Not everything at White Oak was fun and games. We did some serious stuff, too. One afternoon, we were entertaining some missionaries who had come back from their foreign assignments to spend a year back home. One of those people was a doctor from Hong Kong who had treated Bruce Lee right before he died.
The reception was going well. We needed to get more ice for the punch, and I volunteered to go back to the walk-in freezer in the kitchen to get more ice. I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and long pants. When I got to the freezer, I swung open the steel door and went in to get the ice, which was toward the back. The door swung back and shut with me still inside. There is a steel rod on the inside of the door that one can press, which will open the door. I pressed it, but nothing happened.
I didn't know what to do. There was a vent at the upper left of the door. I yelled for help, but the vent had iced over. I banged on the door with my fist, but no one heard. I started kicking the steel rod, and I kicked so hard that the rod bent, but the door still didn't open. I was getting pretty cold at this point. I saw two fans at the back of the freezer, and I thought that they were blowing out cold air, so I unplugged them both. I didn't know that they were on to circulate the air.
The reception was no more than 50 feet away from where I was, but no one knew of what was happening to me. The oxygen was being used up fast, so I began to slow my breathing down. I remembered from Boy Scouts that the air at the floor is the last to breathe, so I got down on the floor trying to breathe. By now, I had been in the freezer for about six minutes, and I thought I was going to die. I was about to pass out from lack of oxygen. I managed to sit on a box of produce, and I prayed.
I asked God to deliver me from this situation, because I didn't want Mamie (our cook at White Oak) to find me the next morning dead, because she would go crazy and run out on I-77. I mustered up enough energy to try the door one more time, and it opened. I fell out onto the floor of the kitchen, gasping for air. Once I could walk, I stumbled out to the reception and told them what happened. One of our staff workers was also an EMT, and she realized I was suffering from Hypothermia. Her name was Amelia. She took me to the first aid room and began working on me. When I asked her why they hadn't come to check on me, she said everyone just thought I had been in the bathroom. They didn't think I would be too stupid to lock myself in the freezer.
For about three months after this incident, I felt light-headed. I also had a problem with my vocal chords from screaming so much, and I had a bruise on my hand from pounding on the door. As time went on, most of those problems slowly went away, although my vocal chords were damaged somewhat, and remain so. A few months later, I was talking to a building contractor about what happened to me. He said that when a door shuts like that, it creates a vacuum seal. No matter how hard one tries, the seal can't be broken. Then after six minutes, the seal gradually starts to release. He also told me that most freezers have about five minutes of oxygen in them. Prayer works. I am living proof.
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