• A giant fish swallows a man; spits him out 3 days later.
• Ancient, advanced cultures sink and disappear and become legendary. (Atlantis) (Minoan?)
• Violent storms, whirlpools, and shipwrecks.
• Of course, there is the most ancient work of Western literature from the 8th century B.C. – Homer’s Odyssey. In the story, opposing gods interfered with Odysseus (Ulysses) on his 10-year return home after the Trojan War.
  He faced storms, monsters, sirens, lotus-eaters, Cyclops, …

Here are Webster’s definitions of “odyssey”:
1^st: a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune.
2^nd: an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest.

I do believe last month’s trip turned into an odyssey for my husband and me – a long wandering marked by changes of fortune, as well as an intellectual and spiritual quest.

Odysseus’ journey home was thwarted by warring Olympic gods and nymphs. Michael’s and my journey was aided by the one true God.

One of our questions in today’s lesson is:
“Relate how Jesus has brought calm to your life during a storm.”

I’ve often acknowledged and thanked God that my life has not been plagued by a number of trials and storms.
This “vacation” was probably the worst storm I have ever faced.
Like Odysseus, it felt like we were blown “off course” by a storm, making this trip longer than intended and much more challenging, but one of self-discovery and spiritual faith-strengthening.

Last year at this same time Michael and I were in Swaziland and Zambia – two places one would NOT want to be with a life-threatening medical emergency.

This year Michael and I left home on September 21^st for a 2-week vacation that was to start in Venice, Italy, and we were to return from Bologna, Italy, on October 4^th. We had been invited to join a small group tour with one of our favorite travel companies -- Story Land & Sea.

Perhaps our Odyssey began back when I was a little girl growing up in rural Jackson County. This is one of those “because of this,” that happened, and because of that, this happened, and because, because, because cascades …

Because ...
I grew up in Jackson County, Arkansas, where our small rural church had a very personable and fun Harding Bible student named Gary Martin as our youth minister for a period of time. And it just so happened that Gary had served as a Harding recruiter at Michael’s home congregation when he was a teen.

Fast forward to Spring of 1974: I was finishing my first year at Harding University when it was announced at College Church that students were needed immediately after the semester ended to go on evangelistic door-knocking missions for one week with one of the Arkansas “May campaigns.” Gary Martin, my former youth minister, was leading one to Clinton, Arkansas. So I signed up to go with him. I did not yet know anyone else on the campaign team. And because they knew Gary Martin, Michael and his college roommate also signed up to participate. The team met several times before we left so I “kinda” became acquainted with some of the team members.

On Wednesday night of the campaign, all the Harding students were invited over to JoJo Story’s house for a social evening. JoJo was an upper classman at Harding. It was at that party that I started “socializing” with Michael. Also at that party was JoJo’s 8-year-old cousin, Mark Story. If I ever laid eyes on Mark, I don’t remember. I just remember “socializing” with Michael that evening.
By the next year’s May campaign, Michael and I were engaged, and then before the following campaign in 1976 we were married.

By graduation, Michael had been accepted into medical school and enlisted in the U.S. Navy for a scholarship that fully paid for med school. After med school graduation and then a 3-year residency here in Fort Smith, the Navy shipped us off to Italy for 3+ years. We fell in love with the country, its history, art, culture, people, and the food. So much so, we have returned six times for vacations.

In 2009 we signed up for a Northern Italian small group tour with Story Land and Sea. You can imagine our surprise when we got an email from the owner, Mark Story, asking if we were the Michael and Jeannie Cole from Harding that he remembered meeting in his cousin’s house many years ago! Yes, indeed!
We started following each other on Facebook. Mark is also a Harding grad who went on a campaign for Christ to Australia. That is when Mark discovered his love for travel and turned it into his profession as a travel agent and guide. This September was to be the 3^rd trip he arranged for us and the 1^st one that he was going to be our tour captain. So we were doubly excited about this trip – visiting Italy and getting to meet Mark as an adult.

And so our odyssey begins: Because Michael and I both knew Gary Martin, we met each other. Because “little" Mark Story was at that party, he thought he knew us and wanted to travel with us. Because we love Italy, and because we wanted to travel with Mark to a part of Italy that we did not know well, all things were in place for an exciting 2 weeks.

The storm on the horizon: Michael’s heart had other plans. We had known for about a decade that Michael had developed a mitral valve prolapse. He had been back for regular check-ups, but nothing had changed. We didn’t think much about it when he missed his last heart check-up due to a scheduling issue.

The weeks before any extended trip –especially overseas– are filled with getting regular things in order before leaving, as well as preparations for the trip itself. Besides making sure everything will function as it should while we are out of the country for 2 weeks, there are the banks and credit card companies to alert that we would be making out of country charges, get the appropriate international data plan for our cell phones, etc. It is stressful, but acceptable, knowing that good things lie ahead. Michael was overworked, tired, and ready to get out of town so he could rest from his busy clinic schedule.

We flew out of Fort Smith early Friday, September 21.

Adding to the storm: We were carrying backpacks as our carry-on luggage instead of roller board carry-ons – a requirement for this particular trip. In the Dallas airport, Michael looked and felt exhausted. He just wanted to get on the next 3-hour flight and sleep. When we landed in Philadelphia, I challenged Michael’s ability to go on. In fact by this time, I was carrying HIS backpack as well as my own.
We had plenty of time to get to the international terminal – which was a good thing because we were moving very slowly and stopping several times for Michael to get enough energy to proceed to the gate. Michael attempted to convince me that he just needed to rest. Who am I to challenge a doctor?
In retrospect, I should have thrown his backpack across one of the empty gate areas and said, “if you are well enough to go on, go pick up your backpack and meet me at the gate in 5 minutes and I will get on the plane with you. Otherwise, we are not going any further.” Life is full of “should haves …”

Full storm: The 8-hour overseas flight proved to be his undoing. Apparently, air pressure in a plane cabin can be a challenge for hearts in distress. We had not identified that as the problem before this time, but it was creeping up the scale of possibilities by mid-Atlantic. Michael was so tired that he did not eat the dinner offered.
I knew Michael was uncomfortable, but I got a good night’s sleep thinking that I may need that sleep come morning. Indeed I did.
When I awoke the next morning, the flight crew was preparing to serve breakfast. Michael was still lying down. By this time, he was pretty confident he was having a heart issue.
When the flight attendant offered him breakfast, he said, “No, thank you.” She asked him if he was okay and he replied, “I’ll answer that when you finish serving everyone breakfast.” She came back shortly and he told her that he was a doctor and he believed he was having a heart problem that would require him being taken by ambulance to a hospital upon landing. She announced over the intercom asking for medical volunteers to come assist him.

God is good all the time: A cardiologist, a cardiac intensive care nurse, and a surgical nurse were there at his side in no time checking his heart, giving him oxygen and attempting to start an I.V. They stayed with him until it was time to land in Venice.

Michael and I were taken off the plane in an ambulance and officially entered the country that Saturday through an airport medical entrance bypassing the usual customs entrance.
I had to go retrieve our luggage while medical personnel were attending to Michael and was told that I should get a taxi and go to the Ospedale St. Angelo emergency room in Mestre where they would be transporting Michael. Mestre is the town on the mainland – the port to get to the islands of Venice.

God was taking care of me as well. After quickly getting our luggage, I immediately saw a man standing there holding a sign that said, “Story Land and Sea.” As the driver was transporting me to the emergency room, he assured me that this was THE hospital to be in with a heart problem in southern Europe. It was very modern with the best heart surgeons. He escorted me in with our two carry-ons. Then he took our two big suitcases to our nice “tour hotel” in Venice.

The Tempest Rages: One of the virtues of having a task-oriented brain is that you can pretty much shut down the emotions and just work through the task at hand. I never shed a tear throughout this whole ordeal, but the 7-hour wait in that Italian emergency room was a challenge. I speak Italian perhaps on a kindergarten level. The attendants in the emergency room spoke no English.
I had acquired no euro on arriving so I was unable to purchase anything out of the snack or beverage machine. I was not even 100% sure I was in the right emergency room since I did not see the name of the place as we drove in. The staff seemed content to ignore me since it was difficult for us to communicate. Michael texted me once or twice during that time, but I still had not seen him and I felt "in the dark." They took his cell phone away from him at some point. I was relying heavily on the Holy Spirit during my prayers, because my attempts to do anything were not making much sense to me.

Late that afternoon they allowed me back and explained that they were admitting him to the hospital with acute heart failure. I saw him briefly before they whisked him away to their cardiac ICU.
It was about an hour later that I was allowed to see him briefly and found him with the strangest plastic “gold-fish bowl helmet” type apparatus over his head – saturating him with 100% oxygen. I was told I could see him and his doctor again the next day after 1:00 pm.

My personal storm: So here I was on Saturday night alone in Mestre, knowing I’m maybe 50 minutes away from my luggage and hotel in Venice. I was tired and hungry. I was pretty confident that I could manage to get to the Mestre port by cab and then find a water taxi to take me to my hotel in Venice, but I was not looking forward to this ordeal. Nothing was as it “should” have been.

God is good all the time. I stepped outside the cardiac ICU and immediately heard someone calling my name. It was Mark Story, the boy-now-man who was to be our tour leader. He introduced himself, hugged me and escorted me to Venice to my hotel and then took me out for dinner and listened to our saga and assured me that he and his staff were going to be taking care of my needs. Mark had to depart with the rest of the tour group on Tuesday, but he had staff members that would assist me as needed. Burdens are lifted.

I had texted both of our kids that Saturday afternoon. In fact, my cell phone battery was running low by late afternoon and I had to search through Michael’s backpack to find a European adaptor and then find an outlet to charge it up – no small feat in an Italian ER waiting room.

Early on, our daughter Angelique offered to come, but I didn’t take that offer seriously. She loves Italy as much as we do. We lived in Italy while she was age 3 to 6. She and her husband had spent a semester studying in Florence with Harding University and they have returned a few times since. She speaks much better Italian than we do. By Saturday night when she said she was serious with her offer to come, I told her I would not say no.

On Sunday morning Mark helped me check out of my very nice Venetian hotel and moved me and my stuff to a hotel close to the hospital.

Angelique was there by Sunday evening. My Angel. God is good. She was such a blessing to have as my personal assistant, communications director, second brain, and loving daughter.

After Michael was assessed by the cardiac specialist team on Monday, they put in an aortic heart pump which stabilized him. He would need to be scheduled as soon as possible for surgery to either repair or replace his mitral valve.

Raging storm: And so began the task of countless hours of trying to get our health insurance company and our travel insurance company to communicate with the Italian hospital administration to pay for heart surgery. This became the biggest obstacle for me personally. For 4 days we kept 3 devices –my iPad, my iPhone, and Angelique’s cell phone– quite busy trying to get our insurance representatives to connect and communicate with the hospital. And, we had to work with the travel insurance to cancel our scheduled return flight and to book a new return flight for an as-yet-to-be determined date. We used up our cell phone data plan within that first week. The language barrier was somewhat of an issue, as well as the 7-hour time zone difference which meant that every communication between the hospital and our insurance had to be done by email since the Italians had gone home by the time our U.S. insurance people had come into work. Finally, on Friday, all the entities fully communicated and agreed that we could proceed with the surgery. Surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, October 2^nd with Dr. Mangino, one of Europe’s renown cardiac surgeons – 11 days after entering the country and being admitted to the hospital.

God is good all the time. During that week before the surgery, Angelique and I moved to a hotel within walking distance of the hospital. This was a quadruple blessing:

1. We could walk instead of having to rely on a taxi.
2. Between the hotel and the hospital was a shopping mall where we could purchase most everything we needed for our extended stay - including gelato.
3. The train station for Venice was nearby – Angelique and I slipped off to Venice 4 mornings – (3 p.m. hospital visiting hours).
4. And blessing of blessings: a most wonderful Italian restaurant, Rosso Pomodoro, which served the best pizza in the region. Angelique and I shared one every day.

The surgery went well on October 2^nd. Michael’s destroyed mitral valve was replaced. Dr. Mangino said Michael’s heart was now “perfect.” He just needed time for his chest to heal and to regain his strength after 11 days of lying flat on his back. Following the surgery, the improvement was slow, but steady.

One thing that I initially viewed as a “storm” turned out to be another of God’s blessing. We had understood Dr. Mangino to say that Michael would recuperate in a private room, but in fact, he was put into a semi-private room. I was not looking forward to sharing this time and space with an Italian family that I would have to think hard how to communicate with. I totally love the Italian people, but there are times when they can be over emotional, over dramatic, over assertive, etc.
The staff was real thoughtful and put Alan McNabb from Scotland in as Michael’s roommate. Alan and his wife had been on a Mediterranean cruise when he had a heart attack and needed emergency triple bypass surgery the day after Michael’s surgery. Their two daughters came to assist their mother. They spoke no Italian. We got along wonderfully with this family. It was nice to share a similar odyssey with another family. We took the wife and daughters to our favorite restaurant for a meal. When Angelique and I brought gelato to Michael, we brought enough to share with the McNabb family as well. They returned the favor another day.

Angelique flew back home to Texas on Wednesday, October 10^th. Michael was discharged the next afternoon, 20 days after being admitted to the hospital. Our travel insurance provided a “rescue nurse” to meet us at the hospital and accompany us on our return trip. That Thursday night, she and I accompanied Michael to Rosso Pomodoro for his one true Italian meal where he ordered insalata caprese, verace pizza and gnocchi – his favorite Italian dishes.

On day 21 we flew home with Angie, the medical escort nurse. She provided door-to-door assistance. She came to our hotel room that morning in Italy and helped us get out the door, saw that we were checked out of the hotel, arranged for our transportation to the airport, and made sure there was a wheelchair at each airport. She sat beside him on each of the 3 flights and monitored his pulse and oxygen level every few hours. She was quite amazed when she wheeled Michael into the Fort Smith airport and there were a number of church members to greet him at 10:30 at night! Her duties were completed when she got Michael and all our belongings into the foyer of our house.

Michael is healing. He tires easily and is feeling less pain every day, provided he doesn’t over do it. He actually started back to work yesterday morning on half days seeing a limited number of patients.

God is good all the time. He is there to help us through the storms of life.

Jeannie Cole