Let Me Be More Explicit ... (Part Three): Permanent Goosebumps

At 10pm on June 8, 2003, my wife Vonna experienced what has been described, even to the most dubious of my fellow skeptics, as a genuine, documented, and verified "miracle".

From wheelchair dependent ...

Ten years ago, Vonna had been deemed “permanently disabled” by four years of rapidly advancing secondary progressive multiple sclerosis.  She was numb and partially paralyzed over the left half of her body.  She experienced double vision and eye pain.  She suffered cognitive impairment and debilitating fatigue.  She was dependent on leg braces, canes and an electric wheelchair, forcing us to move to a handicap-accessible house.  Halfway towards being licensed as a marriage and family therapist, Vonna was unable to continue working, and had to let go of her career aspirations.  At this point,the best we dared hope for was that continued medical care would at least slow down the inevitable deterioration of her condition.  But even that hope was growing thin.

... to playing volleyball.

Then, at 10pm on June 8, 2003, as Vonna was falling asleep, and several hours after we skeptically allowed a visiting minister pray for her, Vonna was startled awake by an intense heat penetrating her body, lasting for about five minutes.  The next morning, she got out of bed to the astonishing realization that, for the first time in years, she had feeling on the left side of her body, that her left leg was responding, and that she had to awkwardly try to remember how to walk with two working legs.  Within days, Vonna began kayaking, hiking, swimming, and even playing volleyball.  Whatever had happened that evening was beginning to seem like not only an instantaneous, but a complete healing from every trace of MS.   But for a skeptic like me, the next question became, was it permanent?

With skeptical hyper-vigilance, and a certain measure of stunned disbelief (at least on my part), we kept looking for the slightest hint of any of the all-too-familiar symptoms.  But none ever returned, not even for a moment.  A few weeks later, Vonna returned to see her neurologist, who examined her diligently, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, finally confirming that, as far as he could tell, Vonna had no detectable indications of MS.  In stunned amazement, he was left with nothing to say other than “It’s a miracle,” and to tell her there he saw no reason she needed to take another dose of the dozen or so medications on which she had been dependent.

 

Today, we are ten years closer to the declaring Vonna's healing as not only instantaneous and complete, but permanent.

If we had dared to ponder in early 2003 what things would be like ten years in the future, the best we probably would have expected was that Vonna might still be able to take a few steps on her own, and would hopefully have not yet reached the point of needing full-time care. Never could we have imagined that instead we'd be spending the day kayaking and biking. We are thankful and blessed beyond our wildest dreams.   

Word for the day:  horripilation

And that's why, ten years later, thinking about what happened at 10pm on June 8, 2003, still gives us the goosebumps.