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My young son was being transported to Cardinal Glennon's children's hospital in St. Louis Missouri. I was extremely upset. I had just left him in the hospital room with my husband, Tom there to watch him for me. I had needed to go home for clean clothes, a shower, and just a little bite to eat. I wasn't going to take time for anything more than that. Couldn't they wait for me to do that? I thought my goodness, give me a break here, but what was it they had told my husband? They had said Jerry's vital signs were dropping. What did that mean? What were vital signs? I had been with Jerry since they had admitted him to the hospital the day before. Now they were preparing to take him to St. Louis.
My son was losing his muscle tone and movement gradually as each day had passed. He had lost a little more today. It had all seemed to start when he went to get down off of the porch. His knees did not work for him and he fell hard to the ground, and just lay there looking at us. We picked him up and asked him what happened and he said to us, "My feet didn't work like they should have." "I just fell off of the porch." We picked him up, helped him straighten up, and we went on with our daily lives. We did not think too much about this first indication that something serious was wrong with our child. There weren't any signs of fever, no indigestion, no marks on him to determine that he was ill, but something was wrong with him. We just really did not know it at that time.
Then Jerry had begun to crawl across the floor instead of walking across the floor. He went along with his head to the floor, and along the floor, pushing his head along the floor with his back. I had told him to get up and walk like a normal child would, but he did not say anything about it. I could understand this, some kids played in mysterious ways, but Jerry really did not seem to be playing with us. He just kept going like that. I waited to make sure that there was something really wrong with Jerry. So I called Doctor Fine's office personnel, and I set up an appointment for us with them. I had to carry Jerry into the doctor's office. Doctor Fine became very worried when he saw that Jerry couldn't lift himself from the floor. He said to me that he needed Jerry to go to the hospital right away to be tested. There was something wrong with Jerry, and he did not know what it was. But he would need to find out. He immediately put Jerry in the Herrin hospital, and told me that Jerry couldn't walk or lift himself, up by himself. I was very worried by now and wondering what this strange occurrence was.
I had left Jerry lying on the hospital bed with Tom watching him. I needed to check on my other children, take a shower, and get a bite to eat, but that wasn't what Tom had said for me to do. He had said the hospital was flying my son Jerry to the Cardinal Glennon's Children's hospital in St. Louis and that Jerry's vital signs were dropping. He said that he did not think they had much time left to get him there, but they were taking him as soon as possible by medical helicopter. He asked me to wait on him to get home. We would then both of us, take the car and go to St. Louis in the car. I called my sister asking her if she would watch my children for me, and she said yes that she would watch the two boys for me. I took long enough to call a 1-800 number for prayer way off somewhere in Texas, and then we were off for St. Louis.
I had a premonition of things not being right. I had a voice come to me in the early evening hours and say that someone very close to me was going to be very ill. The voice said that I needed to be in prayer and fasting right away. It had given me three days before this had started to happen. I had said O.K. and I was on my knees in prayer for hours before midnight.
I didn't know then that it was my own son who I was praying for. I just found it hard to believe that it was my own son that I was praying for. You never know when you get a burden like that who you will be praying for. I had no idea that this was my own son that I was doing all the praying and fasting for. I had no idea how God would deliver us from this sickness, but I knew my God was willing. I was crying when I called the 1-800 numbers for prayer, but they said that they would be praying with me. I then called my sister in St. Louis, and my other sister in Missouri for them to pray along with me. I knew Jerry would be all right now. I had already done what God had told me to do in my hours of prayer and by fasting for someone in need.
When we reached St. Louis and the Cardinal Glennon children's hospital, they were waiting for us. Jerry was lying in the bed and talking to the nurses. He looked at me and smiled so prettily. I knew God had answered my prayers. Then the nurses told me that he had stabilized while on the way up by helicopter and was going to be all right now. There were still some tests that had to be done in order to find out what was wrong, but they assured me that they would find out what the problem was.
I just held Jerry's hands and I thanked God for giving me the answer to my prayers. During the night time hours, the specialists were running tests on jerry. It would be a day or two before we knew what was wrong with him. At first they had my husband and I cover up in order to be with jerry, and than as they took more tests, they realized he didn't need that. As a last result, they took a test of Jerry's spinal fluid, and the specimen told us what we were looking at. Jerry had Guillian-berre syndrome. His illness was bad, but he would be able to recover from it. He had been paralyzed for a few days, but he was getting better now. That gave us some hope. They sent Jerry home a week after he continued to recover the use of his limbs. They told us they thought he was a miracle child. They told us that his vital signs had gone down as far as they could go and then slowly had begun to rise. They said they wished all of their children could have this kind of a miracle. We know God has the answer to mysteries, and we know that god turned the balance in our favor.
Jerry had to go through additional tests after leaving the hospital for about nine months, but he has continued to improve. We learned that God is always there for us in good times and bad times. Jerry was in research after he left the Cardinal Glennon children's hospital for about nine months. We thank our researcher's and his doctor's for their help.
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