Chased By God: …And Stalked By Death

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Introduction

Chased By God . . . And Stalked By Death is at first glance an exciting tale of harrowing travel adventures around the world. Drama, peril, and comic relief engulf the main characters as they adapt to exotic languages, cultures, and customs across thirty-two countries. But death is a stalker and a constant reminder of humanity’s mortality. It follows everyone from birth, everywhere they go. The story hints at an ongoing spiritual battle as death and God contend for the life of one clueless soul during a lifetime of miraculous physical interventions.

Chased By God . . . And Stalked By Death is the autobiographical account of one woman’s amazing journey to faith, through dangers, diseases, and disasters. The book broaches the often taboo topic of death through short, action-packed episodes that demonstrate God’s pursuit and protection of us all.

What you are about to read is not a hoax, nor is it fiction. It is the true story of God’s compassionate rescues of one runaway soul from forty near-death events. Death chased her relentlessly. But, more importantly, so did a powerful God.

Susan Goffard, RN, BSN

ONE

GHANA I

Life or Death

Labor pains began at dawn in Accra, Ghana on February 8, 1971. As the sun slowly rose over the West African plains, I was ready to give birth, not to face grave danger. Nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead.

It was Monday, which meant that our baby’s middle name would likely be Adua. The Akan people of Ghana customarily name their children after the day of the week they are born. If I had a long labor stretching into Tuesday, our baby’s middle name would be Abena.

I woke my husband, Luc, to the crow of nearby roosters hailing the sunrise. After Luc’s quick morning ritual of espresso, we said good-bye to the local zobania (security guard) and our Irish setter Rudy. Luc had already practiced the thirty-kilometer trip to St. Anthony’s private clinic in Tema twice during the past week. The local government hospital was much closer to where we lived in Accra, but it was teeming with patients ill from a current cholera epidemic. An American friend had delivered her baby at St. Anthony’s with no problem. On her recommendation, we visited St. Anthony’s the previous week. We met with a Ghanaian physician, Dr. T., who proudly showed us his clinic’s modern operating room, nursery, and patient rooms.

Excited for our new life to begin, we climbed into our trusty Peugeot and took the road. After several turns, it had deteriorated into a red clay mess with giant potholes. Uh-oh, Luc exclaimed nervously. I must have taken a wrong turn. He turned the car around and got us back on track.

What an adventure! Having our first child in West Africa! I thought, even if a little anxiously. We rode along in silence, both still waking up and absorbed in our own thoughts. I marveled that, in a few hours, we would be parents, and our lives as a family would begin. We hadn’t even settled on a girl’s name until last night, when Luc proposed the name of the heroine from a book he was reading. The heroine’s name was Eliane (pronounced Ay-lee-on), and we both loved it. If the baby was a boy, Jean-Luc was already agreed upon.

I had never thought I would give birth in a third world country. Funny how things just seem to happen in life. Luc and I met in Laos during the war in Vietnam. The French government sent him to teach Laotian schoolchildren in 1962. The U.S. government sent me to the same village in 1965 to work with Lao midwives. We married in 1968 at the French Embassy in Vientiane. After Laos, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent Luc here to teach French to adults through the Alliance Francaise.

Here we are, said Luc, as he pulled into St. Anthony’s parking area, and my thoughts returned to the present. An African midwife dressed in white cordially admitted us and took us to a multi-bed ward. Flowery privacy curtains separated us from neighboring patients on either side.

By eleven o’clock in the morning, the labor pains were truly laborious, increasing in frequency and strength. I began using Lamaze deep breathing to keep me comfortable. Dr. T. arrived around noon for a quick assessment and announced confidently, You look too calm; you won’t deliver before seven o’clock this evening. He promptly left the clinic—and Luc and I would never see him again.

I began to worry in earnest. Where was he going? Were there other physicians on the premises? Had we made the wrong decision in the seventh month of pregnancy, to remain in Africa for the baby’s birth? Should we have flown back to the States? What if the doctor is wrong and the baby comes earlier? How can we contact him if there’s a problem?

Half out of anxiety and half in curiosity, I grabbed my patient chart hanging on the end of the bed to read Dr. T’s latest notes. LOA presentation, it read, which means left, occipital, anterior—the most common position of the baby’s head for normal delivery. I breathed a big sigh of relief as both a nurse and mother-to-be. There’s nothing to worry about, I said to Luc—and myself. Thousands of babies are born every day . . . this is a normal human happening. Luc focused on timing the frequency and duration of contractions, coaching me in the breathing while several more hours went by.

By four o’clock that afternoon, the baby was seriously arriving. An African midwife wheeled me to a bare room with a sink, a wooden table, and not so much as a sheet. Where is that modern operating room, I panicked, and where is the doctor? But there was no time to think further. Lamaze breathing no longer helped with the excruciating pain, and Dr. T. had left with the key to the medicine cupboard. An intense, raw fear cut through my exhaustion.

I’m afraid! I cried out to Luc. "What are we going to do? Oh God! I shouted as a tremendous contraction grabbed my attention. Yelling seemed like a good idea, screaming even better! I gritted my teeth with each new wave of unbearable, ripping pain. Without warning, Luc threw his upper body across my heaving chest so I would not see the little feet coming into view. He instinctively knew that I would panic. I wouldn’t have been the only one, for now two midwives were running back and forth, distraughtly ordering me to Push harder! Push harder!"

Luc shouted, "Suzanne! Come on, push! Bon Dieu!" And that was the last thing I registered.

I did not know I was dying.

TWO

GHANA II

Between Heaven and Earth

Ifound myself floating weightlessly in midair next to an air vent on the ceiling. This is odd , I remember thinking. I glanced down at the room and saw a Caucasian man and two African women dressed in white. The women shook their heads and loudly declared: She’s not pushing anymore! She quit! The man shouted desperately, Come on, Suzanne! and shook the inert body of a woman lying on a table.

I recognized no one, not even my own body. I calmly slipped through the air vent, into the duct, and experienced total silence. It all just seemed like the natural thing to do, with no questions and no fear. Ahead of me I saw a long dark tunnel and a bright light at the end of it. I moved effortlessly toward the welcoming light. Abruptly, something snatched me out of the tunnel, and I soared through the air, thousands of feet over the earth. "Oh my God!" I gasped. I’m flying! Really flying! Look at all this! It’s so beautiful! The dwindling rays of the late afternoon sun still shimmered on the rivers and lakes far below. Wisps of clouds swept past me, leaving glimpses in between of forests, mountains, and the African plain. The sky above me deepened into an indigo blue, announcing the coming night. Completely absorbed in the changing vistas, I drifted peacefully along. I experienced no sound, no pain, no heat or cold, and no fear, just a sense of awe and delight.

I did not know that I was dead.

I saw no other people. Again, nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except, of course, for the fact that I was flying. I did not feel any need to know where I was, why I was there, or where I was going. Feelings of complete well-being and contentment engulfed me until . . .

. . . A roaring voice broke the quiet: YOU HAVE TO DO SOMETHING OR THE BABY WILL DIE!!!

The choice was not up to me. With absolutely no effort of my own, something propelled me back into the tunnel, back into the air vent, back into the room, and back into my still body, which came alive again! I pushed the baby girl, Eliane Adua Lee Goffard, into the world at four twenty-three in the afternoon, local time.

Mercifully, I did not feel the ripping of tissues, which would later require more than thirty stitches. I laid there for what seemed like an hour before a physician from Yugoslavia happened by the room, saw my desperate need, and sewed me up. By then, the natural anesthesia from the battering of the tissues had vanished and I keenly felt every stitch.

Next, we moved to a private room. I should have been ready to rest, but the incredible experience I had just lived through was still so fresh in my mind (and would be forever) that sleep eluded me. Now came the questions: why had this happened, and what did it mean?

I tried to describe to Luc where I had gone and what I had seen. He assured me that I had just fainted, much like the soldiers in World War I trenches, he explained, when the pain of their injuries became too great to bear. But I knew in my heart it was not so. I had fainted before and this was not the same. I never lost consciousness during this experience. Every detail of the round trip replayed clearly in my mind—but I had no idea what had actually happened or why. All I knew for now was a sense of wonder that baby Eliane and I were alive and that we were very, very lucky indeed.

That night, I could not sleep; I wanted to see and hold baby Eliane. Moving slowly and painfully, I entered the hallway and heard babies crying. Around the first corner I saw a disgusting laundry room with mountainous piles of bloody sheets and large, humming dryers. In the same hot and humid room of filth, I spied several babies in individual rolling bassinettes, completely unattended! Do you wonder how I knew which baby was ours? She was the only white one. Protectively, I wheeled her bassinette back to my cool, quiet room and kept her close to my bed.

The next day Luc took us home. Both baby Eliane and I had postpartum infections. I have rarely ever again felt so helpless and so alone. Soreness from the trauma, weakness from loss of blood, searing pain with every move, and the body’s battle against infection—all of these completely overwhelmed me!

That afternoon I heard a knock at the door. A dear elderly American woman by the name of Lois stood outside, holding a home-cooked meal, several sets of clean sheets (which I have saved to this day), and a layette for baby Eliane. Lois explained that she and her husband Ed were missionaries who lived across the street and had been in Accra for many years. Their tour was up and they were returning to the States at the end of the week. Smiling kindly at my new-mom ineptitude, she patiently showed me how to wrap a baby to make the little one feel secure. And then, as quickly as she had come, Lois left.

Her soothing manner and encouragement at just the right time were invaluable and exactly what I needed. How had she known that we needed help? We had never met before. Who sent her to us?

In April, I flew back to the States for a surgical reopening of the birth canal, which had been sewn completely shut by the Yugoslavian tailor. It seems he did not even have a physician’s license! Once again, I keenly realized how much we had been at the mercy of terrible circumstances.

Something or someone must have been looking out for us.

THREE

WISCONSIN

Rescues, Struggles, and Growing Pains

Growing up in rural Wisconsin was marked by struggles, including, at times, just staying alive. My parents struggled with an unhappy marriage. I struggled with being the first child and receiving my father’s frequent criticism. My two younger sisters and I struggled to meet parental expectations for us to behave like little adults instead of children. An ongoing atmosphere of subtle tension hung over the home like a slow gas leak that could explode at any moment—and frequently did.

I was seven years old when my parents moved to a house on a hill in Riverview Gardens in November 1950. Winter had already dusted the ground with snow. The backyard