Here is my testimony and pictures. This is what I say when I speak at various events. Please pass it on and share it with ANYONE and EVERYONE you want.
***ALSO...please note that the pictures are EXTREMELY GRAPHIC (bloody). So, if you have a weak stomach, you might NOT want to look at them. Just wanted to warn you. PICTURES ARE AT THE BOTTOM (BELOW MY TESTIMONY)...
“Little Girl, Arise”
The Miraculous Story of My Victory Over Toxic Shock Syndrome
by
Lisa M. (Clark) Mengarelli
Hello. My name is Lisa Mengarelli, and I have come to speak to you about a miracle that God performed in my life. It began as a tragedy in 1997, but it has become one of the greatest blessings God has ever bestowed upon me.
We’ve all heard of miracles. The Gospels are filled with the miracles of Jesus. He opened blind eyes. He cleansed lepers. He made the lame to walk. He even raised the dead. But that was over 2,000 years ago. Does Jesus still heal the sick in modern times? Will He intervene on behalf of those who cry out to Him today? Are miracles still possible?
Absolutely. I am standing here as living proof that Jesus still heals and performs miracles.
My story begins in the summer of 1997. I had just graduated from high school at Calvary Baptist Academy in Normal, Illinois. I’d been accepted at Maranatha Baptist Bible College in Wisconsin for the fall term. In the meantime, I was spending my summer working at a church camp in Chetek, Wisconsin.
About a week or so into the training at Camp Chetek, I developed a kidney infection and a high fever. I was admitted to a nearby hospital. But, since my fever was 104 degrees and I’d developed pneumonia, the doctors thought it would be wise to transport me to St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota—a part of the Mayo Clinic system. There, it took a week for doctors to get things “under control”. Then they sent me home to rest for two weeks, after which I once again returned to camp, thinking all was well.
But, I soon realized that something was still wrong. I tired easily, I felt weak, my joints were swollen, and my fever returned every afternoon. One day I woke up and instinctively knew I had to get home as soon as possible. I called my parents, Dan and Faye Clark, and they drove up that very same day to the camp to get me. We arrived back home the next day. The following morning—Friday,
July 25, 1997,—I went to see my local doctor. He said that everything looked fine, and gave me some medication. We didn’t know it then, but never in all my life had a doctor been so wrong.
That night my family and I went out for dinner. Upon returning home, I hopped on my parents’ bed to watch TV and my dad went to work. It was about 7 p.m. After a few minutes of watching TV, I sneezed. The sneeze had nothing to do with my sickness, but it triggered a series of events that would change my life forever.
Sudden, excruciating pain hit me, as if pins and needles were stabbing every inch of my body. I ran into to the living room, screaming and shaking. My mom called 911, and my dad, who’s not usually on the rescue squad, responded first, rushing into our house ahead of all the other paramedics. He scooped me off the couch and carried me downstairs to the stretcher.
The rescue squad rushed me to BroMenn Medical Center in Normal, Illinois. I have very little memory of anything that happened at BroMenn, but my parents later told me that I was out of control, screaming for medication until the doctors sedated me.
All through the night my blood pressure was stable. The next morning, I stood up to use the bathroom. Everything went haywire. The I.V. in my right hand blew out of my vein. My blood pressure dropped to 50 over nothing. I passed out and was rushed to intensive care.
The doctors now realized what had happened the night before with my sensation of pins and needles. All of my capillaries had burst. Fluid was leaking throughout my body. When I’d stood up to use the bathroom, my blood couldn't get through my body fast enough. Doctors suspected toxic shock syndrome (TSS), but they also suspected Lyme disease. All weekend they worked to stabilize my blood pressure. From Saturday morning to Monday morning, I gained 50 pounds because of the fluid leakage. I normally weigh about 120 pounds, but I was pushing 170.
By Monday morning, July 28th, 1997, the doctors knew that I needed to get to a trauma center. Since I’d been to Mayo the previous month, my parents decided I should return there. Arrangements were made for the Mayo One plane to come and get me. Meanwhile, things were racing out of control. Pressure was building in my arms and legs, swelling them to enormous proportions and cutting off my circulation—a condition called “compartment syndrome.”
The doctors decided I couldn’t wait for the Mayo plane. While the plane was in route, they performed emergency surgery to release the pressure. They made incisions called fasciatomies in my right hand, and in my lower legs and my feet. Then they wrapped me up, and when the Mayo plane arrived, they put me on it along with my parents.
The Mayo doctors did not tell us then, but when they heard the call come in from the plane, they were
certain that I would not make it to Mayo alive. If by some miracle I were to make it, I would probably lose my arms and legs. I was unconscious, completely unaware that I was being flown to another state, and completely unaware that I was within a hair’s breath of death.
When we arrived at Mayo, the doctors told my parents: “Your daughter is gravely ill and we need your
permission to do whatever it takes to save her life, including amputation of all four extremities.” My parents consented and I was rushed back into surgery where my arms and legs were slit open.
During the next two weeks, I was in and out of surgery so often that the doctors didn’t think it wise to awaken me at all. I had been unconscious since my surgery at BroMenn, and I would not see the light of day for two weeks. Thankfully, I was spared the anxiety of knowing that I was being wheeled in and out of surgery, cut and stitched and stapled, then bandaged until the next round of surgery.
I also did not know that my church back home in Normal, Illinois was undergoing a prayer revival on my behalf. Our church banded together like never before, praying that God would spare my life and my limbs. One lady later told me that she became an avid prayer warrior during this revival. At my dad’s fire station, his co-workers took turns covering his shifts, all on a volunteer basis.
During this whole ordeal, my parents and my brothers, Bryan and Jonathan, struggled through a
monumental emotional battle to which I was oblivious. Every day my life hung in the balance. Every day posed the threat of amputations. But my doctors were patient, delaying their decisions until absolutely necessary.
Two weeks later, I finally awoke. I was in a foreign place—in another state. Tubes were everywhere—tubes for medication, tubes coming out of my nose, tubes feeding me, tubes for every bodily need. The tubes down my throat had stunned my vocal cords; I could barely whisper. I was bandaged so tightly, I looked like a mummy. I felt paralyzed. I was in so much pain from all the incisions that I felt as if I was on fire.
My parents tried to explain what had happened to me. I could barely turn my head to look at them. I could not believe what they were telling me. The last thing I could remember was being put in the rescue squad at their house. Shortly after wakening up, I recall being “wheeled” into surgery to have what HAD to be amputated...amputated. Never will I forget that morning and the thoughts that were racing through my mind. The doctors hadn't TOTALLY decided how much they were going to HAVE to amputate. Thankfully, after THIS surgery was over, they only HAD to amputate the tips of my toes on my left foot. Then, on my right foot, they amputated MOST of my 2nd and 3rd toes along with my entire 4th toe.
By this time, doctors had confirmed the diagnosis through a blood culture: it was toxic shock syndrome. They knew it had originated with a staph infection, but it will always remain a mystery exactly how I got it. I’d been weak my entire senior year with achy joints and fatigue, I’d had open blisters from water skiing at camp, and there were a number of other factors that might have contributed, the main one being that my immune system was no doubt ripe for an infection to run wild.
I stayed in intensive care for over a month. I could barely move, I couldn’t eat, I had to use a bedpan, and I vomited constantly. There were holes in my hands and my feet. Beneath my bandages, I was covered with wounds. At age 18 with my whole life in front of me, I was reduced to an invalid. For all I knew, I might never walk again, never go to college, never have a career, never marry, and never have a family. At my lowest point, I begged my parents to please “pull the plug.”
Meanwhile, my church back home kept praying for me. Special prayer groups of all ages met before, during and after church. The pastors and many members of the church drove all the way up to Minnesota to encourage me. I am convinced that their prayers not only saved my life, but turned me upon a slow, but sure road to recovery.
While I was in ICU, my parents showed me a verse that remains special to me this day.
Psalm 28:7-8 says: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth; and with my song will I praise him. The Lord is their strength, and He is the saving strength of the anointed.” It helped me so much to realize that I did not need to depend on my own strength. God is my strength. I learned that when mine fails, His takes over. I could depend upon Him to do what I could not do.
After a month in ICU, I moved to a plastics floor. Here, my wounds were treated. There were holes in my feet (because there wasn't enough skin to stitch them all up) and a hole in my right hand from when the I.V. blew out at BroMenn. Doctors performed skin graft surgery to close my feet. They took skin from my thighs and transplanted it onto the tops of my feet. During this surgery, the doctors realized that there was an infection in my right little toe, so they opted to amputate the toe rather than risk an infection that would ruin the skin grafts. I specifically recall the doctors lifting my head phones (I was listening to Steve Green) and explaining the situation and asking my permission to amputate that toe (since I was 18y/o I could give consent). This was a surgery that we opted to have some medicine to make me "loopy" and then I just had an epidural. The reason I didn't go under "general anesthesia" for the "skin graft surgery" was because the MANY surgeries before, I tended to aspirate (vomit and it went into my lungs which can kill someone). Then, everytime I aspirated, they would have to keep me on the breathing tube (which is NOT "fun" especially when you are somewhat "awake") and either keep me longer in ICU or move me back to ICU if I was on a different "floor". I think that ONE of the worst pains I have been through during this enitre ordeal, was the pain of the "donor sights" (where they took the skin off the tops of both my thighs). That pain, after that surgery, felt like I was on fire and a burn victim. I will NEVER forget that pain...and what my "donor sights" looked like that day and the days to follow.
Eventually I moved to Rehab, where a long, hard road lay ahead of me. Right off the bat a doctor told me the bad news: I would never walk again. If by some miracle I did, I would never regain enough control in my legs to drive a car. At age 18, I trusted him. He was a professional. His prediction frightened me more than almost anything else during my stay at Mayo.
Nevertheless, I began trying. In my mind, I wanted nothing more than to prove that doctor wrong. I began by dangling my feet over the bed, then graduated to a tilt table and eventually used the aid of special machines that allowed me mobility while bearing my weight. Learning how to walk again is an even greater challenge when your hands don’t work. My left hand was weak, but my right hand had suffered extensive damage and I had to learn to use it all over again. In the meantime, I was still vomiting from not having moved for two months and from copious amounts of medication. I am thankful that I had a good physical therapist whom encouraged me to get out of bed and move.
My family helped me immensely—sharing Bible verses with me, propping me up, making me laugh, and bringing by visitors. Every Wednesday night, a youth group from a local church came in to encourage me. Meanwhile, my church back home kept praying. By this time I began to get a sense that everything was going to be all right, though I was not sure how close to “normal” I would ever be. I still had a long road ahead of me, and I was still in a great deal of pain. I held on tightly to Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
I had a lot of time for thinking while I was confined in the hospital. I began to re-evaluate my career plans. I no longer wanted to go into business administration. I wanted to work in the medical field. The nurses who’d helped me at Mayo had made a huge impression on me. One of them became a good friend, and best of all, he turned to God as a result of the answered prayer in my life. But it was too early to say if I’d be able to follow this new dream. Would I ever recover fully enough to help others? I didn’t know yet.
Day by day, I continued to improve. One day, I took my first few steps. And then came the day when my doctor in Rehab called the doctor who’d predicted I’d never walk again. “She’s walking out of here,” she told him. And I did. Leaning on my dad, I walked straight out the door. It was an incredible triumph!
On October 31st, 1997, I was discharged from St. Mary’s Hospital. My family and I stayed at the Ronald McDonald House for a week to make certain they could take care of me as far as bandage changes, bathing, etc. On November 7th, 1997, Burwell Oil Company sent their private jet up with my two brothers on board, as well as a few men from our church to drive our vehicles home. Burwell had heard about my battle with toxic shock and they loaned us their pilot and their jet free of charge. We boarded the jet and flew home as a family.
When the plane pulled up to the hangar at the Bloomington-Normal airport, I looked out the window and saw a few people outside. I thought it was so nice that they would come to welcome us home. But none of us were prepared for what we saw inside the hangar.
There waiting for us were two hundred people—the wonderful people who had been praying for us the whole time. Everyone was cheering, singing songs, holding up signs and crying. Our pastors were there, church members, firemen, our school's pep band, the local paper, TV station, and the radio station. I was still very weak, so my dad carried me off the plane and helped me walk. It was one of the greatest moments of my life. And it was all born out of tragedy.
Since then, I’ve made several trips back to Mayo. I’ve had several more surgeries and lost the rest of two toes on my right foot (so, as of today...2010...I only have my “big toe” on my right foot) I’ve had ankle reconstruction/partial fusion, a tendon transfer in my right hand, and a heel cord lengthened two times. I was in intense physical therapy for quite awhile, including hydrotherapy. Eventually I went from walking with a walker, then to a cane, and then to nothing at all, except the leg braces I now wear because of my drop foot. My weight soon returned to my “normal” weight. At my highest when the capillaries were leaking, I weighed 170. At my lowest at Christmas of ’97, I weighed 82 pounds. Now, thanks to steroids, my weight has fluctuated a lot. So, I am trying to “work on it”.
And today . . . I am a nurse (RN, BSN)! I earned my nursing degree at Mennonite College of Nursing at Illinois State University in 2003. I have a compassion for patients that I would not have had if I’d not gone through this trial. I am married to a wonderful man named Ben. We met at our church after I returned home from Mayo. I would not have met and married Ben if I’d gone to Maranatha (in Wisconsin) as I’d originally planned. God knew exactly what He was doing the whole time. On Tuesday, May 30th, 2006, we had the awesome privilege of adopting a sweet baby boy. He was seven days old the day he was placed in our arms. We named him Dominick James and call him “Nick”. He is another reason I survived my whole illness. God knew that this little boy would need a loving home and He chose us. What a blessing he has been to both our families.
Through this entire ordeal, I gained much more than I lost. Sure, I’d like to be able to walk without braces, and I’d like to wear regular shoes and skirts, but if I could erase the whole episode, I would not do it. It drew my family together. It drew my church together. It changed nurses at Mayo and it changed me into a nurse and the person I am today.
Life is so much more precious to me now. During the Christmas several years ago, someone remarked to me, “Wow, you’re really into this Christmas thing.” I replied, “A couple of years ago, I didn’t know if I’d ever see a Christmas again.” Every day of my life—not just Christmas—has become new. My brush with death opened my eyes to the beauty of life.
There’s a story in the 5th chapter of the Gospel of Mark that means a lot more to me now then it did before. It’s the story of a dying little girl whose father begs Jesus to heal her. By the time Jesus arrives at her house, it appears all is lost; everyone is mourning her death.
But Jesus tells the crowd that she’s merely asleep. They all laughed Him to scorn; she’d never be anything but dead.
Jesus was unfazed by their lack of faith and He walked over to the little girl and said “Talitha cumi,” which means “little girl arise.” She immediately awoke and got up. He healed her when all seemed lost; He performed a miracle.
I was also considered dead and gone. I was given a zero chance of survival. Through the power of prayer, and by the grace of God, my life was spared. In fact, the doctors at Mayo call me the “miracle kid of 1997.”
But, you may ask, what if Jesus hadn’t healed me? What if I’d died? Indeed, He sometimes chooses not to perform a miracle. We all know or have heard of someone who died in spite of fervent prayers. I do not pretend to understand why God heals some and not others. But I can tell you this. If I knew that God would allow toxic shock syndrome to strike me again this time next year, and take my life this time, I would still stand before you praising Him. If I knew He would stop my heart an hour from now, I would not move an inch. I would continue to praise Him.
My trial has taught me that God’s love is bigger than life, bigger than death. The ultimate miracle for me was not surviving, but it was learning more about the God who granted my survival. As precious as my life is, my God is more precious. I have no trouble believing that the God who taught me how to walk again, who arranged circumstances so that I could meet my husband, allowed me to become a mother, and who saw to it that I could beat all the odds by becoming a nurse, is able to care for my dear friends and relatives who have gone home to Heaven.
A couple things I want to share with you, and I will close.
Never forget that prayer changes things. God may not answer in the way that we wish, but His love for us surpasses our love for ourselves. This verse was shown to me as we were going through the “ups and downs” of the adoption process...and, I refer to it for many different things in my life today...including my health. It's I John 5:14-15 “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask Him ANYTHING ACCORDING TO HIS WILL, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked of Him.”
He knows the path of greatest good when we are blind to it. If we allow Him, He will use our trials to mold us into His image and draw us closer to Him. One of my favorite verses is
Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”
Lastly, and most importantly—do you know Jesus in a personal, intimate way? My trial would have been unbearable without Him. But. because He was my strength, my guide, and my comforter, I was able to watch Him transform my tragedy into a blessing. If you do not have this kind of close relationship with Him, please feel free to talk with me anytime. There is nothing I would rather do than to tell you more about the God I love.
I thank God for everything He has done in my life. I am thankful that by His grace, I have my arms and legs, that I am still alive, but most importantly, that I know Him better.
Sometimes I wonder, if at some point when I was sick, or maybe while I was under anesthesia during an operation . . . I wonder if Jesus stepped into my room, and whispered in my ear “Talitha Cumi—Little girl arise.” It was a miracle then, and yes, I believe He performs miracles now.
I’m living proof of that.
