Mission 177

Mission 176 | View All Mission Reports | Mission 178

Departure:
Denver, Colorado

Arrival:
Indianapolis, Indiana

Date:
Tuesday March 27, 2012

Mission Report

Grace on Wings flew out to Denver the night before transport and due to high winds, an unexpected restart of a “control burn” caused the sun to shine like a big orange ball in the front lands of Denver area. It smelled like camping too. Too bad the mountain view was fuzzy. It’s one of my favorite places.

Conner M, who is 18 years old, went out to go skiing for his spring break with his brother and Dad. It was a trip they planned for over a year. On the Breckenridge slopes, he had a bad wipeout and ended up with a broken thigh. The orthopedic surgeon fixed it with hardware and he lay in the hospital recovering for 2 more days. On the third day after surgery he was released to go to a hotel room, but he still required some nasal oxygen to keep his blood level of oxygen in the normal range. The doctors thought is was a combination of altitude, meds, and recent surgery.

That night Conner was “snoring” loudly but his brother did not think anything of it-in the morning tragically, they were not able to wake him up and the ER confirmed he had suffered a severe brain injury from lack of oxygen and was in a coma.

His mom flew out to be with him and his parents were told “he’d probable be in a vegetative state permanently.” Wow-he was just hitting the slopes a few days earlier?!

His mom contacted his sister in Michigan and her Campus Crusade for Christ began to spread the word as well as their church back in Indy and soon-over a thousand people were praying for Conner to wake up.

Two days later he opened his eyes and began to be aware. Within a few hours-all life support was able to be taken off and he began to speak. He has some trouble finding the right words but he relayed to his mom that he had died and was “on the ladder going up to heaven when he was made to turn around” because so many people were praying!

When we loaded him onto the aircraft, he was still too weak to move his legs and still had trouble finding the right words. He began to get frustrated as he tried to tell us what he needed. His mom asked him if he was scared and he said, “no that’s not it.” We moved him and asked him all sorts of questions to figure out what he needed. His mom said on take-off, “remember you are in the palm of the Lord’s hand and He will take care of you.” I agreed He was going to take care of all of us because He is a big God! Conner was finally able to get the sentence out, “I’m hungry.” Yep I should have been able to guess that one (I have two teenagers also-always hungry). He loved the breakfast bars I had.

We were amazed by his miracle story and were so glad to be a part of getting him home. We had Heartland Ambulance donate the ground ambulance to get him from the Indy airport to the Rehab Hospital of Indiana. I told Conner that they had amazing food there and he was looking forward to putting back on the 30lbs he had lost!

Thanks for great flying by Hal and DJ, and care from Medic Adam. Thanks again to Heartland Ambulance for ground help!

Tam

 

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