Excerpt from Sudden Death: God’s Overtime
Read his own personal story of how Jacob Bembry went into sudden cardiac death at work, was revived by EMS and how he hovered near death in the hospital and read about the miracle from God that kept him here.
Note: On December 8, 2011, I went into cardiac arrest and suffered sudden cardiac death. I was clinically dead, according to my physicians and according to the paramedics. I did not see the “Light,” the glories of Heaven, or God while I was clinically “dead.” I feel that if I had I would still be there and would not, nor could I, come back. I wrote a book about the experience called “Sudden Death: God’s Overtime.” Below is an excerpt from the book which is available at a number of online book retailers or you can receive a signed copy by mailing $12 plus $3.99 shipping and handling to me at Jacob Bembry, P.O. Box 9334, Lee, FL 32059
When I went to work at the newspaper office on December 8, 2011, the last thing I had in mind was dying.
I had gone to work concerned with a comment left on Greene Publishing, Inc.’s website. Unable to sleep, I had gotten up at 3 a.m. in the morning and checked my company email account. I found a report on a crash that had happened the night before, which took the life of a man I had known for years. I wrote the story and posted it on the newspaper’s website.
My memory is fuzzy but I believe that I went back to sleep and awoke a couple of hours later. I checked the newspaper’s website and saw a comment left by the victim’s daughter. Apparently, she had not been told by the Florida Highway Patrol or by family member’s that her father was dead. I tried dealing with the comment by answering her in what I thought was a diplomatic fashion.
At about 8:30, my publisher, Emerald Greene and I began instant messaging each other about the comment left by the daughter. Emerald was in Monticello where she is also the owner of The Monticello News and The Jefferson County Journal, in addition to The Madison County Carrier and The Madison Enterprise-Recorder, where I serve as editor of the paper her father and mother founded (the Carrier. founded in 1964) and the oldest newspaper in Florida (the Enterprise-Recorder, founded in 1865). Later, she sent me a couple of stories to edit that were running in Monticello because they do not have an editor at that newspaper.
The transcript of our instant messaging session shows I stopped typing a little after 10 a.m. Emerald was still asking me questions and my answers before had been rapid fire because of my typing speed. I never answered her.
At 10:15 a.m., Emerald stopped typing. She had been told what had happened to me.
The two reporters, Kristin Finney and Lynette Norris had heard strange noises coming from the area of my desk, which is divided by partitions, separating me from Kristin, who sits to my left as I face, the wall, and Lynette, who sits to my right. Dee Hall, who works in production on the other side of the room, heard me and she and Lynette came to my desk, thinking I was snoring and shook me to wake me up.
“It was so strange,” Lynette told me later, “because I thought you were asleep but your eyes were wide open.”
Kristin called 911. Dee Hall got me out of my chair and onto the floor.
I listened to the chilling 911 call for the first time on February 15, 2012. On the call, Kristin Finney is heard, along with Sarah Leigh McGraw. McGraw gives instructions and Finney relays them to the people in the office who are working to revive me. Kristin, the then nineteen-year-old daughter of Doug and Sherry Finney, amazingly kept her calm in spite of the excitement going on around. Only once did the dispatcher have to tell her to “Calm down. Slow down your breathing” and that was near the beginning of the call. Kristin took a deep breath and walked through the call.
Helping perform CPR were Dana Williams and Lynette. They tried to revive me and at times my breathing would stop completely and then come back. The breaths were shallow and uncertain.
About six minutes into the 911 recording, you can hear that EMS is 1097. They have arrived on the scene. Heather Bowen, the production manager, leads them in to where I am at.
The paramedics who attempt to revive me and finally succeed are Michael Raines and Mica Taylor. Assisting at the scene also from Madison County EMS are EMS Director Juan Botino, Logan Brennan and Linda Kent.
Someone who was there to answer the call filled out a run report on me. On it, it says that my blood pressure was 0, my respiratory rate was 0, my systolic blood pressure was 0 and my diastolic blood pressure was 0.
I was dead.
View Sudden Death: God’s Overtime and other books I have available for purchase
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