Baby Lu's Amazing Survival Story
A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in
Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room
of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery.
Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.
That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple's new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.
At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound
nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature.
Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.
"I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could.
"There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through
the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does
make it, her future could be a very cruel one"
Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the
doctor described the devastating problems Dana
would likely face if she survived.
She would never walk, she would never talk, she would
probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to
other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to
complete mental retardation, and on and on.
"No! No!" was all Diana could say.
She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long
dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to
become a family of four.
Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.
But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana.
Because Dana's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw',
the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't
even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love.
All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light
in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close
to their precious little girl.
There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger.
But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce
of weight here and an ounce of strength there.
At last, when Dana turned two months old. her parents
were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time.
And two months later, though doctors continued to gently
but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much
less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana
went home from the hospital, just as her mother had
predicted.
Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young
girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life.
She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more.
But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.
One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her
home in Irving, Texas, Dana in the bleachers of a local ball
park where her brother Dustin's baseball team was practicing.
As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her
mother and several other adults sitting nearby when
she suddenly fell silent.
Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, "Do
you smell that?"
Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain."
Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?"
Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet.
It smells like rain."
Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted
her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced,
"No, it smells like Him.
"It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."
Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped
down to play with the other children.
Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed
what Diana and all the members of the extended
Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along
During those long days and nights of her first two months
of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to
touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is
His loving scent that she remembers so well.
I recieved this story as a "pass-it-on" email, but found it so astounding that I put it up online. - Andy
