Have you ever had an encounter during a crisis that you absolutely cannot explain? It happened to me, and because of it, I now believe in angels. Here is the story of my angel encounter:
On December 19, 1996, my young son, Richard, who was only 3 1/2 at the time, was diagnosed with a very deadly form of cancer called neuroblastoma. The prognosis was not good, and I remember the doctors gently informing my ex-husband and I that our son's odds of survival were roughly 20-40% IF his cancer responded to chemotherapy treatments. But my son was already at Stage 4 at the time of his diagnosis, so the doctors did not hold out much hope. In fact, I remember them very gently saying, "Our best advice to you is to prepare yourselves for a funeral." All I remember is my mind screaming "What? WHAT?? Are you telling me that my baby, who has only been sharing my life for 3 1/2 years is going to be GONE soon?? What?!?" but I didn't say a thing because I was completely stunned and shocked into silence.
The doctors reassured us and promised that they would do everything that they possibly could to save my son. But still, they did not hold out hope that this was going to have a good ending.
On January 1, 1997, my son received his very first dose of chemotherapy...Happy New Year! We actually watched as this poison went into his veins and damaged his hearing and peripheral nervous system...the doctors warned ahead of time that it probably would. The next 11 months are a blur of chemotherapy treatments, surgery, radiation therapy, a bone marrow transplant...and watching my son slowly waste away. In the very first week of chemotherapy that he received, he literally dropped 10 pounds in one week...at the time, he only weighed in at 50 lbs., so he lost one-fifth of his body weight in a week! That would be like a 150 lb. person losing 30 lbs. in one week!
My son's weight and appearance began to spiral downward. Not only was he dropping weight like crazy, but his color washed out and he became corpse white, then the bruising under his eyes, and all the hair loss...and not just hair on top of his head, either, but all his eyelashes, his eyebrows, even the hair inside his nostrils fell out. He looked like a walking corpse...like the photos you see from Auschwitz. And whenever I asked the doctors how he was doing overall, they would say, "He's still alive". That was the only real response or reassurance that they gave me through the whole year. No other words. Every day I was scared to death that it would be my son's last day.
After Richard's first round of chemotherapy, he had to stay in the hospital until his body recovered from the treatment. Chemotherapy destroys your red blood cells, your white blood cells and your platelets (which cause clotting). Once he recovered, they let us go home for a week or so until his next round of chemotherapy. However, that very night at home, he caught a fever and we could not get it to break all night long. The next morning, I called the hospital, and they urged us to hang up and "bring Richard in right NOW"...they didn't even want us to pack...just load him up and bring him asap. So we did.
By the time we got Richard to the hospital, he was lethargic and nearly unresponsive. By the time we got him to his room, he was unconscious from the fever. I was beside myself, sick with worry. I remember my ex husband telling me that he was going to return home to pack clothes for us, because he knew we were going to be staying at the hospital for at least a few days. The nurses were getting Richard checked in, so that left me with nothing to really do except sit on the other bed, hug myself, and watch. My ex-husband left, and so did the nurses, and I was alone with my son, watching him from the other bed, wishing he would wake up and be okay. I just wanted my baby.
It couldn't have been that long, maybe a couple of minutes, when I saw a woman poke her head in through the door of our room, look around like she was looking for someone, then leave again before I could say anything. I thought she might be lost, and that was all the thought I gave it. A minute or two later, she poked her head in again, with a look on her face that seemed to say "Is this the right room? I could have sworn this was the right room!", and then she was gone again. This time, curious, I watched the door. The third time she stuck her head through the doorway with the same look on her face, I asked, "Can I help you?" I was a bit annoyed...I mean, I was having a crisis here...
She looked up right into my eyes, and said, "Yes. Do you need someone to help you pray?"
This was not the response I had expected, and I was taken aback a bit. I stammered at her that her timing couldn't be better, and invited her to come into the room. She approached me, gently held out her hand, and said, "My name is Karen. God sent me to you because he told me that someone needed help reaffirming their faith." I didn't know what to say to that, I wasn't really religious, so all I said was "What...?"
I will never forget her words. She said, "I was at church praying, and God told me that I had to come to this hospital, to this floor, to this room, to help someone with their faith."
I was floored. We were on the sixth floor of a huge hospital, and had only been at the hospital for 20 minutes at the most. Why and how would she randomly pick us? I looked her over. Karen was grandmotherly...she was an older African American woman, maybe 5' 2" tall, a little heavy but not obese...her hair was grey going white, and styled very short and curly around the sides and back of her head. She wore a simple black dress, just below her knees, with short sleeves halfway to her elbows and a high neckline. Her dress was simple without any decoration at all...not even a brooch or a necklace. I don't remember her having any jewelry on at all. But in her hands she carried a huge leatherbound Bible that was about the size of the Yellow Pages. The cover was very well worn, as though it had been read and re-read many times.
She must have seen my confusion, because she then told me that "God wanted me to come to you, so that I can tell you that he is going to heal your son." My brain reeled...how could this person come off the street, out of the blue, and tell me something like this when the docs were all telling me otherwise? She had no idea who we were, what my son's story was, what his odds of survival were...was this some kind of cruel joke? No, she didn't look like a cruel person. All I could manage to say was, "I'm sorry...?" because I didn't understand what she was telling me. She continued, patting her bible.
"God promises us in the Bible that He will heal the sick. He told me to come here to you so that I could tell you this. Your son is going to be okay, God is going to heal him. It will be a tough road, but he is going to be okay."
"Stunned" doesn't even begin to describe how I was feeling...
Then Karen asked me if it would be okay if she prayed for Richard, and prayed for me and his dad, too. I told her that would be nice of her, and that I would appreciate it. She prayed to God to give me and my ex the strength and courage to help our son get through this. Then she touched Richard, and he figeted a bit, so she touched me and had me touch Richard, and he lay still again. She then prayed to God, saying that He had sent her to me to comfort me and give me His message that He will heal my son. She said that my son was in His hands now, and she prayed that He would guide Richard safely through this time. At that point, Richard started fussing again. When I gave him my attention, Karen gently said over my shoulder, "I will leave you to your son now", and left. I realized that I hadn't thanked her, and when I turned to do so, I saw her walking through the doorway and out the room.
I went quickly to the door to catch up with her, but when I got to the hallway, she was gone. I looked both directions up and down the hallway, and it was a long distance either way to the elevators at either end. There is no way a 60 or 70 year old heavyset woman in heels was going to sprint it to those elevators! I was in my early thirties and a very fast sprinter, and there's no way that even I could have made it to the elevators in those few seconds of time. Karen had literally vanished.
I looked in front of me at the nurse's station, and there were two nurses sitting there, one of whom I knew by name. I asked them if they had seen the lady who had just left my room, and if they could tell me which way she'd gone? Both nurses looked up at me, and I could see from the looks on their faces that they were wondering what I was talking about. So I described Karen, and told them that she'd just left my room not 5 seconds ago, and could they please tell me which way she'd gone? The nurses looked at each other with strange looks on their faces, then back at me. Chris said, "Jackie, we've been sitting at this desk for about 25 minutes, and the only person who has come out of your room is you." I disagreed, and again, described Karen. Both nurses shook their heads. "No, Jackie," Chris said, "Absolutely no one has come out of your room but you." All of this conversation took only a few seconds.
I thought that perhaps the nurses just didn't see Karen, so I ran down to the closest elevator, which was around a corner, but there was no one there. Not enough time for Karen to get to the elevator ahead of me, either. And I could see the other elevator clearly from my room, so I knew Karen didn't go that way. I have no idea where she went...there were no other exits from the 6th floor...it was as though she'd simply vanished into thin air.
A week later, Richard was perfectly fine...his fever had broken, and he was up and playing. Only then did the doctors inform us that he'd had pneumonia so badly that they were convinced he was going to die. They could not believe that he was still alive, and called him a "miracle".
I never saw Karen again after that. But for the rest of the year, I clung to her words as they gave me a hope that the doctors wouldn't or couldn't give to me. Every time that things looked bleak, I would silently replay her words over and over in my head. They were literally my lifeline through all of 1997.
In October of 1997, we were sent to Lucille Packard's Children's Hospital for a bone marrow transplant/stem cell rescue. We were there for almost a month, while Richard underwent the time consuming process that took about 2 to 3 weeks to complete. When they finally let us go home, I remember packing Richard up in my truck and driving away from the hospital...he was nearly 5 years old now. When I reached the freeway (only a couple of miles away), I saw the biggest, brightest rainbow of my life over the hospital that we'd just left. I remember the first thought to come to mind was that a rainbow is God's promise...and I thought it was really interesting and fitting that my son's cancer road started with a visit from an angel and ended with a promise from God.
Richard has now been in remission for 14 1/2 years, is now a healthy, strong young man of 19, and will be graduating from High School in three weeks. To this day, whenever he has his annual checkups, his doctors all still shake their heads and mutter "miracle" under their breaths.
I do believe in angels.
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