Natalie’s Story
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
Natalie was born into this world on February 17, 2000. She was a little early, but came out screaming! She was a true blessing from God, and brought such great joy into our lives. As she became older, and more mobile, she was such a full of life toddler. She loved being outside, playing with the dogs, her sandbox, and running around barefoot. Needless to say, that when Natalie was awake, she was on the go…..full blast.
On September 16, 2001, while our nation was mourning the terrorist attacks, our family was attacked. Natalie became ill, and went into cardiac arrest. It was later determined to have been a small bowel obstruction that caused her to go into septic shock. This led to the cardiac arrest, which caused the severe brain damage. Natalie’s injury is known as anoxic, which means that the brain was starved of oxygen.
We didn’t realize the severity of her injury until a few days later, after a MRI showed massive brain damage from lack of oxygen. Natalie was in a coma for over a week, in the ICU unit at Children’s hospital. The doctor’s gave us little
hope of her coming off of the ventilator, or even opening up her eyes again.
Through the grace of GOD, on Tuesday, September 25, Natalie opened her eyes. The nurses became family to us, and prayed and gave us shoulders to cry on. We can’t say enough about what loving, caring people we met during our stay, including the families of other sick children.
Over the next 12 weeks, our family lived in Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Natalie was in the ICU for 2 weeks, then went to the step-down unit for 2 weeks. For the last 8 weeks of our stay, we began rehabilitation with Natalie. Many hours during the day were spent just getting Natalie to unclench her jaw, hold her head up, and stretching out her arms and legs that were drawn up due to the brain injury. The therapist at Children’s hospital were exceptional, and provided us with lots of encouragement, and information for resources, and things to concentrate on with Natalie.
Through the grace of God, strength of Jesus, and support of our family, friends, and church, we were going to be ok, even though the road we were about to travel upon was going to be bumpy, rocky, and a new uncharted course for our family.
We came home with Natalie on December 7, 2001. It was a whole new world to us, and we didn’t know what to expect. Her new therapies started almost immediately. They worked on mostly the same things, head control, sitting up, stretching her arms and legs. Natalie was still crying alot during therapy, and not sleeping well at night, which really began to wear on us. Somehow we got through the first few months.
Throughout the spring and summer of 2002, Natalie was really making some improvements. She began to eat small amounts of food by mouth, she would hold her head up more on her own (her attitude really shown on this), and she began to follow us more with her eyes. It was hard to see the progress because it was in small steps, but any progress was good news for us.
During the summer, Natalie began to eat lunch and dinner by mouth. We were still feeding her, but she was eating by mouth. She especially enjoys chicken noodle dinners, and chicken and broccoli. She is still getting her morning and late night feed by the feeding tube, but this is great progress for the little angel they said wouldn’t come off the ventilator, or open her eyes again.
We had noticed one particular change in Natalie that we had prayed for throughout all of this. A SMILE!!!!!!!!! At first, we thought it might have been some type of seizure activity that we had been warned might occur, but the more she did it, we realized it was on purpose. It was really noticeable when we would play games with her, like tickle bug or sing goofy songs while moving her arms and legs.