Do You Believe in Miracles?
Ask yourself, "Have you ever witnessed a true miracle?" You know, the kind you read about in your Bible. A miracle so astounding you had no doubt it had to be from God. I think most of us could say that we have seen some type of miracle in our lifetime. I know God has performed countless miracles for my family and me in the past.
I wanted to share with you the story of the second greatest miracle I have seen God perform in my lifetime.
In July of 2004, my oldest daughter was diagnosed with leukemia which at the time was heartbreaking to say the least. After talking to the doctors we felt a little more at ease about it. They told us that the type of leukemia Theresa had was one that they had good success with and that the cure rate was about 80% now as compared to five years ago when it was almost a sure sentence of death.
All went well for the first couple of months. She received her chemo treatments on time and recovered from each as expected. The doctor referred to her as his poster child because she was textbook in what they expected in each step of the procedures.
After two rounds of chemo though, she had her first big setback. The hospital called and told us she was being taken downstairs for emergency surgery on her stomach. Somehow she had gotten an infection in her intestines and they were about to rupture. We rushed up to the hospital and got there as they were preparing to take her into surgery. The doctor came over and told us it was very serious and he would do everything he could to save her. Well, after two hours in the waiting room, the doctor came out and told us she was doing well. They had to remove most of her large intestine but he felt he had got all the infection out and she should be all right.
That was the first of many miracles to come.
After she recovered from the surgery she was doing fine again till she started to have some pains in her back which wound up being a kidney infection. This put her in the hospital again. After she recovered from that it was time for another chemo treatment.
When her body's immune system was low again from the chemo, she started to develop a runny nose. Then her eye started to swell up and she was having bad headaches from the pressure in her sinuses.
Her doctor called in an ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist to look at her. He took her down to the operating room and looked into her nose with a small camera. While looking he cleaned out her sinuses and took some tissue samples.
The next day the lab sent word that she had a fungal infection in her head and the type she had was one of the worst (mucomycossis). The ENT doctor said it was serious and he wouldn't sugar coat it for us. He said he would have to remove her lower sinus cavity, and any infected tissue around it. This is a fast moving disease because it travels through the blood stream and he had to get it all out before it got to her brain.
They went in that evening and removed her lower sinus cavity and some of the soft tissue around it, took some more tissue samples, and closed her up. The next day then found that it had spreat into her upper sinus cavity so that Friday night they went back in to take it out also. The doctor told her there was a good chance he would have to take her eye because the blood from her eye ran right into the brain and if there was fungus on her eye it should come out also. Theresa told him no, she didn't want him to take her eye out before he talked to her about it.
So there we sat for the second night in a row, worried sick over what was happening. Shortly before midnight the doctor came out and told us what all he had removed and that her eye now had the fungus all over it and we really needed to remove it tonight. With this news Wanda began to cry and told him we couldn't make that decision for her. She said not to take it, he would have to ask Theresa first. While Wanda stepped out of the room to call home and let everyone know what was going on, the doctor told me that if he did not take the eye she only had two or three days to live. I asked him if we took out the eye would she be all right? He said there was no guarantee and with this type of fungal disease there was not much he could do for her, especially with her blood count being so low.
Right before the doctor came in to talk to us a man came into the room, walked over to the corner and sat down. He pulled a Bible from his backpack and was quietly reading. He sat there while the doctor talked to us. When the doctor left, he picked up his things and walked by us on his way out. He patted on his Bible as he walked by and said, "Everything's going to be OK." After that we never saw him again.
We waited for Theresa to come out of recovery and followed her back to her room. We told her what the doctor had told us and told her she would have to think about it overnight and give him her answer in the morning. With that, we left for home.
After a restless night of sleep, Wanda and I got up the next morning and prepared to return to the hospital. Wanda asked me to get pastor Larson and the elders to come to the hospital and anoint Theresa. Wanda just had a feeling we needed to do this so I called and set it up.
We drove to the hospital and found Theresa had already spoken with the surgeon and she asked him if he could guarantee that removing the eye would save her. He told her that the only thing that would kill the fungus would be her body's natural defenses and that removing the eye was just a way of trying to stay ahead of the fungus. Fungal bodies and the human body are very similar and anything he tried to do to kill the fungus would likely kill her also. He said her eye was covered with the fungus and it would start to die in a day or two even if she kept it.
It had been six or seven days since her last chemo treatment and with the first two treatments she had bounced back in about 5 days so she felt she should start recovering anytime and that would save her and her eye. So, she told the doctor she wanted to wait a day to see if her blood count would start to rise.
After church was over, the pastor, elders and a couple of others came to the hospital to anoint Theresa. They gathered around her bed and the elders took turns praying for God to place His healing hand on her. The pastor concluded the prayers with an "amen."
At this time something happened that took my memory back to a miracle I had witnessed several years ago. Wanda and I were actors in a program called The Witness which is a musical on the life of Christ that is put on here in Hot Springs, Arkansas. We had been told to always come to the pavilion, if we were scheduled to be there, no matter what the weather looked like.
One day there was a big storm coming and we could hear it thundering as we got dressed in our costumes. Judy, our director, told us to run up top before the rain hit and meet under the shelter. When the storm hit we held hands and made a big circle. A couple of men offered a prayer asking for the rain to stop and then we began to sing one of the songs in the program. As we sang, the wind started blowing out of the south and blew the storm right out of the area. We all knew we had seen God's hand in this because as the rain fell it did not blow under the shelter anywhere we were standing but flooded the other areas where there were no people. As the song ended, the sun burst through the clouds in a way that was unforgettable.
It had been cloudy all day and looked like it would rain at anytime as we stood there in that hospital room. Wanda and I stood with our backs to the window. At the very moment the pastor said "amen" I could see a light pouring into the room and as I turned around and looked at the sun bursting through the clouds, I thought of that day at The Witness. I turned to Wanda as she turned to face me and she smiled and said, "The Witness." She too remembered how God had worked a miracle that day and we were sure He had just answered our prayers for Theresa. We looked at Theresa and she had this glow about her that just made us all feel she was going to be all right. We just new her blood count would start to come up and this would kill the fungus and she would live. We visited a little longer and then we let her get some rest.
The next morning we rushed to the hospital to see what her blood count was that day. When they told us it was still the same, we were heartbroken. Theresa started thinking maybe she had made a mistake and maybe she should have let the doctor take out the eye. We had all second guessed God's power to heal in an impossible way and limited His powers to the only way the doctor had said she could be healed.
That afternoon when we came home, Wanda went for a short walk and came back saying she felt we should move her to Little Rock and get a second opinion on her eye and the fungus before we let the doctor take her eye out. We called Theresa and asked her what she thought and she agreed so the next morning when the doctor came around she asked him if he could go ahead and send her to Little Rock to the Cancer Center. She was scheduled to go there for a bone marrow transplant anyway so the doctor told her he would try to get her up there. It's hard to get in up there because they have a waiting list and to get in it normally takes about a week, but we got a call that afternoon to come get her stuff because by some miracle they just had an opening come up and they were on there way down to get her.
Late that Monday night when she arrived, they checked her over and checked her into her room. Once she was settled in we headed back home for the night. I drove up there the next morning to find they had been running tests on her most of the night and that they were bewildered. Theresa said when they came to take her down to examine her surgery and the fungus, she told them it wasn't there anymore and that she had been healed. They were nice about it but skeptical as you can imagine. When they pulled out the packing and ran their little camera up her nose they could not find any fungus anywhere. Her eye showed no sign of fungus and had no signs of getting weaker. They went so far as to call the surgeon and ask him was he sure she had this fungus at all. She was very tired from all the tests though so I left and let her sleep the rest of the day.
The following day, Wednesday, I drove up and sat with her. As we were talking about how the fungus had disappeared and how funny it was to see these people running around in such disbelief, a man came in the room and introduced himself as being a doctor there at the hospital and his specialty was fungal infections. He told her he was not one of her doctors hut her doctor had told him about her case and he wanted to know if she would mind if he looked her over a little bit. She said, "Sure, go ahead." He proceeded to check her eyes and things and when he was finished he said she was a very lucky girl, only about 10% of the people who contracted this type of fungus survived and never had anyone survived when their blood count was low. He said, "I just wanted to meet you," and he turned and left.
The doctors told us as fast as she was healing she may come home in about a week if her blood count would come up. Everything was sounding so good, but God had other plans than what we wanted. We had shown faith in believing God could heal her but we thought He would do it by raising her blood count. We were limiting God and His power to do the unimaginable. The people at the hospital were sceptical in her healing so God had to show them too His greatness.
Theresa started getting sicker and sicker and they couldn't tell why. No matter what she tried to eat or drink she would throw it back up. Finally, after three days of this, they put a tube into her stomach and took the pressure off her stomach so she finally got some relief but she wans't getting any better. Finally, by Friday, the doctor came in and told us that we needed to make some decisions on whether or not to code Theresa when she passed away. Wanda laughed and said, "Why of course, we don't want her to die." The doctor talked for the next five minutes telling us how bad she was and that we needed to prepare ourselves for what might happen. I know she had to think we were crazy because we just sat there with a smile on our faces and told her we understood what she was saying, but we knew she was going to be all right. She finally stopped hinting around and came right out and said Theresa was going to die this weekend. I told her we understood what she was saying and if she should need to be revived to do so and to do whatever they needed to do to keep her alive, and if she should go into a coma we would worry about it then.
I know when she left she was mad but we weren't worried, we knew God had answered our prayer and if it was His will to take her this weekend then so be it. We were at peace with that. By the way, the doctor told us she wasn't on call that weekend and she would not be back until Monday. As she left the room Theresa told her, "By, I'll see you Monday." We turned and looked at each other and we were all smiling. Theresa said if God saw fit to heal her from this fungal infection she didn't see Him letting her die now. We all agreed.
The next day we got up, called Theresa to see how she was doing and got ready for church. After sharing with everyone at church all that had gone on that week everyone was down but the pastor said that we were not giving up on her yet and God could still work a miracle which was met with a big head nod from Wanda and myself.
When church was over we headed straight to the hospital. We found Theresa sitting up a little and in a talkative mood. I could tell she was feeling better than she was the day before. As we visited that day Theresa said she had faith she was going to be all right but she didn't understand why God would make her suffer through all this if He saw fit to cure the fungal infection. I shared with her the statement Ellen White made about if we could see everything from the beginning to the end we wouldn't change a thing. She said, "Maybe not, but right now I don't like it." I asked her what she was going to tell the doctor when she showed up Monday and found her still alive. She said, "I'm going to tell her, 'Good morning, Doc. I'm still here!'" After that we called it a day and told her we would be back as soon as we could tomorrow.
When we arrived the next day we were walking into the hospital and I heard a voice say, "We timed that just right." I looked up to see Theresa sitting in a wheelchair on her way back to her room after they had run some tests on her. I told he we would be right behind her.
When we got there Theresa was sitting up in bed with her legs crossed and a smile from ear to ear. She had the color back in her face and she was just glowing all over. I asked her if she was dead yet and then we all laughed. We sat and visited for a while then I asked her if she remembered what she was going to tell the doctor when she showed up in the morning. She chuckled and said, "I'm still here." I told her I wished I could get there soon enough to see her do it. It wasn't five minutes later when the doctor came into the room and looked at Theresa and with a trembling voice said, "Theresa..." "I'm still here," Theresa replied. "Ah, ah, ah, I'm not on call today but I came by to check on another patient and I looked at your chart." Tears began to fill her eyes. "Your blood cound has come up. You're going to live. Way to go, girl!" With both thumbs turned up in the air she turned and looked at Wanda and me and then ran out of the door so we wouldn't see her cry.
What a wonderful feeling to see God showing His power to non-believers. We were so happy we all had tears in our eyes. The next thing I said was to ask Theresa if there were any more questions on why God hadn't healed her completely yet and she said, "No."
On Monday morning the doctor and her whole team came in and checked her over from head to toe and she looked to be just fine. You can always tell when Theresa is starting to feel better. She starts complaining about being hungry and wanting to go home. Can't say I blame her though. If I went for seven weeks without any solid food I would be hungry too.
That afternoon the doctor came back into the room alone and told Theresa she wanted to apologize to her and her family for being so hard on us Friday night. Theresa told her a little bit about what we had all been through over the last few weeks and that it was OK, that we knew she didn't know the reasoning behind our assurance that she was going to be OK.
As I write this today we are preparing to get ready for her bone marrow transplant. Her brother was a 6 point 100% match for her so we have high hopes of having an end to this whole ordeal.
Her blood count is up to normal. They still can't find any sign of the fungus. They haven't even seen any signs of the leukemia in the bone marrow biopses, and best of all, the thing Theresa is most proud of is she still has two working, healthy, blue eyes.
Is she out of the woods? Theresa says it like this: "I may not be out of the woods yet, but at least I can see the light at the edge of the woods and it's not all dark anymore."
Theresa says once this is all over and behind her she wants to go back to school and get her degree in nursing, and she wants to specialize in oncology so she can help others through what she has had to live through.
As the mother and father of this yound lady, we are so proud of how she has handled herself through all she has been through and even more proud of what she has planned for her life.
It has been no picnic for sure, yet everywhere she has been the people are just amazed at how her attitude has been and how much fight and determination she has had to live. With three young children depending on her and the best years of her life still ahead, I would say she has a tremendous reason to live. We just hope and pray we get to see her fulfill those dreams, and with your continued prayers and love we're sure she's going to make it.
No amount of words or thanks could ever say how we truly feel about all the support we've been given. I know there are people praying for her all around the world.
May God bless you all for the wonderful things you have done and praise God for His healing powers and His mercy.
For the rest of her story click here.
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