19
An Appointment With the Great Physician
With her life hanging in the balance, Gracie Rummel received help from a supernatural source.
Gracie sprawled on the bench overlooking the community pool. Her brothers Ethan, five, and Nicholas, seven, were having a blast on the water slide, and her mother had tried in vain to coax Gracie onto the steps of the pool. But Gracie just lay on the bench wrapped in her towel. Odd behavior for almost any three-year-old, but very disturbing for this one, a little fish who loved everything about the water.
“How’s your breathing, Gracie?” Robin asked.
Gracie had been short of breath lately. Robin, an ER physician, had taken Gracie twice to the hospital to be checked by her colleagues. But Gracie, outgoing and extroverted, had perked up each time she was around the hustle-bustle of the hospital. And each time, the doctors evaluating Gracie had concluded that she appeared perfectly healthy.
But Robin suspected something was wrong. Now, seeing Gracie’s poolside lethargy, she was more convinced than ever.
“C’mon, let’s head home.” She waved the boys out of the water. “Ready, Gracie? Let’s go home.”
Gracie climbed out of the chair and headed toward the gate. Suddenly she sat down on the cement. “I can’t,” she said breathlessly. “I’m too tired.”
Robin took Gracie back to the ER. This time she was admitted to the pediatric ward. That night, Robin’s husband, Tim, stayed home with the boys while she spent the night next to Gracie’s hospital bed. The child’s heart was racing and she was complaining that her belly hurt. By that point, she hadn’t urinated in almost twenty-four hours. She was also gradually becoming less and less responsive.
When the nursing staff hesitated to call Gracie’s pediatrician in the middle of the night, Robin called her husband, Tim, also a physician.
“Tim, I think Gracie’s dying. You need to get hold of John and get him over here.”
Tim reached John Bascom, who was at Gracie’s side by six that morning. By then she was being moved to the ICU. She was showing signs of being in shock, but from what? Where was it coming from?
Listening to Gracie’s heart, Dr. Bascom heard something amiss. “Before we do a CT scan of her abdomen,” he said, “let’s get an echocardiogram of her heart.”
Robin stood with John as they looked at the scanned images of Gracie’s heart. She could see right away that Gracie’s heart was barely pumping. “Where’s her heart?” Robin said, torn between her roles as mother and doctor. “Nothing’s moving.”
It turned out Gracie had contracted viral myocarditis, caused by a virus that settles in the muscles of the heart, making it thicken and stiffen until the heart can’t pump anymore. Because Gracie’s heart wasn’t pumping normally, there wasn’t enough blood pressure for her other organs to function well. Her stomach didn’t digest food normally, which is why her belly hurt and she couldn’t eat, and her kidneys weren’t getting enough blood pressure to eliminate fluids properly. As a result, fluids her body would normally eliminate built up in her body, leaking into her tissue and skin.
Of children and adults who contract viral myocarditis, a third die, a third need a heart transplant, and a third go on to experience partial to full recovery.
Grasping what Gracie faced, Robin fought back waves of nausea. There was a sense of relief in finally knowing what was wrong, but also a sense of hopelessness in the face of such a devastating a diagnosis.
The next day doctors determined that, with Gracie’s body saturated with fluid, they couldn’t administer medications through an IV. Instead, they would have to utilize a peripherally inserted central (PIC) line, which led into Gracie’s heart cavity in order to drain fluids and administer meds.
Even though Robin had done this procedure countless times on her own patients, she couldn’t bear to be in the room. Tim had arrived by then and was there holding Gracie’s hand as Robin stepped into the hallway. She was so thankful for his steady, gentle presence, just as she was grateful for such an intelligent doctor who had hurried to Gracie’s side and quickly diagnosed the problem. She felt blessed to live in America where her daughter could get good medical care. But she still felt overwhelmed and grief-stricken, knowing that Gracie was likely to die.
Family and friends began to rally. Tim and Robin’s pastor, Matt Heard, from Woodman Valley Chapel in Colorado Springs, came to Gracie’s room in ICU, anointed her with oil, and prayed over her. Robin’s dad and stepmom arrived from out of town to stay with Ethan and Nicholas while Robin sat with Gracie, and Tim divided his time between home, Gracie, and his medical practice. Robin’s sister arrived and simply sat for days with Robin in ICU, a courageous gift since she had recently lost her seventeen-day-old son to a sudden infection.
At the end of that week, Gracie was still alive. Physicians sent her home attached to a monitor, on oxygen, and with sixteen different medications to try to keep her fluids at a level that wouldn’t interfere with her digestive tract, her kidneys, and her heart. The doctors were adamant: If Gracie caught so much as a cold, she would die. Colorado was experiencing a horrible influenza epidemic that winter, so it would be a challenge keeping her well. But Robin and Tim were fiercely determined.
When six-year-old Ethan came down with influenza and a temperature of 105, Robin quarantined him to one side of the house and Gracie to the other. For weeks, she donned gown and gloves to attend to her children, so she didn’t expose Gracie to Ethan’s influenza or get sick herself.
When Ethan recovered, Tim and Robin pulled both boys out of public school so she could homeschool them. To try to save Gracie’s life, the family put themselves in quarantine, rarely leaving the house lest anyone bring home a virus or bug that would, literally, be the death of Gracie. Even Dr. Bascom visited Gracie at home rather than have the fragile toddler risk a trip to his office.
The only time Gracie left was when her monitor showed her fluid levels to be so high that her medications wouldn’t absorb through her stomach, and she had to go to the hospital to be given meds through her central line.
But Gracie didn’t respond well. Even in the midst of the most attentive care, she continued to decline, retaining dangerous levels of fluid. Trips to the hospital increased. She barely ate and lost even more weight. If she lay down, fluid would fill her lungs and she would drown, so she slept in a crib next to her parent’s bed, propped up on pillows and wearing a monitor that would sound if she slipped into a horizontal position.
One day Robin got a call from Gracie’s cardiologist, Dr. Duster, who said, “There’s a study at the University of Denver. They’re using a beta blocker and having good results with adults with myocarditis. It’s helping hearts to develop healthy muscle tissue. They’re just now taking a look at the drug’s impact on kids. I’d like to enroll Gracie.”
Robin and Tim quickly agreed. It was the first bit of good news in three months, ever since that day at the pool when Robin knew without a doubt that something was terribly wrong.
Initially Gracie was accepted, and her blood pressure was strong enough to continue. Physicians tried three times, but each time she was dropped from the program. She was, in fact, too sick to participate in a program that might give them a fighting chance to save her life.
Dr. Duster wasn’t willing to give up. He went to a pharmacy, instructing the staff to compound a child’s dose of the drug specifically for Gracie. She was no longer part of the study, but she continued to take the medication. Still, she continued to go downhill. Nothing seemed to be helping.
One Friday evening Robin was getting ready to leave the cardiologist’s office with Gracie when the doctor said gently, “Look, Robin, your whole family has been quarantined and under a lot of stress for months now. The flu season is over, and the risk of Gracie catching something is much lower. Gracie’s not improving. But you have today. You can lose this time you have with her by sitting around and worrying, or you can enjoy the time you have. I’m asking you to get Tim and the boys and go out to dinner tonight. Just have a normal family night together.”
They were bittersweet words. But that night Tim and Robin piled the boys in the backseat, strapped Gracie in her car seat, and headed to their favorite Mexican restaurant.
Halfway there, Gracie announced, “Mommy, I had a dream last night.”
“Really?” Robin said. “What was the dream?”
“I dreamed that my heart broke, and it broke like this—” She made a breaking gesture with her hands.
Tim and Robin both responded, saying what a sad dream that was.
Robin added, “Then what happened?”
“Well, no one could put it back together,” she said. “So the angels started crying, ‘Waa, waa, waa.’” With balled-up fists, she wrung her hands in front of each eye, to show what the crying angels looked like.
“Was that the end of your dream?” Robin asked.
Gracie perked up and said excitedly, “Oh, no. God came then, and he gave me a new heart. And the angels said, ‘Yippee!’”
That night Gracie’s monitor went off. She had no blood pressure and her fluid levels had climbed. Drowning in her own fluids, she was admitted to ICU. The next day, after a round of tests, doctors broke the news. “We’re not going to get recovery. Gracie’s going to need a heart transplant.”
Robin and Tim met with specialists at the Children’s Hospital in Denver. But there was more bad news. Gracie couldn’t be listed for a heart transplant because she was still losing weight. The doctors agreed to see her again in a few weeks in the hope that Tim and Robin could find a way to get her weight to stabilize in that period of time.
After months of watching her daughter hover between life and death, Robin’s strength and stamina were stretched to the breaking point. One night she read her Bible, looking for any answers or comfort—any thread of hope. She turned to God in anguished prayer. “I just need to know one way or another what’s going to happen to Gracie,” she pleaded. “And most of all, I need to know that you are here and that I can trust you with this child.”
Tears streaming down her face, she confessed, “I feel that if I leave her for one moment, you’ll take her away. I need to know she’s safe with you, whether she stays with me or you take her.” She finally fell into an exhausted sleep across her Bible.
At 4:00 AM, her cell phone rang. It was a woman friend who said, “Robin, I want you to know that God woke me up and wants you to know he’s heard your prayer.”
When Robin hung up, she felt amazed—and not nearly as alone as she’d felt just a few hours earlier. God had heard her anguished prayer, confirmed by her friend’s out-of-the-blue call.
Around 10:00 that morning, the doorbell rang. Robin opened the door to find a woman from down the street who said, “I wanted you to know that I got two of my girlfriends together and we’ve been doing energy work around Gracie.”
Robin shook her head. “I appreciate your concern for Gracie, I really do, but you know I’m a Christian and I don’t feel comfortable with that. I don’t feel comfortable with the powers you’re calling on.”
The woman waved her hand. “Wait. Just hear me out. In the spirit realm, we tried to get near to Gracie, but we couldn’t. She was being held in this bright white light, and we couldn’t get anywhere near her. My two friends had the same experience. You know I’m not a Christian, but my friends and I talked about it, and the only thing we can conclude is that she’s being held in the hands of God.”
God was finally getting through to Robin. He hadn’t abandoned Gracie. He hadn’t abandoned Robin or Tim or the boys. Whatever was going to happen, God would take care of Gracie.
Two nights later, Ethan asked, “Mommy, how do we know Gracie is getting all her medicines?”
“I put a chart on the fridge and check it off,” Robin explained.
“How do we know she’s getting enough oxygen?”
Robin explained how Gracie’s oxygen system worked.
“Mommy, how do we know she’s not going to die?”
Robin looked deep into her son’s eyes. “Ethan, we don’t know. But we know she’s not going to die today. And tomorrow, God will give us whatever strength we need.”
Robin knew that without God meeting her in a very real way two days earlier, she could never have answered Ethan’s question the way she did.
Their very next trip to see the cardiologist up in Denver about Gracie’s transplant, the doctor decided Gracie’s weight had stabilized. He was willing to put her on the list for a new heart.
Then he took an EKG, and what he saw changed everything. “You know, I’m seeing something here. Her electrical activity is moving in the right direction. It looks like something’s happening. I’m going to hold off putting her on the list to see if her heart is going to continue to heal itself.”
Over the following months, Robin continued taking Gracie to Denver to see the doctors. Each time they made the trip, Gracie would ask, “Why are we going there?”
“To talk to the doctors about getting you a new heart,” she would answer.
Every time, Gracie responded, “You can talk to the doctors, Mommy, but I told you, God already gave me a new heart.”
Gracie’s heart continued to get stronger. Eight months later, she was weaned off all medications. That September, she started preschool.
When she was six, her cardiologist lifted all physical restrictions. That meant Gracie’s echocardiogram confirmed she was strong enough to do anything she wanted. He told Robin, “Swimming is the last activity I add for a kid who’s had heart trouble. But Gracie’s heart is strong enough to handle it.” A few weeks later, Gracie went swimming for the first time in three years.
In three more years, when she was nine, Gracie was given a clean bill of health. They were in Dr. Duster’s office when he said, “She’s completely normal. All residual thickening of the wall of her heart is completely gone. There’s absolutely no sign of anything irregular with her heart chambers at all. You know,” he added, “this just doesn’t happen. Not in cases as serious as Gracie’s. This is a miracle.”
Robin says that there wasn’t a miraculous moment in which Gracie was healed. She says, instead, that it was a miraculous journey.
Today, Gracie is twelve. She plays competitive soccer. Her parents remind her often, “You know, Gracie, you never questioned that God had given you a new heart. And he had. It just took some time for us to see it.”