I headed to school for teacher orientation on August 4th, but that is all I remember from that day. I entered the school, collapsed, and was rushed to the ER for severely high pulse rate and low blood pressure. A rapid Chest CT revealed there was a blood clot blocking both branches of my pulmonary artery. I was rushed to the Cath lab for an emergency thrombectomy. The equipment needed to restore my artery would normally take one hour to prepare, but there was a doctor was teaching about the equipment that morning, so the equipment was able to be used immediately. But once in surgery, I proceeded to code on the table. I went from feeling fine and healthy to life escaping my body in an instant.
It took the doctors fifteen minutes to bring me back.
At 27 years old, I survived a massive heart attack, with both branches 95% blocked.
The doctors placed me on an ECHMO machine. It pumps the blood from my veins to get oxygenated in a machine and then reenters to oxygenate the body, bypassing my heart. That little machine saved my life.
Two days later, my doctors realized something was wrong. I was not waking up within a typical post-surgery timeline. An MRI revealed significant brain damage from lack of oxygen. The neurologist explained that the damage was in the part of the brain that cannot heal itself. I had a 5% chance of waking up and even if I did, it would be in a vegetative state. They told my family to prepare to say goodbye.
But God.
My family refused to agree with the diagnosis and begin to pray without ceasing. Friends and family stood with us in prayer that I would be healed in Jesus’ name. My students even led a prayer vigil directly outside my ICU room in the 100-degree Oklahoma heat.
Miracle after miracle began to happen.
I started to move my toes on command and pulling at the many wires surrounding my body. On day nine in the ICU, I opened my eyes for the first time. On day ten, I was moved from the ICU. I became coherent - acting and speaking like myself, something that the doctors could not understand or explain. I began standing on my own the next day and walking the next. Less than one week after leaving the ICU, I walked out of the hospital to inpatient rehab for one week. I have advanced through cognitive and speech therapy much more quickly than anticipated. My follow up brain scans at CT scans show miraculous restoration, improvement, and no clots. The damage is gone entirely.
What once was dead is now alive and working better than ever before. God still works miracles today.
“Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.” Isaiah 41:10
There is so much more to the story, but I will leave you with what my neurologist shared at the foot of my hospital bed, “We can only understand what we have been taught and what we can see with our human eyes; but clearly, there is a Greater Physician at work.”
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