Chapter 5

In the year 1978, I retired from the New Orleans Police Department and moved my family to a sixty-one acre farm in Mississippi. It was here on this farm that my wife and I started a new ministry by opening our home to less fortunate children who had been neglected, abused, and misused. In a period of three years we had opened our home to thirty-two children. Realizing that most people considered themselves blessed raising small families, we considered ourselves to have been abundantly blessed to have had thirty-two children in these three years.

While conducting our new ministry after my retirement I was still involved in a phase of law enforcement work. This work included my training men and dogs for use in the off-shore oil industry to be used in the detection and prevention of the use of illegal drugs in that industry. Since part of my duties included selling this program to the oil industry, I was required to spend a great deal of time traveling.

Early in the year 1979 I was still not satisfied with my life. Feeling emptiness, I knew that something was missing. All my time was occupied, but still I was hungry for something else, not knowing what that something else was. I had been convinced that when we opened our home to children, it would satisfy my spiritual needs. It did not. At this time, some friends of mine talked me into getting into politics. Because of all my years of experience in law enforcement, they thought I would make a good candidate for sheriff. I spent the entire spring and summer working my campaign with all my strength. Just a few days before the election scheduled for August 7, 1979, I was suddenly struck with a grave and disastrous illness. The night before the tragedy I went to bed as usual and carefully planned the following day in my mind.

On awakening that morning I was slightly nauseated and skipped breakfast. My wife asked me if I was not going to eat. I replied that I had to hurry to keep my appointment with some folks who I hoped would support my candidacy for sheriff with campaign contributions. I was unaware that God had also made an appointment for me that day, let me remind you that the Bible says that it is appointed once unto man to die and, without warning, my appointment came. Like a flash of lightning, the main trunk artery in my body cavity ruptured causing a devastating, sudden, blood loss.

I was admitted to the local hospital and immediately tests were run in an attempt to locate the area of the great blood loss. The local hospital was very small and did not have sufficient equipment to deal with the problem I had presented. Late in the afternoon of August 3, 1979, my physician came into my room and I could tell by the look on his face that he was concerned. He said to me, "Mr. Pittman, you are a very sick man. We do not have the expertise, personnel nor equipment here to take care of what you have. I am, therefore, recommending that you be transferred immediately to the regional medical center."

The medical center was forty-five miles away and I protested by telling my doctor that I was too tired to make the trip. Wanting to rest, I asked that the doctor allow me to stay where I was overnight and transfer me the following day. I pleaded for him to allow me to gain strength and then I said, "Perhaps I'll go tomorrow."

He replied, "You won't be here tomorrow." They prepared an ambulance, assigned a paramedic to attend me in the ambulance, and permitted my wife to ride as we started off on the trip. About half-way from the medical center, all my vital life signs suddenly failed. My veins collapsed, preventing my body from receiving the life-supporting blood and drip. The paramedic judged me dead and radioed ahead what had happened. He requested the hospital assign a physician to meet us on the ramp explaining that perhaps a physician could revive me and restore the vital life signs.

When we arrived, a waiting physician took me immediately to the emergency room where a desperate battle began that was to cover the next twenty-four hours.

A six-man team of physicians desperately fought to preserve the spark of life in my body. Seven of those twenty-four hours were spent in the emergency room, seven in surgery, and the rest in recovery. Seven days were spent in the intensive care unit. Those first seven hours in the emergency room were when my vital life signs were restored. After approximately three hours of working, one of the doctors came out and told one of the family members to prepare the family for the worst. Later, the chief surgeon came out and told my wife that I had lost a tremendous amount of blood and that they were unable to stop the blood flow. He further stated that they were unable to locate the blow-out, but were doing all that was humanly possible. He added that the situation was, indeed, grim and that he could not give her any basis for much hope.

About midnight the same night, the doctor came out of the room and told my wife that they had finally found the blow-out and that the only way they could stop it was through surgery. The doctor said that it was impossible to do that surgery because I was too old, had lost too much blood, and could not withstand the operation physically. Because of these conditions, the doctors decided to put me in ICU to try to build me up with some special nutrients. They were hoping that I could hang on till Monday. Then, they speculated, I would have a chance of withstanding this surgery. So at midnight they carried me into ICU and at 6:00 a.m. the following morning, my vital life signs failed again. The chief physician came out of ICU and told my wife, "It is something else." They took me into surgery where they worked on me for an additional seven hours.