I believe in miracles, and I believe in God and here’s why.
On February 5th 1991, in the middle of a tropical storm, I wrapped my car around a tree traveling 80 MPH. I was taking my pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver our first child, Kara. With a concussion I pulled my wife from the wreckage and flagged down a passing car.
As God planned, the person who stopped to help us was a paramedic on his way to work. As he drove toward the city he could tell that we were not going to make the Humana hospital in time for the delivery. Instead, we stopped at the nearest midwife’s house on the way and Kara was born minutes later.
The Baton Rouge Advocate dubbed her “Kara the Miracle Baby”. How right they were.
Four years ago Friday I left work in Atlanta and headed home as usual. I only lived about 10 miles from the bank, however in Atlanta rush hour traffic it usually took 30 minutes or longer to get home. As I waited in traffic my phone started ringing; I could see by the caller ID it was my wife.
I debated answering it because I knew she was calling to give me something extra to do before I got home. Little did I know that this phone call was about to change my life forever.
I answered the phone in a sarcastic manor, as I usually do, and said “yes dear”. All I heard was screaming on the other end, it was the sound of my kids (3 boys) and my wife screaming in tones I had never heard before. At first I thought it was a joke or something because I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying.
I waited for them to quiet down before I tried to speak but the longer I listened the more I began to believe that the call wasn’t a joke. My wife was trying to tell me something but I couldn’t make out what she was saying because her speech was broken and panicked.
Finally, I screamed as loud as I could “SHUT UP AND TELL ME WHAT’S WRONG”!
“Kara’s hung herself and the ambulance is here, I have to go, I’ll meet you at the hospital.”
The words didn’t register.
My daughter was a beautiful happy 14 year old cheerleader who had just called us an hour earlier to ask if she could order a pizza. I screamed back at my wife in disbelief and all I heard her say as the phone dropped was “GET HOME”.
Dazed and confused, I hung up my cell phone and sat in the bumper to bumper traffic for about a minute in disbelief and confusion. Of all of the bad news that you could possibly receive over the phone how can you prepare for the one that tells you that your daughter has hung herself; much less while you are sitting in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic?
Once the adrenaline kicked in I began driving like a madman around cars, on medians and sidewalks, even going as far as to push one car out of my way with my truck that wouldn’t move. I made it to the house in about ten minutes.
As I arrived, Kara was being loaded into the ambulance with two paramedics that were performing CPR. As they closed the door the driver quickly asked me if I was coming with them as he jumped behind the wheel. Still dazed and speechless I nodded and climbed in the front of the cab. At this point I still didn’t know exactly what had happened, I just knew it was bad.
On the ride in they made several calls to the ER and after speaking with several doctors we were re-routed to Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in mid transit. I heard the driver request for life flight because of the traffic and extra distance we had to travel but he was told it was unavailable.
As we neared the hospital I could see in the back of the ambulance that the paramedics were still performing CPR on Kara and had been the entire trip. I still couldn’t believe what was happening. In my mind I couldn’t really grasp the severity of the situation. Somehow, it just felt like another trip to the emergency room that we had taken with our boys for stitches or something. That is until we arrived.
When we arrived Kara was whisked into the ER faster than I could get out of the ambulance and make it up the ramp. I attempted to follow her into the hospital but was met and stopped by the hospital Chaplin. She immediately grabbed my hand and guided me into a private room away from the other people that were waiting in the ER; it finally began to sink in.
Once we were in the room she asked me if I wanted to pray with her and I answered her “why”? At that very moment I finally grasped the severity of the situation. I asked her “Kara is going to be ok isn’t she”? She answered me only with her eyes and repeated “let’s pray”. At this point I began to sob uncontrollably; I bolted from the waiting room and began searching the ER for her.
Almost like every hospital scene you have ever seen in the movies or on television I crashed into the room where they were working on Kara and tried to speak with her. The surgeon, as if it were scripted, screamed for someone to get me out of there. Security soon arrived and persuaded me to return to the waiting room.
After about 20 minutes the doctor came into the room with me and the Chaplin and told me that my daughter had suffered massive brain loss due to a lack of oxygen and was resting on a ventilator right now. I asked the doctor directly “is she going to make it” and he replied just as direct, but gentler, “no”.
He asked me if I wanted to come in to the room where she was to see her perhaps for the last time. I left the waiting area and slowly made my way to the room where they had been working on her. The first thing I saw was her chest moving up and down mechanically from the machine that they had her hooked up to. When I saw that I immediately became sick and had to sit down.
All I remember from that visit were the freckles on her face (that she hated) when I leaned in and kissed her and the hot pink glitter fingernail polish (that I hated) when I held her hand.
The doctor told me that since there was some minimal brain activity they were going to move her to PICU for the neurologist to examine before any final decisions were made.
That night she was put into an induced coma so that we could discuss our options with the family and see exactly how long the insurance company would let us keep her alive. As it turns out, Blue Cross Blue Shield rocks, they gave us a blank check and wished us well. We decided to wait and see what God wanted us to do.
Over the next 3 weeks we received over 20,000 emails from the prayer requests we had sent out through our work and church. Kara remained in an induced coma for this time with little signs of change.
Nearing the 5th week Kara’s brain activity increased slightly which gave us hope. However we were assured by the doctors that this was normal and that her brain activity was too low to support bodily functions like breathing and so on.
During the 6th week my former wife (Kara’s Mother) and I were sitting by Kara’s bed in the PICU when a man showed up and asked us if he could pray for Kara for us. This seemed odd because Kara was only allowed visitors by appointment and only two at a time. Neither of us knew this man but we agreed that we should all pray.
After we prayed I walked the man, whose name I can’t remember, out of the hospital and we hugged as he got in his car and left. We never really figured out who sent him or how he knew about Kara. All he said was “God put it in my heart to come down here and pray for your little girl”.
Kara’s brain activity nearly doubled the next morning when they took the daily reading. This got the doctor’s attention and that evening we decided that we would pull her off her ventilator the next morning and see if she could breathe on her own, and she did.
Kara became fully conscious over the next few days; however she had suffered massive brain damage and lacked the ability to speak or walk. The doctors told us that she may get her motor skills back to be able to walk, but mentally, she was probably playing her “A game”. At age 14 Kara began re-learning to speak and tie her shoes.
Yesterday I took pictures of Kara in her Prom dress, she’s beautiful. (I will post them tomorrow). She is a student at Choctawhatchee High School and was one of the nominees for this year’s Prom Queen. She has a B in algebra and will graduate in another year; she wants to be an attorney.
Kara still speaks slowly and has a delayed cadence, but she is committed to working through these issues in spite of what the doctors tell her she can’t do.
She eventually plans to travel to from school to school and speak to students about the dangers of playing the “choking game” and inducing hyperventilating which is what caused her accident.
God has a plan for my baby, Kara the Miracle Baby.
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