Megan M. - Quilt Finished in 2006
Born: January 21, 2002
Illness: Cardiomyopathy, Anoxic brain injury
A Thank you from Megan's Family!
Written May 14, 2006
Hello. I wanted to take a minute and thank you ever so much for the quilt for Megan. She absolutly loves it and I think it's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. You can just FEEL the love that was sewed in every single stitch. Here is a picture of her with it. I hope you like it.
God Bless,
Tammy and Megan M.
Megan M.'s Story
written by mom Tammy
Well, where do I begin?? Megan was our miracle child from the start. We had wanted a child for 17 years and the doctors all said I could not get pregnant. I was saved but my husband was not although he was a wonderful husband, he was not saved. In 2000 a lady that a knew approached me about adopting her sister's unborn child, we readily agreed to it. We bought the mother everything she would need throughout the pregnancy but the night before she had the baby she simply changed her mind about giving her up. I was totally devestated. I went to the alter the next Sunday and began to pray and cry. My pastor's wife came up behind me and told me not to worry. She told me God had someting better in store for me. I did not know then how right she was!
On May 13th 2000, After 17 years of marriage my husband had gotten saved and the very month he got saved is the month I got pregnant, we were overjoyed! When I was about 4 months pregnant they did an ultrasound and told us she was going to be born with all of her intestines on the outside, that very night we prayed about it. My husband got up the next morning and said for me to call the doctor and have him do another ultrasound because he said he knew the Lord had healed the baby. I called the doctor and he said he knew the baby's stomach would not be healed, he said he had diagnosed over 200 of these and he did not have a doubt that nothing will have changed but we insisted. Three days later they did another ultrasound, her stomach was perfect!! God had healed her! Then, when I was about 5 months pregnant they told us that she had fluid around her kidneys and she would have to have surgery for that as soon as she was born, once again we prayed, by the time I was 8 months pregnant the fluid was gone, the Lord had healed her kidneys this time. Megan was born January 21st at 12:40pm with the cord wrapped around her neck 3 times but with no complications, once again the Lord had watched over her.
Megan weighed 7 lbs & 11 oz and was 19 inches long. She was always such a healthy baby, never even so much as an ear infection. By the time she was 10 months old she was putting 2 words together, her pediatrician was amazed by how smart she was. Then on December 14th 2002 I was at work and my mom called me saying Megan had been throwing up and crying alot. I went home and took her to the local hospital and they said she was dehydrated from a "little" virus, they transported her to the hospital in the next town. All night I told them I felt like something was not right. They kept saying it was just a virus, she would be ok. The next morning her doctor came in and took an x-ray. She IMMEDIATLY sent her by ambulance to T.C. Thompsons Childrens Hospital. When we got there they called us in a little room and told us our little 11 month old daughter whom we loved so very much had Cardiomyapathy, a virus that attacked her heart, and that she had about 2 hours to live. We were devastated. They let us go back to ICU to see her, she was hooked up to about 14 different IV'S and she was on a breathing machine.
By this time there were about 50 friends and family there. We all began to pray fervently. Her 2 hours turned into all night then they said she would not make it through the night. She did. They tried 3 times over the course of 3 weeks to get her off of the breathing machine and finally the 3rd try she was able to come off of it. She did great and they let her come home. She was home about 3 weeks and started getting sick again, her doctor once again had us take her to TC Thompsons, with each passing day she got worse. She was in heart failure once again. The last day she was there they put her back on the breathing machine, she had been there about 2 weeks this time. The day they put her back on the breathing machine they took her by life flight to Atlanta Childrens Hospital, to wait for a heart. She was immediatly put on the transplant list but we were told she was the sickest child in the ICU. They had her sedated and paralized so she did not use any of her own strength, she could not afford to, she was our little angel and she was dying.
Every passing day Megan got worse, we kept praying, we never gave up on her although we told God if it was in his will to take her home we would understand, that was the hardest prayer I ever prayed. Megan received countless blood transfusions day after day, her skin was ice cold and she had purple blotches all over her from lack of blood flow.
One day they called us up there to tell us that Megan's kidneys were failing and they were going to have to put her on "ECMO" a heart , lung & kidney machine, we had no choice, they told us all they were doing was buying time, hard words to hear. They scheduled this for 7:00 P.M. but before 7:00 came Megan went into cardiac arrest at about 3:00 P.M. They did CPR on her several times and put her on ECMO right then. They came and told us she had died several times but they got her back. They kept telling us she was not going to make it, we kept praying and believing in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Megan's testimony was too mighty to let her go.
Megan had been on ECMO about 3 days when they came and told us her heart was so huge they had no choice but to go in through a heart catherazation and pierce the back of her heart to relieve the pressure but, he told us he did not think she would ever survive this surgery, she was just too weak. Well, she made it through that but while she was still in there she began bleeding from somewhere and the doctors could not figure out where the blood was coming from, he tried for several hours to stop the blood but they could not even figure out where the blood was coming from. We were devastated. Once again they said they felt sure she was dying. They came out and told us the only thing they had left to do was have the heart surgeon come in and cut her chest open to see if they could find out where the blood was coming from but they felt sure when they did that she would just be bleeding from everywhere and she would die right there on the table but if they did not do it she would bleed to death for sure.
They let about 20 of us go in and kiss her good-bye, my husband got up there and kissed her and through his sobbing I heard him say to her "Megan, I know you are with Jesus now and if you want to stay with Him that's ok but if you want to come back to Mommy & Daddy just tell Jesus" They carried me out of there. We went back to the room where we had been waiting all day and got down on our knees and began praying crying out to God as loud as we could to please save our baby. My pastor went to the verse in the Bible that stops blood, Ezekiel 16:6 and he read it and we all claimed it, 10 minutes later they came out and said the blood just stopped!! They could not believe it! She was on blood thinners and ECMO, which also thins your blood. The doctor said there was no "earthly" reason why that blood should have stopped, but it did, we knew it was the Lord. They never cut her open, it stopped right before the doctor cut her. They told us we could come see her in a little bit but they still did not think she would make it through the night.
One hour later they came to get us again, they said they needed to speak to me and my husband alone, you know what we thought! But we were wrong, we could not believe what they had come to tell us, they had found our baby a heart! She got her new heart the next morning around 8:00 am. We were told there would be complications because she was so sick, there were none, we were told her chest would be open, it was closed, they told us she would be on a special venilator that shook you real hard, she was on a regular one, they told us she would still be on ECMO, she was not! GOD IS GREAT!
Well, we thought our storm was over but when they started letting her wake up about 4 days later they realized she had a "severe" brain injury from her heart stopping so many times that one day. The neurology team said she was hopeless! WE KEPT PRAYING! She could not bend her arms or her legs, she just looked straight ahead, she would not respond to anything or anybody, we kept praying!! Megan went into several withdrawls from all the medications she had been on, this was a terrible thing to watch your baby go through. She had severe diareah for weeks on end, her body was shaped like a "C" but I knew God did not give her the perfect heart just to take her brain away. The prayers never stopped!
Eight weeks after her surgery, she came home! She is now moving her arms, moving her legs, laughing, smiling and learning everything over again but she's getting there and she's only 2 years post transplant!! GOD IS GREAT!!
Written by Megan's mom Tammy on July 11, 2005
