Divine Providence?

So last night, I cared for an elderly patient that was involved in a single vehicle accident.  Seems my patient drove their car off the road into a ditch...  severe damage, airbags deployed.  In addition, the car started on fire and was a total loss.  So already two instances/situations that this patient could have died...  the third was the extreme Phoenix heat, ~109 F yesterday afternoon!

But this patient was able to self extricate, avoid the fire, and was injury free!

But what saved this patient was the fire.  You see, the accident was in a relatively remote location, not well traveled.  This patient could have been sitting out in the desert heat for quite a long time before someone would have happened along to find them... but a big black smoke plume got someone's attention and they called 911 to report the fire.

Ends up, this patient suffered from Alzheimer's Disease, somehow got a hold of the car keys, drove from the East Valley, way out to the West Valley.  Survived the crash.  But in the ~109 F heat, decided they needed to light a candle they had in the car, "in order to stay warm."  The candle tipped, ignited other things, whoosh... the entire car is on fire!

So, it was a debilitating disease that caused a chain of events, that very well might have caused the death of this person in one of three ways.  But it was one of the things this person did, that ultimately saved their life!

For the smoke from the fire caused an emergency response.  No fire, no response.  The patient would have been out in the heat of the desert, stranded for days!  But the fire they caused by the lack of cognitive ability... ultimately saved their life.

Divine Providence!