My Hero

Some people you are meant to have in your life. Call it Divine intervention, Karma, or a cosmic conundrum, but for reasons unknown to us, special people are placed on our path.

Yesterday Daughter #2 and I worked together to complete a health insurance application. My company is changing insurance carriers and our agent suggested it might be cheaper for her to have an individual policy. (I'm still wondering why no one told me this before.) Part of the horrid application asked, "Have you seen a doctor, a counselor, a therapist or been hospitalized or gone to the E.R. in the last 5 years? (Are you kidding me?) If so, please list date of your visit, your diagnosis, any medication prescribed, including dosage and if you were cured. They must be insane. Who remembers if, much less when, they saw a doctor five years ago for a cold or perhaps strep throat? After a lame attempt at answering and after our doctor's receptionist told us to be vague - that the insurance company would request records anyway, the next question was - "have you EVER (bolded) been admitted to the hospital or emergency room for anything other than what you have previously disclosed?"

Thank you insurance application for dragging up the worst time of my entire life! When Daughter #2 was three years old, what appeared to be a cold with a fever, that the pediatrician on call for our regular doctor told us to treat with children's Tylenol, turned out to be spinal meningitis. After a night spent administering Tylenol, tepid baths, praying and repeatedly calling the doctor on call, we met our doctor at his office at the crack of dawn. He, Dr. Glen Boris, took one look at her, did a spinal tap right there in his office and told us to go directly to the hospital emergency room (located right next door - he said we could get there quicker than calling an ambulance). One of the clear memories I have, in an otherwise blur of a day, is of my stoic husband breaking down in tears as we made our mad dash to the emergency room. At that moment I realized the severity of the situation and knew I, for the first time in our marriage, had to be the strong one and must save my breakdown for later. The emergency room was ready and waiting and Daughter #2 was immediately admitted into Pediatric ICU. That day was both the worst day and the best day of my life.

We were advised to call in our family, as our daughter was not going to make it through the day. My parents and my brother immediately boarded a plane in Houston (my sister was in another state and was frantic that she couldn't be with us). I have been told that almost everyone we knew converged on the hospital that day. I have little memory of anything other than my rough-and-tumble, very active (her nickname at that time, given to her by her great-grandmother, was H.T. - for Holy Terror) three year old lying comatose in a hospital bed with i.v.s and tubes and oxygen. The thought of losing my child was inconceivable. There are no words to convey the heartbreak, the despair.

By late afternoon our hero, Dr. Boris, met with us and I will never forget his words, "I feel that I can tell you now she is probably not going to die." He did go on to tell us that she would most likely be blind and/or deaf and/or have some brain damage as a result of the illness. Can you imagine being thrilled beyond belief to learn your child might be blind or deaf or brain damaged? I was! I didn't care about anything as long as I got to keep my daughter. If God would leave her with me I would celebrate any disability - what was that compared to losing her?

The next nine days were spent in Pediatric ICU and each day brought another miracle. Vision tests, hearing tests, showed no impairment. And on the day my aunt brought a complicated toy to the hospital and my daughter knew right away how to operate it - I knew there was no brain damage. Months later, Dr. Boris was still ordering tests and shaking his head in disbelief that she came through the ordeal unscathed.

So, he is our hero. He saved her life. He and the power of prayer. One day, long after our release from the hospital, I met a woman in the waiting room of my daughter's ballet class. We struck up a casual conversation and somehow ended up discussing my daughter's illness. She brightened and said, "Oh, that's the little girl my Sunday school class has been praying for." I gradually learned that strangers from near and far had prayed for her recovery. If I had ever doubted the power of prayer, or miracles - I don't anymore.

The awful insurance application brought this all to the surface yesterday. We finally completed it, submitted it, and are now awaiting "approval". About two hours later I went to my neighborhood market to pick up something for dinner and who should I run into? Dr. Glen Boris. He still refuses to call me by my first name, opting instead to call me Mrs. ____, and he still gets a teary twinkle in his eyes when he asks how my girls are.

Some people you are meant to have in your life.