Miracle Story #14
“My story started about 10 years ago and actually, I got out of the hospital this month in 2007. It was October through January. I was twelve when I was admitted and I turned thirteen when I was in there.
We had gone down to Arkansas for a soccer tournament and that’s when I started feeling sick and throwing up blood. My mom tells me that I was kind of feeling a little sick on our way down to Arkansas, but I don’t remember that.
I remember going down to Beaver Lake because we were staying at a cabin that my friend owns, during the tournament. We went down a big hill to see the lake and then we went back up the hill. And I could not get back up. I couldn’t make it, so my coach had to pick me up and put me on his back and hike me up the hill.
And I just started throwing up blood then.
So I kind of ignored it for a few hours and then the soccer games came, and I was throwing up blood all over the soccer field. It looked like red Gatorade. It wasn’t like, cough and there’s a little pool of blood, it was large amounts of blood.
My coach pulled me off and he was like, “You and your mom need to go to the hospital right now.”
So we went to a hospital in Arkansas. I stayed there for about a week and they just diagnosed me with pneumonia. And so we went home.
I remember it was picture day. It was probably October 15th, something like that. And I was so weak from losing all that blood, so I was sitting on our couch and my sister was doing my hair, and my mom was doing my makeup. I remember that I got up, but then I sat down at the kitchen table because I was feeling dizzy.
And then I just threw up blood all over our carpet.
My dad and I rushed straight to Wesley hospital, and that’s when I got admitted. I don’t really remember being scared, I just remember being so faintish and dizzy.
But my parents were really scared.
I stayed in the pediatric unit for a day or two and then my nurse pushed me over to the ICU. It was during the night time when they pushed me over to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.
And then that’s when everything went down.
I don’t really remember the beginning all too much. I know they ran a bunch of tests. They put me in an induced coma because my body was fighting so hard against itself and the coma would just relax everything and give the doctors time to figure out what the heck was going on.
And then my kidneys started to shut down. My lungs were filling up with blood and fluid. And so I had six chest tubes, three on each side, to keep the fluids drained.
I had heart surgery in my room, because it was an emergency. I had a bubble behind my heart but I don’t know that that was causing anything. I think it’s because I had so much pressure or something going on in there.
The doctors didn’t know what was going on. They couldn’t figure it out. My parents said there were doctors always in the doc box, going through books, going through the internet, just trying to figure it out.
And they finally diagnosed it as an autoimmune disease. There is a name out there for it, but it’s super long. I’d have to ask my doctor for the name again.
They say it was like a wildfire in my body just trying to fight against itself.
The doctors told my parents like three different times that there was nothing they could do for me. So that was pretty hard on them.
And then I just got better.
I was in the coma on my thirteenth birthday, which falls on Halloween. It lasted for about a month, maybe a little less than a month. They pulled me out of the coma to see how I would do.
I was breathing and I was doing good.
I couldn’t talk because I had a tube in my throat that was helping me breathe, so they gave me a whiteboard to write on. I guess I wrote on my whiteboard, “Why do I have balloons? Did I miss my birthday?”
And my parents were like, “Yes.”
And I started crying I guess. And then ten minutes would pass and I’d say the same exact thing. I just forgot.
I got the tube taken out of my throat on November 16th. That’s my dad’s birthday. So for my dad, that’s going to be like a birthday present for another twenty years. (laughs)
My mom, she’s a teacher. She teaches special ed. And during that time, she took off the whole time, and so she had the day shift. And then my dad took nights, so he would spend the night.
And he always tells that sometimes at night, he would just pull the sheets over his head and start crying. Because he didn’t know what to do.
And my mom is very emotional about it. Mom’s have that special connection with their kids. It was really hard on her too.
I probably got out around January 20th, somewhere around there. I was in intensive care for the majority of the stay, but the last week or so, they had pushed me back to peds.
They said that when I was out of the hospital, that I would need a kidney transplant or I’d have to be on dialysis for the rest of my life.
They said that I’d be on oxygen for the rest of my life.
They said that I would never play soccer again.
I’m not on oxygen.
I didn’t have a kidney transplant.
And I played soccer at Hutchinson Community College.
The two main doctors I had are Protestant. They said this was a miracle. They don’t know how I got better. They always thought that I’d be on oxygen and something would be wrong with me the rest of my life.
I was thirteen when this happened, in 7th grade. I was only on dialysis when I was in the coma, well maybe a short while after too. I do remember having the little antenna things.
I would go in for regular checks, every week, right after I got out of the hospital. I had to get chemo for something to do with my white blood cells. I don’t remember exactly. I was on kidney medicine and steroids too, so my cheeks were just huge.
I was like a hundred pounds going into the hospital and then coming out, I was sixty-four pounds. I had to re-learn how to walk and all that good stuff.
You know those little pill organizers? I had those and my dad would put all my medicines in there.
He’d be like, “Avery go take your medicine.”
And I’d be like, “Okay.” And then brush it off.
So my dad saw me do that and he was like, ‘Okay, let’s see how she does.’
And so I just took myself off all my medicine. And we went to my nephrologist and my dad told her that, and she said, “Okay, we’ll see how you do the rest of the time.”
I probably stayed on my medicine for about five months. And now I’m not on any kind of medicine.
I started playing soccer again, six months after I got out of the hospital. My coach would only put me out for like two minutes at a time. (laughs) It was a competitive team. We were the EFC Attack, that was our name. We traveled everywhere.
I had started playing soccer when I was four years old. I miss it.
Soccer was my life before everything happened. I put soccer before going to church. I put soccer in front of everything.
And I feel like this experience just put everything back in place. Even though I was pretty young, I needed to prioritize my life again, you know?
I went to Wilbur. And after I went there, I went to Bishop Carroll for probably only a year and a half, because I had back surgery. I have a full rod in my back. I think I had slight scoliosis before I went into the hospital but since I was on that vent, it just kind of made it worse, and so it was a corrective type of surgery. That was after my freshman year.
I just couldn’t keep up with homework there, so I transferred to Maize South the second semester of my sophomore year. I graduated from Maize South.
I had played my freshman year at Carroll, the spring semester there. And then I played my senior year at Maize South. And then I played soccer for two years at Hutchinson Community College.
I have one older sister. When this was all going down, she was actually a freshman in high school. So transitioning into high school and having my parents centered all on me, that was really hard on my sister.
She doesn’t get much props but I give her a lot of props. She has two little kids now and she lives in Arkansas, so I don’t see them that much but when I do, it’s awesome.
I went to St. Patrick’s for elementary school and when I was in third grade, my religion teacher had us write a paper about a saint.
Now Father Kapaun wasn’t a saint but I was very interested in Father Kapaun. And I think it’s because he was a Kansas priest and he fought in WWII and the Korean War. I thought that was pretty cool.
So I wrote a paper about him. It’s a really bad paper. (laughs) I had to read it to little kids at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton when I was twenty-two and I was like, ‘Okay, I need to change some of this.’ (laughs)
I don’t like talking to huge groups. I don’t feel like I’m very good at it. (laughs) Last year my dad and I went to St. Elizabeth’s and Christ the King and talked to the sixth and seventh graders about it.
My dad usually tells the whole story, because he knows more about it really than I do. I read my little third grade paper about Father Kapaun to the kids. And then they ask questions.
They’re usually all about soccer. (laughs)
So there are some interesting connections with Father Kapaun in my story.
If you look up my name in Google, you’ll find this picture of when I was like nine or ten and I have this cake, it’s my first communion cake, and that date ties in with Father Kapaun somehow. It was either when he got ordained a priest, or something significant. I can’t remember at the moment.
My dad, he’s a very devout catholic. He’s just always been up to date on past priests and stuff. My dad went to adoration at night time and this is what he says. He said that he was writing down little prayers like, ‘God please make my kid better.’
And what’s weird is that he wrote those prayers on a paper and when he turned it over, it was a Father Kapaun brochure.
So that was kind of weird too.
And when my parents started praying to Father Kapaun, they just told Father Weldon, who was at St. Patrick’s at that time, to just tell everyone in the parish to start praying to God and for Father Kapaun to intercede for me.
So everyone at St. Patrick’s was praying. And I was really good friends with some Maize people and so Maize started praying for me, and then it just went from there. Just people everywhere were praying, all over the world.
And me, Chase Kear and Nick Dellasega are all miracles attributed to the Father Kapaun prayer. We didn’t really know the Kear’s before all this happened. When the Father Kapaun miracles all started getting tied together, our family and the Kear family became really close.
We still are.
And we all do the Father Kapaun walk. When he served in the Army, he and his buddy got caught by the Koreans. His buddy was weak and so he carried him for 65 miles to the place where they were all being held. He got a Medal of Honor.
So every summer we do a 65 mile walk from the Church of the Magdalen here in Wichita, to Pilsen, Kansas. It takes three days. (laughs) It’s fun.
Like I said, I was all about soccer before this. If I had a soccer tournament, then I put soccer over everything. I was still a good catholic, I went to church sometimes. But I would miss church pretty regularly.
But now, after all that I’ve been through, I don’t miss Sunday mass. I feel like I’ve gotten closer to God through this.
Him saying, “Avery you need to get your priorities in order.”
If this hadn’t have happened, I probably would have gone to KU or something to play soccer. I’d have been a much better soccer player. I just think it changed me a lot.
I’ve gotten closer to God because of what happened, definitely.
I work at Wesley in the pediatrics unit right now. So sometimes I work with some of the same doctors and nurses that took care of me.
Sometimes we just talk about stuff that is happening with the patients we have now and they’re like, “Oh yeah, you had that too.”
And then they just explain it to me. It’s pretty cool.
It’s very cool.
I’m a nurse assistant right now. I’m going through nursing school. I just graduated with my LPN this past December. I have to take a couple more classes before I can apply to RN school.
And I hope I get into the program at Butler or Hutch.
I know I didn’t have cancer or anything. And if I have oncology patients I don’t personally tell them, “Keep fighting.”
But I always pray for every single kid that I have. I do say a prayer for them, that they would get better.
I just give them a lot of encouragement and try to make them happy.
I really want to be an oncology nurse.
Just the way the connection is with those kids. You see them every day. I just love the connection I have with them. I get really close with their families.
The ones that have passed, their families come in sometimes.
And we share a hug.
I always wanted to be a teacher or a pro soccer player, before all this happened. But my nurses made me want to be a nurse.
And I found my mission.
I just want to encourage people to keep praying, because miracles do happen.
Catholic or not.
I’m not really emotional about it. I’m just blessed I’m here. I just keep positive.
And hope it never happens to me again. (laughs)
I think about it.”
© 2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.
For a more complete look at the medical miracle side of Avery’s story, please go to: http://www.kansas.com/news/special-reports/father-kapaun/article1067627.html
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My name is Avery, and I live in Wichita, Kansas.
In the midst of an autoimmune disease attack that almost took my life,
I AM Miracle Story #14.