergency room, just in case. The urgent care was closed, so we had to go to the emergency room.
I kept praying, “Lord please let it be heartburn, please!” They checked his vitals and did an EKG. All normal. The nurse said that he would be getting his blood drawn for labs. After two or three hours the cardiologist was going over his results and I remember her saying something like, “Your atropine levels are trending. You need to get an angiocardiogram.”
The following morning, we went in to get the test. The nurse said, “Oh it shouldn’t take that long, maybe 45 minutes to an hour if everything is good, but if we go in there and it can be fixed with a stent or something we will do it right away.” I prayed, “Lord, please let it be that they go in there and everything is okay.”
He went in for his angiogram and I waited in the waiting room. I kept praying, “Lord, would you please get him a clear angiogram, pretty please!” 30 minutes later, the nurse called me back in. I was thinking, “Praise the Lord, it didn’t take 45 minutes, so it must be good.”
I walked in and said, “Hi babe!”
He said, “Oh, you haven’t talked to the nurse or the doctor?”
I said, “No, why?”
The surgeon came in then and said his arteries were 90% blocked. He needed open heart surgery. I didn’t hear anything after that. I just remember tears falling and staring at my bestie and thinking, “Lord I prayed for better, not worse.”
The surgeon said, “You could walk out of here without it, but you could have a heart attack and die at any time.”
We took that as a sign to have the surgery.
I have always looked to my bestie for reassurance, and we always make decisions together. This time felt different. I was scared, lonely, and mad.
I prayed, “Lord, why is this happening to us? We have five kids. What will my kids and I do without him?” I felt my faith starting to shake a lot.
I remember the night before the surgery, we prayed so hard and both of us were crying and scared. My bestie had never been scared in my presence, at least I had never seen it. This time both of us were crying out to the Lord in a way I’d never seen before.
The surgeons reassured us that this was a routine surgery, and it would take three to four hours. Four hours passed and there was no word from anyone.
I kept praying. “God, please hear my prayer, please, you brought us together. We are a complete package. We cannot be separated, not now!” I paced back and forth, waiting for him to come out of surgery, by myself, all alone. Then I remembered a memory verse that my dad gave me when I was a kid.
God the Help of Those Who Seek Him
A Song of Ascents
PSALMS 121 (NKJV)
I will lift up my eyes to the hills—
From whence comes my help?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
3 He will not allow your foot to be moved;
He who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, He who keeps Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord is your keeper
The Lord is your shade at your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
Nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord shall preserve you from all evil;
He shall preserve your soul.
8 The Lord shall preserve your going out and your coming in
From this time forth, and even forevermore.
I don’t wish this experience on anyone. It was the worst so far for me! My faith was tested and continues to be tested every day.
I know though that God was there with me in that waiting room and God was there with my bestie in the surgery room.
His surgery took five hours. We had a rough recovery, but today he is healthy and still making me laugh like the very first time! I love you forever, Teisi, God’s got us! Thank you to our pastors, our family, church family, and friends for all your prayers.
Mele Vakalahi Uaine has been married to Teisi for 22 years and is grateful for their children, Esther, Uaine, Lineni, Sifa, and Finau. She volunteers at La Sierra Academy with home and school, helps with the Junior High girls’ basketball team, and is a huge college women’s basketball fan.