The Miracle of Sight
In 1988 my two children were at a neighbors house playing. My oldest son Ej was 15 years old and a sophomore at Sacred Heart High School.
Unknown to my husband or myself the children were playing with
BB guns and shooting at tin cans and rocks. During this "playing" a BB ricocheted off of a rock and struck EJ in his left eye. When the call came to our house from our neighbor the feeling of pain and desperation was indescribable.
When we arrived at our neighbors we found our son with a bloody mass where an eye use to be. Wasting no time we took him to the local emergency room. After examining him they felt there was nothing that could be done but surgery to remove the eye but decided to send our son to Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. When the decision was made an ambulance was called and we were told it could not come for one hour. The emergency room gave us the option to drive him there ourselves so we did. Before leaving for Wills Eye the prayer line at our local parish was called and they were asked to pray for Gods intervention.
All the way to Philadelphia we watched our son sit in the back seat with a small trickle of blood dripping down his cheek. We made it to the hospital in record time and walked into the emergency room. When we walked up to the receptionist she stated that everyone was preparing for an emergency from New Jersey so they were stunned when he walked in and did not arrive via ambulance. They began to examine him and the prognosis was worse since they believed the "bullet" was lodged in his brain stem. There was only the worse news and no hope was found. After calling a specialist in this field it was decided that a CAT scan should be done to find the bullet. This was done and none was found. We thanked God.
When the specialist spoke to us he said that he had to remove the eye because in his 15 years of practice he had seen many injuries with BB guns and these injuries always resulted in removal. As EJ was prepared for surgery we were permitted to sit with him a few minutes. When I asked him what we could do to help him he said will you hold my hand and pray the Our Father with me. We held hands with our son and prayed and off he went to surgery while we waited.
Approximately one half hour after going into surgery the doctor came out to talk with us. He said that for some reason he wanted to just clean the area and leave the eye for a few days. He did not know why but he wanted to try and save it. Of course he told us that he could only wait 3 days and if there were no improvement he would have to remove it. Of course we agreed and EJ was brought to his room after the doctor cleaned the area.
The next morning when examined the eye looked better and there was hope. The specialist told us that he was optimistic that the eye could be saved but that there would probably be no sight. His theory was that some day a surgery would be developed to fix the problem so it was better to leave the eye in place.
Each day the eye got stronger and on the third day our son saw light. The specialist said he had never seen this before and was amazed. He did not know what made him leave the eye in place and doesn't know what he did different with EJ. He called him the luckiest fifteen-year-old on the East Coast. We told him about the prayers of all we knew and especially of that special Our Father. He agreed that something different did happen in that operating room; something told him to wait.
It is now ten years EJ has very good sight in that eye and it is healthy. We believe that divine intervention occurred and that God performed a miracle that day. We thank God every day for all the miracles in our life and always say a special prayer of thanks for that day ten years ago.
Cathy Newell
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