Jesus Saved My Life: A Medical Miracle

Let me set the scene.  We live in the mountains without electricity with small houses scattered throughout the mountains.  There are no doctors or stores or internet or buses or cars.  We use a solar charger to keep our team phone charged for emergencies.  It’s been raining for four days and our phone is dead without the sun.  The dirt roads are beginning to wash away.  Our contact, Pedro, lives in a city about an hour away and is the only person we know with a car.

Dinner at 6pm Thursday.  Fried eggs, refried beans, tostadas and sweet potatoes.  Yum!

Itching at 8pm.  I thought it was dry skin due to the cold weather.

Benadryl at 9pm.  I didn’t want the itching to keep me awake.

Rash & Benadryl at 3am.  Surely this is just a skin reaction.

Throat began swelling at 6am.  Jay and our host, Roman, are trying to contact Pedro to get me to a hospital but both phones are dead.  Roman runs to a friend’s house to borrow a phone.  Pedro doesn’t answer.  I begin waking up my teammates asking for an EpiPen or steroids.

30mg of a teammate’s Prednisone at 7am.  Roman calls again and found out Pedro is in another city at a church service.  We’re getting mixed messages.  He could be here between 8 and 9 or he could be here at 1:30 or he could be here at midday.

Jay, Kent and Anika start running down the mountain for help at 8am.  My medical knowledge is getting the best of me knowing how quickly anaphylaxis can result in death.  There was no way for me to get off the mountain.  I was terrified.  My team prayed for healing, for help, for comfort.  Then I remembered a sermon we’d listened to recently.  He spoke about knowing in the hard times that God has already won the battle.  When God has given us a word of something to come and it hasn’t happened yet, we know we can beat whatever we’re facing because we still have a promise to receive.  God told me on several occasions last month that I was going to be a mother.  That hadn’t happened yet, so I knew I would live through this.  That’s when the peace came.  That’s when the joy came.

I begged my teammates to play cards with me at 8:30am to distract me from my labored breathing.  It worked, but my chest was getting tighter and my throat was constricting.  I had to remind myself to try to breathe.  It wasn’t happening naturally.  I wanted so badly to drink water or go to sleep but my medical logic knew those were the two things I should absolutely avoid.

Pedro arrived with Jay, Kent and Anika at 10:30am.  The drive took an hour and a half because of all the mud.  I had so little oxygen that I was fighting to stay awake.  I’d close my eyes for a few seconds and see nothing but light.  It was such a dark, dreary, foggy day…where was this light coming from??  I heard voices calling me closer.  I’d open my eyes for as long as I could and slip back into this almost lucid dream.  This should have been terrifying, but I had no fear because…

We arrive at the clinic hospital at 12pm and within minutes I was injected with Epinephrine.  Within 15 minutes, my throat was opening, my chest was relaxing, my breathing was normalizing.

More Epi, steroids, albuterol and fluids until 4pm.

Any normal anaphylactic reaction to food would have happened within a couple hours.  It is highly likely that I could have died in my sleep, but God had other plans.  Maybe the copious amounts of Benadryl and the small steroid dose helped, but ultimately, God is a Healer, awesome in power and He wasn’t finished with me yet.  It’s the only explanation of the ridiculously slow progression of my reaction.  The doctor couldn’t believe I hadn’t had food or drink that same morning.  She couldn’t believe I was still breathing from something ingested 18 hours ago. 

I’m still recovering, have a rash and will be on high dose steroids and antihistamines for a few days but my spirits are so high because I know that Jesus saved my life and gave me peace beyond understanding yesterday.

Needless to say, we’ll be investing in an EpiPen.

Jenn Dannelley