By Theresa McGallicher
When my daughter, Bridgette, was born in 1999, she was beautiful and looked perfectly healthy, but her doctors told me that something was wrong.
Her blood sugar was too low because her body was not producing the hormone cortisol. They didn’t know why, and they didn’t know if they could fix it. At that time, I was living in Havana, Cuba. I had a great salary at my full-time job and free housing with a wonderful nanny. I had come to the U.S. to give birth, expecting to return in six weeks with my new baby. I took a leave of absence from my job to stay in the U.S. while doctors treated Bridgette. She spent the first month of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of a hospital located one hour from home.
Suddenly and without warning, I was a stay-at-home mom with no salary. My husband was newly hired in his job and not making much money. I had been surprisingly peaceful about Bridgette’s birth and her health condition. Still, other aspects of my life were stressful and uncertain. Traveling to the hospital to visit this precious baby with two other small children and no support network was difficult, not to mention the unexpected household move.
After a month, doctors finally diagnosed Bridgette with Adrenal Insufficiency, and we were allowed to take her home. We were told, however, that she would have this condition her entire life and always need cortisol administered daily. Her doctors said that her brain would never “kick-start” and tell her body to begin producing cortisol after giving it to her artificially.
Fast forward to two years later, when my husband was directed by his job with the State Department to move overseas. He took Bridgette back to her doctors at Egleston Children’s Hospital in Atlanta and asked that she be retested. She went off cortisol for 24 hours, and they drew blood.The result?
She was perfectly healthy!
She did not need for us to continue giving her cortisol. There was nothing wrong with her and no one could say how or why. Her doctors basically said that there was no reason to ever bring her back.
Now, I don’t know if they misdiagnosed her in the first place, or they were wrong and her brain kick-started her adrenal glands to produce cortisol, or if it was some kind of miraculous healing.
But I do know this: I never saw Bridgette as anything but perfect and whole. My heart flooded with love for her the first moment I saw her, and I never resisted her diagnosis or condition but accepted her exactly how she was. It is my belief that it was this unconditional love that “cured” her.
Today Bridgette is a healthy and happy young woman, and I am a mom who believes in miracles with all my heart
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Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense, everything that comes from love is a miracle. [CE T-1.3.1]
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