MUKJIZAT DI PINTU KEMATIAN

Ini adalah kisah seorang bayi di pintu kematian, kisah mukjizat tentang Ethan Stacy. Pada waktu kedua orangtua Ethan melangkah sepanjang jalan di pekuburan untuk melihat tempat untuk mengubur bayi mereka, Ethan Stacy, yang tinggal menunggu kematian dalam hitungan hari. Ethan sudah dirawat oleh perawat spesialis bagi pasien-pasien yang akan meninggal (hospice nurse). Kondisi kesehatan tubuhnya menurun dengan cepat.

Menurut penjelasan Dr. Melissa Rhodes, Ethan menderita sakit kanker darah jenis Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Ia bertugas di bagian Onkologi di RS Anak Vanderbilt di Nashville, Tennessee, Amerika Serikat, dan menjadi salah satu dokter yang merawat Ethan. “Anak-anak yang terlahir dengan penyakit leukemia biasanya tidak akan bertahan hidup lama,” kata Dr. Rhodes. “Pengobatan terbaik yang dapat kami lakukan adalah mengobati Ethan dengan kemoterapi yang berat dan itupun tidak menjamin apakah ia dapat disembuhkan.” Sesungguhnya, kemoterapi itu ibarat racun bagi bayi-bayi yang baru dilahirkan sehingga para dokter memberi pilihan kepada orangtua Ethan untuk menolak kemoterapi bagi anak mereka.

Setelah dua minggu di RS, Chad dan Mandy, orangtua Ethan, mengambil keputusan yang berat untuk membawa bayi mereka pulang ke rumah. “Kemo itu dapat membunuh bayi kita,” kata Chad. “Banyak risikonya.”

“Kami pulang ke rumah dan saya ingat sedang berbaring di ranjang sambil berdoa,” kata Mandy, “Saya katakan, ‘Tuhan, berilah kami jawaban,’ Kami berdua bangun tidur pada keesokan hari dan kami sepakat, ‘Tidak, kami tidak akan membiarkan Ethan dikemo.’” Kebanyakan dokter di RS Vanderbilt mendukung keputusan mereka. “Kami bayangkan jika Ethan memang terkena jenis leukemia yang kami duga, bahkan dengan pengobatan melalui kemoterapi dengan dosis penuhpun mungkin tidak akan menolong Ethan,” kata Dr. Rhodes. “Karena alasan itulah kami menghormati keputusan keluarga itu.”

Setelah beberapa hari di rumah, bayi Ethan mengeluarkan bintik-bintik, yang sangat umum bagi para bayi yang terkena infeksi. Oleh karena itu mereka membawa kembali Ethan ke RS. Itulah saatnya ketika tumor mulai menampakkan diri. “Kami mendapati ada tonjolan di betisnya,” kata Mandy. “Kami memanggil dokter, dan mereka memberitahu bahwa itu mungkin gumpalan darah atau tumpukan sel leukemia, yang disebut ‘chloroma’.” Tumor-tumor lain mulai muncul di bagian tubuh Ethan yang lain, seperti kaki, tangan, dan lengannya.

“Leukemia itu sendiri artinya kanker darah, suatu penyakit darah,” jelas Dr. Rhodes. “Tetapi jenis leukemia AML ini dapat menyebar ke dalam jaringan kulit. Itulah yang kami percaya sedang dialami oleh Ethan. Ia sesungguhnya terkena leukemia di dalam kulitnya, di tangan dan kakinya, selain di dalam liver dan limfanya. Jadi, tubuh Ethan menunjukkan bahwa penyakitnya sudah mencapai stadium lanjut.”

Saat itu Ethan sudah berumur tiga minggu, dan kondisi kesehatannya sangat menurun. Ia tidak mau makan dan mulai mengalami gangguan tidur. “Sang perawat memberitahu saya bahwa Ethan mungkin akan mengalami apa yang disebut ‘sepsis’, yaitu infeksi di seluruh tubuh, yang bisa berakibat kematian dalam damai atau pendarahan hebat,” demikian kenang Mandy. “Saya mungkin akan melihat darah di dalam popoknya atau mungkin keluar darah dari telinganya. Bahkan saya begitu takut membuka popok untuk menggantikannya.

Setiap perawat datang, Chad dan Mandy merasa mereka sudah ada di titik akhir dan para sahabat terus berdoa, sambil memercayai Allah untuk melakukan hal-hal yang mustahil. Saya ingat pada suatu saat saya menimangnya sambil bernyanyi, ‘Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. I want to see You’,” kata Mandy. “Saya tahu bahwa sekiranya saja saya memfokuskan pikiran saya kepada Kristus, maka itulah satu-satunya cara untuk melewati semua ini.”

Pada malam ketika Ethan menghadapi krisis kesehatannya, terjadilah sesuatu. “Larut malam itu Mandy mulai memberi Ethan makan, dan Ethan mulai menyedot botol minumannya sedikit demi sedikit,” tutur Chad. Keesokan harinya, Ethan sedikit lebih kuat... Tetapi apakah ini hanya merupakan pemulihan sebelum kematian?

Mandy berkata, “Saya ingat saya sedang duduk di meja dapur dan berkata, ‘Saya percaya Allah sedang menyembuhkan Ethan. Saya dapat melihat Allah sedang bekerja.’ Kemudian Ethan mulai menjadi semakin baik secara bertahap. Dan selama minggu berikutnya, kami memberi minum susu enam ons setiap tiga jam.” Selama dua minggu berikutnya, Ethan semakin pulih! Dan ketika Mandy membawa Ethan kembali ke RS Vanderbilt untuk memeriksakan darah Ethan, kadar trombositnya sudah mencapai 415,000, yaitu ada dalam batas normal, padahal sebelumnya pernah mencapai titik terendah 39,000.”

Hal ini membingungkan Dr. Rhodes dan para dokter sejawatnya. “Semula Ethan sangat parah sakitnya dan kemudian dengan tiba-tiba ia menjadi semakin sehat. Jadi, kami ingin memeriksa lebih lanjut. Kami melakukan test sumsum tulang, yang menunjukkan tiadanya bekas leukemia. Tumor-tumor itu secara bertahap menghilang dalam hitungan seminggu atau lebih. Hal ini sungguh sesuatu yang luar biasa untuk disaksikan.”

Chad dan Mandy tahu bahwa mereka telah menyaksikan suatu mukjizat ketika mereka melakukan biopsi ulang terhadap sumsum tulang di bulan Juli dengan hasil sama yang memuaskan. Hari ini Ethan Stacy sudah berusia dua tahun, yang suka bermain-main dengan ayah dan kakak perempuannya, Kaylee. Tak diragukan lagi bahwa keluarga Stacy sangat bersyukur kepada Tuhan. “Doa-doa dari para sahabat dan anggota jemaat itu sangat berarti bagi kami,” tutur Chad. Mandy turut mengiakan. “Sungguh mengagumkan punya Allah yang dahsyat seperti itu...Saya tak habis mengerti akan mukjizat demi mukjizat itu. Saya tak sabar melihat apa yang Allah sediakan bagi Ethan selanjutnya karena saya tahu bahwa ada sesuatu yang hebat telah disediakan baginya.”

A Baby at Death's Door: The Miracle Story of Ethan Stacy

By the time Ethan’s parents took the long painful walk through the cemetery to see the place where they would bury their son, Ethan Stacy was within days of death.

Ethan was already under the care of a hospice nurse. His body was rapidly shutting down.

According to Dr. Melissa Rhodes, Ethan had AML, an aggressive type of leukemia. She serves in the oncology unit at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, Tenn., where she was one of Ethan’s physicians.

“Children who are actually born with leukemia don’t usually do very well,” Dr. Rhodes says. “The best that we could offer was to put Ethan through difficult chemotherapy and still not know that he would make it through.”

In fact, chemotherapy is so toxic for newborns that doctors gave Ethan’s parents the option not to treat their son. After two weeks in the hospital, Chad and Mandy made the painful decision to take their son home.

“The chemo could kill him,” Chad says. “There are all kinds of risks.”

“We came home and I remember lying in bed and praying,” Mandy says. “We said, ‘God, give us an answer’. We both woke up the next morning and both said, ‘Nope, we’re not going to put him through it’.”

Most doctors at Vanderbilt supported that decision. “We figured if Ethan truly had the kind of leukemia that we felt he had, then even with full treatment he may not do well,” says Dr. Rhodes. “For that reason we felt it was right to honor the family’s decision.”

After only a few days at home, Ethan’s baby acne, which is common in newborns, had become infected. So they went back to the hospital. That’s when the tumors began to show up…

“We noticed a lump in his calf,” says Mandy. “We paged the doctor, and they told us that it could be a blood clot or a build up of the leukemia cells, which is called chloroma.”

Tumors started popping up in other places such as Ethan’s feet, hands, and his forearm.

“Leukemia itself means cancer of the blood; it’s a blood disease,” explains Dr. Rhodes. “But in this particular kind of leukemia it can also go out into the tissues. That’s what we believe was happening with Ethan. He actually had leukemia in his skin, in his hands, his feet, and his legs, as well as in his liver and spleen which is more common. So he was showing that he had a very advanced disease at that point.”

Ethan was now about three weeks old, and his condition really started to decline. He stopped eating and began to experience sleep apnea.

“[The nurse] told me that he might develop what’s called sepsis, which would be a total body infection, and that he would go peacefully or he might hemorrhage,” Mandy recalls. “I would see blood in his diaper or maybe coming out of his ears. I was so scared to open up his diaper to even change it.”

When the hospice nurse arrived, Chad and Mandy knew they were near the end but Chad, Mandy and their friends continued to pray… believing God for the impossible.

“I remember rocking him and singing, ‘Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. I want to see you’,” Mandy says. “I knew that if I just focused my mind on Christ that’s the only way that I could make it through.”

The night that Ethan faced his greatest medical crisis, something happened. “Mandy late that night started feeding, and he started taking his bottle a little bit at a time,” Chad says.

The next day, Ethan was a little stronger… But was he having one final rebound before death?

Mandy says, “I remember sitting at the kitchen table and saying, ‘I believe God’s healing him. I can see God working.’ Then he just gradually started getting better. And over the next week, we were back up to six ounces of formula every three hours.”

Over the next two weeks, Ethan improved! And when Mandy took him back to Vanderbilt to check his blood counts? “His platelets level was like 415,000 -- in normal range, where it had been 39,000 at his lowest point.”

This stumped Dr. Rhodes and her colleagues. “Ethan had gotten about as sick as a baby could possibly get and then spontaneously got better. So we wanted to look. We did the bone marrow test, which showed no evidence of leukemia. The tumors gradually went down over a period of probably a week or so. It was just remarkable to witness it.”

Chad and Mandy knew they had witnessed a miracle when they repeated the bone marrow biopsy in July with the same results.

Today, Ethan Stacy is a strapping two-year-old, who loves playing with his dad and big sister Kaylee. It goes without saying that the Stacys are thankful.

"The prayers of my friends and church members meant everything to me,” Chad says.

Mandy agrees. “It’s just awesome that we have a God like that… I just can’t get over the miracles. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for him because I know it’s going to be big.”

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http://www1.cbn.com/700club/baby-deaths-door-miracle-story-ethan-stacy