(Part 1 of 3 in a Series: Life of Miracles)
I love to watch movies. I love good mysteries, and I love good action and adventure stories. I grew up watching Wonder Woman, Superman, Star Wars, and read a lot of Agatha Christie novels. Now it’s X-Men, The Justice League, Mandalorian, Captain America, and all the Avenger movies. Seems like there is a new hero movie each season. While I love a good story, that’s often where fantasy dies. I don’t know anyone who has special, magical powers or has saved the world, except one.
I’m no hero, not even close. Everyone has a story or knows someone who has been through something hard, something rough, some things we would never wish on anyone. My someone, my unlikely hero is my son, Austin.
He was my first baby, born during a snowstorm in January at the local hospital. He was born perfect, but at 3 ½ months he had complications that started with what I originally thought were cold symptoms. He quickly shaded at the doctor’s office turning a bluish-purple, and I rushed him to Children’s Hospital.
Four hours later, a Rabbi and some doctors gave us the grave news. Austin’s heart was basically plumbed wrong. The veins from the heart to the lungs were attached to the wrong side of the heart. He would need open heart surgery and may not make it.
So, at 3 ½ months old, Austin had open heart surgery. I took a picture of him, so young, so tiny with all the tubes, lines, and medical equipment around him. I wanted to be able to show him that picture someday when things got tough – to show him how strong he was and is in his body, in his mindset.
Fast forward to his high school years, he had survived the initial surgery as a baby and lead a relatively free and unrestricted childhood despite being diagnosed with pulmonary hyper-tension at around 14 months. He would get a pacemaker in 2011. Then, in 2013 after being exhausted and passing out, it was changed out for a pacemaker/defibrillator.
Medication came into play. Then, a permanent port with a medicine that had to be changed every other day, which came with obvious challenges. Later, as Austin continued with the challenges he had, it became clear that his hypertension symptoms became significantly greater than his heart repair had been. He started retaining water due to congestive heart failure and his color began to change, signifying that things were not improving.
In and out of the hospital various things started becoming the norm. Some challenges were worse than others and harder to bounce back from. So many tests, so many stops and starts.
There was only one time in all this that Austin wanted to give up. He was very sick, very exhausted, and very tired emotionally. I remember saying to Austin, we are not giving up. He wasn’t alone; we were with him. God was with him and would see us through this hurdle too.
After that episode, it did seem like things had smoothed out, like we were finally ahead of the curve. It was about that time that Austin got married to his girlfriend, Larisa in July. He looked so good on his wedding day. There was little evidence aside from how thin he was from the outside that anything was going on. We were all thrilled! However, it was only a matter of time.
I remember during one of his hospital stays prior to their marriage, I asked Larisa to have lunch with me so we could take a break. I told her how proud I was of her, how it’s hard to be a care giver. I expressed as gently as I could that if I were her parents, I would be concerned for her relationship to a man who only had a little time. How much that would hurt, and as parents, while we knew she loved Austin, she had to know that we were all concerned for her well-being as well.
I told her that it wasn’t a matter of “if,” but “when.” Like a trooper she said she was alright, she could handle it – even if it got harder. There was no talking her out of loving Austin despite the obvious. She would also become one of our unlikely heroes because of her strength, faith, and love.
We would never realize how true those words were as “when” came way sooner than any of us expected.
Later during the holiday season, Austin again started retaining water. The hospital would “tap” him to remove the excess water. They removed sometimes anywhere from 2 liters of fluid to up to 13 liters of fluid. His color was continuing to worsen, and Austin was precariously thin. In January he was admitted back to The Ohio State University Hospital. He would remain there until sometime in February when covid was just starting to break out.
In February, the doctors finally said the words that would forever change the course of all our lives, especially Austin’s. Austin would need a transplant. They would work to get him on the list. He was just starting to go through the first series of tests when covid had now officially shut down the nation. That included a good part of the testing that needed to happen for the transplant. We were discouraged, but hopeful. We had more questions than answers.
My husband and I began to scramble. They were staying with us in our condo we had “down sized” to as empty nesters. The condo wasn’t ideal with stairs and little privacy. Knowing that Austin was getting worse, and with pending news of a transplant, we decided we needed to do something. After searching for a new home only to be out bided as the housing market went off the rails, we had sold our condo and were able to secure a rental house that would be big enough for all of us. We moved in around the first week of May.
As Father’s Day approached it was getting incredibly hard to watch as Austin continued to decline. Shortly before that weekend, Austin asked his father, Steve, to take a drive with him. He said heart-breakingly that he knew it was only a matter of time before there was no more time left. Austin was done fighting; he was tired, but ready for eternal rest. I cry even now remembering him this way, of how hard we all were believing for a miracle to come, waiting, and watching while his body quietly shut down.
Late afternoon on Saturday, Austin and Larisa treated us to pizza for Father’s Day Weekend to celebrate his dad. We arrived home, and while doing dishes Austin received a phone call. He was on the back porch with his dad when the transplant team informed Austin that they had a transplant donor, now. He would have to come that very night to get admitted and prep for surgery on Father’s Day!
Father’s Day has so many implications. We were all screaming, crying, running around trying to call everyone we knew to get the prayer chain going, and making arrangements for the dogs, work, etc. Austin, however, was as calm as a cucumber. He was ready. He only asked, “Is there any leftover pizza and root beer?” He figured he could have it, reasoning it could be his last meal. Austin unfazed by it all was relaxing and proceeded to eat while we were all frantically preparing to leave for the hospital.
We rushed to the hospital; they let us in the back entrance and roundabout to the area avoiding the night security. Covid had shut down all visitors from going to the hospital, but the team of doctors, nurses, and staff knew how precious time with Austin was for us.
Larisa’s family rushed to be by her side and see Austin too. We were all nervous, excited, and didn’t know what to say or how to act. We all knew that we loved Austin, and that this was Austin’s only hope that God had graciously provided. Steve remembers leaving the hospital that night thinking how grateful he was that Austin was getting his shot. I don’t think anyone slept that night as our prayers and thoughts were louder than the adrenaline pumping through our veins.
Early on Father’s Day, Steve, myself, Larisa, and her parents were snuck in again by someone on the transplant team to see Austin before they took him to surgery. It was all so overwhelming. Austin was clearly ready, while we were not. I don’t even remember what I said, but Larisa remembers me praying over Austin with all of us there; “God, I give you, my son.” God did indeed have him already.
The head nurse kept coming to inform us of progress and after 10 hours the lead transplant doctor came to give us the details. He was alive after a double lung and heart transplant! For the most part things had gone smoothly, it was clear his body had been in the process of shutting down. Now we would wait and see. Another surgery was set for the next morning to allow for any swelling to go down before closing him up from the transplant surgery.
The first time we were allowed to see Austin was amazing! His color was so bright, so normal. They had blankets covering him from the neck down covering all the tubes coming out of him. It was a miracle, all of it! He would later be taken briefly off the ventilator and was able to say a weak “Hi” while waving. We were thrilled.
But the journey was only the beginning. Austin would be in the hospital from the evening before Father’s Day until around the first week of December. We almost lost Austin 5 different times. Multiple surgeries for various things. Going on and off the ventilator, learning to breathe all over again, physical, and occupational therapies, medicines and more. Some of Austin’s organs were still trying to cope and come back online from shutting down. He still dealt with fluid retention from congestive heart failure, and they had decided not to replace the liver, although it was questionable.
It was tough on all of us. We saw Austin go down to such an emaciated state from under nourishment, and multiple days of being not allowed to eat prior to various procedures. Working later with the frustrating feeding tubes and all their complications, it would be two steps forward, and ten back for Austin. But God won! Austin won! We had all won!
An unlikely hero was also at the center of the story. A man in his forties named Jason who lived in Licking County Ohio. He was a man whose whole life had challenges of his own. Jason suffered from seizures his entire life. A man whose life, like Austin’s had been in and out of the hospital because of it.
It was just a day or so before Father’s Day that Jason had passed away from a grand mal seizure. His own family was wrestling with not being able to say goodbye at his sudden death.
Then, another miracle. One of Jason’s sisters said she went to her car alone to take a break from the hospital room. It was then and there that she heard God say to her, “Surrender him to me, so that I might save someone else!” She knew it was God prompting her. She went back to tell her mother and the rest of Jason’s family what God had said to her. They prayed and decided that they would do just that – they would surrender Jason to save others – whoever they may be.
Jason’s family were unlikely heroes that day too. Jason’s body was being wheeled down the hall of the hospital where the whole staff came out to line the hallway to give him a hero’s ovation. I picture Jason receiving an even better ovation from all of heaven when he was safely in Jesus’ arms! Imagine the angels rejoicing!
The teams of doctors, nurses, and therapists at OSU Hospital were unlikely heroes as well. Some of them were just downright amazing!
Austin became an unlikely hero. His perseverance, his toughness, his unwavering faith in Jesus, his strength beyond measure, and poise. There were days where it seemed he didn’t have any of it – there were days we didn’t. None of it was pretty, and yet all of it was pretty amazing!
JESUS, The World’s Unlikely Hero:
In a world of made-up heroes and my personal ones, I alluded earlier to the only one who had saved the world. He was the true hero who was in his time, the most unlikely hero of his day, Jesus!
Jesus was a carpenter, son of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth. There was nothing notable about him. He was nothing special to look at. Nothing about Jesus stood out from any other person, until he became all about his father’s business. Jesus came to seek and save the lost and the hurting. (Luke 19:10) He had compassion on those in need, those lost and tossed in their circumstances, in the midst of a fallen world. (Mark 6:1-3; Luke 19:10; Matthew 9:36; Mark 1:32-34)
He was blameless. He would preach, teach, heal, and cast out demons all along the way until he surrendered his life on the cross. Jesus was crucified on the cross, after he had already endured beatings, scourging, and verbal abuse, though no fault was found in him. (Acts 2:22-24; Matthew 4:23)
This unlikely hero was fully man and fully divine as God’s only son who came to reconcile the world back to his Father through his sacrificial death on our behalf. It was our sin that put him on the cross, but his great love for us held him there. (Colossians 1:19-20; Colossians 2:9; 2 Corinthians 5:19, 21)
Three days later as he predicted, Jesus rose again, defeating death (the punishment for sin), so that we might someday live in eternity with him in heaven. (Mark 9:30-32; Mark 10:33-34)
Our world likes flashy heroes in metal suits, capes, lassos, etc. We want them to look the part. We’re ok if they’re not perfect as long as they come through for us in the end. But do they? None of them offer eternity in heaven with no more tears, no more sorrows, and endless tomorrows. Only Jesus. The only true hero over even all our known, personal heroes.
Austin owes his life to these unlikely heroes, all while being an unlikely one himself. But he will tell you it was all made possible by Jesus, the world’s most unlikely hero of them all.
(This series is part 1 of 3 parts. Next week: When Hope Seeks You Out)
