A Heavenly Favor for Oliver

November 11, 2022 | Part 2 of 3

Baby Oliver was born August 3, 2015 the first child of his young parents, he was a perfect baby and beloved by the whole extended family. In addition to caring for Oliver, Oliver’s mother aided in the round-the-clock care for her grandmother with Alzheimer’s. One night, while Oliver’s mother was attending to both Oliver and his grandmother, Oliver rocked himself out of his highchair, landing on his head. As his mother monitored him, he began to show signs of a significant brain injury.

A race against time to save his life

Oliver was admitted to Mercy General Hospital in Guthrie, Oklahoma at midnight on February 16, 2016. Oliver suffered a traumatic head injury, a fractured skull, with acute bleeding, an actively growing hematoma and a midline to left shift of 12mm. Within minutes of reading his CT, the Mercy ER ordered a Life Flight for him. They tried to transfer him to several other hospitals; however, he was not accepted by any of the closer hospitals. He was finally accepted by Saint Francis Hospital, which was about an hour away from Mercy Hospital by Life Flight. By God’s providence, Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma Michigan live and serve in Saint Francis Hospital—Oliver went from one Institution under Mother Catherine’s patronage to a second. By the time Oliver arrived at Saint Francis, Hospital he was obtunded, in respiratory failure, his pupils were fixed and pinpoint, and his rating on the Glascow Coma Scale was 3, his epidural hematoma had grown to 9.8 cm x 4.7 cm, showing active bleeding in brain, but, inexplicably, his left midline shift remained 12 mm. He was rushed to surgery soon after his arrival. The family was asked if they would like a chaplain to be called for bereavement counseling. Oliver was not expected to survive surgery.

 

 

Due to a chaplain being on sick-leave, one of the Religious Sisters of Mercy took an extra on-call shift for the night of February 15 to help in covering for the chaplain. It was very rare that this Sister ever served as the chaplain on call. Just before her shift was to start, she was approached by the day-shift chaplain on call. He informed her of a child named Oliver, whose father was dying of liver failure. The chaplain believed that the Sister would be paged for Oliver during the night and wanted her to have some history on the child. The Sisters decided to add Oliver to their Holy Hour intentions and promised to pray for him. On February 15, Holy Hour was offered for “for Oliver, for hope and consolation.” Unaware of what was about to unfold, the Sisters unknowingly were entering into, perhaps, Mother Catherine’s own prayer: “God to grant you His Divine consolation and comfort…”

 

Praying for Mother Catherine’s Intercession

At 3:20 a.m. the Religious Sister of Mercy was paged to meet the two young parents and to provide bereavement support as their son was being taken to what many worried would be a futile surgery. Upon arriving, the Sister entered into prayer with the parents for their baby and discovered his name—Oliver. At that moment the Sister knew immediately that, by God’s providence, she and her Sisters had already prayed for Oliver. At this time, the Sister introduced to the parents the person of Venerable Mother Catherine McAuley. While the Sister was unaware that she was invoking Mother Catherine for a miracle, she simply knew that Mother Catherine could help the parents in faith and in support, and she wanted them to know her. The Sister provided the parents with a quotation of Mother Catherine, as it was Lent and almost Easter: “pray fervently for your portion of Easter grace; pray and do not give up until all of heaven is given to you.”

 

 

After attending to the immediate needs of the family members as they arrived to wait for the surgery to finish, the Sister then went to the hospital chapel to pray for them during the long wait. She was drawn to thinking of Mother Catherine; she thought of the love Mother Catherine had for her nieces and nephews, whom she adopted. She thought of Mother Catherine’s motherly heart. More than thinking of her, the Sister felt her tenderness and the love she had for people on earth then and not just for them then but as a gift to all now. The Sister prayed: “Please adopt Oliver, take all that love and give it to him; love him now in surgery, bring him peace and strength to fight.” She thought of the distressed women Mother Catherine served. “Please, adopt his mother. And bring her son back to her.” The Sister felt an inexplicable confidence and strength. When she left the chapel and went back to the family, the young parents both said they had a strange peace and faith that the Lord was taking care of this.

 

 

“Oliver made it through. He is alive. This is a miracle, and there is plenty of room for the Lord to move.”

A little after 6, the surgeon came out and informed them that Oliver survived the surgery, but that he almost died several times throughout it. The surgeon said that Oliver had a blood clot the size of his fist between the skull and the outer membrane of the brain. The skull was also fractured. He said that they were able to remove the clot and things seemed to be responding well; the brain was enlarging back to its normal size after having been under pressure from the large hematoma. But, then, once they were closing things up, he noticed that the brain became too large and began to swell dangerously. Because of the size of the first clot and the pressure it caused on Oliver’s brain, he had an intracranial bleed, which the medical team could not get under control. They had to enter his brain and could not stop the bleeding. Oliver lost incredible amounts of blood—over 75% of his blood volume—and he had tachycardia and almost coded on the table. The surgeon said, again, they almost lost Oliver and that they had to sacrifice and cauterize a large vein to stop the bleeding. This meant that Oliver was in danger of strokes in the next few days; even worse, the surgeon stressed that Oliver was a “very sick baby,” and these next few hours would be critical. “He made it through surgery, but it was a miracle, and it is very likely he will not survive this,” the surgeon warned them. He also informed them of the strong likelihood that, if he does survive, he might suffer severe brain damage, cognitive delays, paralysis, etc. The hematoma had taken up the entire right hemisphere of Oliver’s brain. There was no telling the extent of the damage. This news was crushing to the family. When the surgeon left, the Sister reminded the family—“Oliver made it through. He is alive. This is a miracle, and there is plenty of room for the Lord to move.”

 

Read about Oliver’s miraculous recovery