Blessed by an Apostle

by Robert Rosskopf

I was feeling rather sickly and sometimes had trouble breathing. I went to a doctor for a checkup, and he discovered that my heart was pumping erratically. He referred me to a heart specialist. The specialist had wear a heart monitor for several days. Having confirmed that it was beating erratically, he decided to do an angiogram. A small camera was inserted into the artery in my leg and threaded up through my body to look at my heart. It looked healthy and there was no evidence of heart disease. Then they did a sonogram where they use sound to view the size and shape of the heart, and watch the way it beats. I was diagnosed with Cardio Myopathy. It is a gradual enlargement and weakening of the heart. The doctor explained that the heart muscles become confused, and start contracting in different directions, working against each other. He told me that there was no cure, and that most people died within five years of diagnosis. He prescribed a special medicine which had the undesirable side-effect of lowering my already low blood pressure. I started to live life in a haze.

A few months later, I attended Stake Conference. Apostle M. Russell Nelson was the keynote speaker. He explained that he didn't know why he was called to visit this particular conference. With over a thousand Stakes in the church, each having two conferences a year, it was rare that any one might have a visit from one of the twelve apostles. I thought that I should ask him for a blessing, so I went to my Bishop after the session was over, and he directed me to the Stake President. The Stake President in turn told me to go and ask the apostle. Elder Nelson said that he had a few minutes and agreed to give me and one other person a blessing.

Elder Nelson was a heart surgeon before he became an apostle. He actually operated on President Kimball's heart. In one General Conference, shortly after his surgery, he pointed to Elder Nelson and in a moment of light humor, and said "That man has touched my heart very deeply".

Elder Nelson proceeded to ask me all the questions that a heart doctor might ask of a patient. Then he laid his hands upon my head and gave me a priesthood blessing. In the blessing, he told me to seek competent medical advice. There was a wonderful spirit present in that blessing and I had no doubt that I was being given a gift from God.

After about three months, my symptoms completely disappeared. Following the advice of the blessing, I sought a second opinion from another heart specialist. This doctor was somewhat surprised that I wanted a second opinion. He didn't think there was much point to it, but he scheduled me to take the same tests again. I wore a heart monitor for a week and took a sonogram. The intern who administered the sonogram looked puzzled and then smiled, but refused to share with me the test results. I already knew what the results would be, but kept it to myself. I was fairly confident that they would find nothing. When the doctor finally gave me his diagnosis, it was exactly that. They didn't find an erratic heartbeat and they didn't find any enlargement of the heart. I was given a clean bill of health.

When I returned to the original doctors office a couple of years later, the doctor was more than merely skeptical and had me run the same tests again. Still negative. That was more than 15 years ago. I still feel fine.