It Could Happen to Your Daughter by Charles Wood There is no man so poor as he who has ONLY MONEY—and no gratitude! The Charles Wood family are just about the richest people in the world. They are rich in gratitude to God, for He did a wonderful thing for their daughter Sheryl. Charles Wood is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and is presently comptroller for a large Cleveland corporation. In the fall of 1962, Sheryl, our older daughter, was an active, athletic thirteen-year old girl who had just entered the eighth grade at Olmsted Falls Junior High School. The summer before, she and Carol, her eleven-year-old sister, had attended a Christian camp and participated in a full list of activities ranging from baseball to pillow fights. Now Sheryl was trying out as a cheerleader. Every afternoon our backyard was the scene of cartwheels and flips, as cries of “rah-rah-rah!” and “block that kick!” bounced off the walls of our house and others. The fact that Sheryl’s activities had caused her several hard licks on the head did not seem too important at the time. It was all part of being a vital, fun-loving teenager. Then, one Monday morning, my wife Gwen received a phone call from the school office saying Sheryl had fainted in the hallway. Gwen rushed to the school. By the time she arrived, Sheryl had fully recovered, but Gwen took her home. The next day, however, Sheryl was back in school. On Wednesday, a call from the school secretary reached my office. Sheryl had fainted again and they had been unable to get in touch with her mother. I left the office at once and drove to the school. A little pale and quite frightened, Sheryl seemed all right otherwise. However, I made an appointment with our family doctor for that afternoon. Finding no cause for alarm after examining Sheryl, the doctor thought it would be safe to let her return to school. He suggested that we call him if Sheryl had further difficulties. The very next day I received another call from the school. Sheryl had fainted for the third time. They had been unable to revive her and she had been taken to the Southwest Community Hospital in Berea for emergency treatment. I rushed to the hospital and was relieved to find that Sheryl had already regained consciousness. I insisted, however, that she be admitted as a patient. When she had fainted, her head had struck the tile floor and the doctor suggested we have X-rays taken of her skull. This was done, and a spinal tap also, in an attempt to determine the reason for the fainting spells. Because the tests were inconclusive, the doctors suggested a few days rest and further observation in the hospital. During her hospitalization, Sheryl had still another fainting spell, this time while seated in a wheelchair. Eventually, although there still was no firm diagnosis, she was allowed to return home and resume school attendance. Within the next several weeks she had many more fainting spells and complained of a “ringing” in her head. One day she reported that when she and some of the kids had stuck each other with pins, she could not feel the pin pricks on her right arm. Sheryl’s fainting spells grew more frequent and she remained unconscious for longer periods of time. It was becoming increasingly difficult for her to keep up with her school work — not because of the absences, but because of the “ringing” in her head of which she complained more each day. Late one night I was awakened by her moaning and crying. Stumbling to her room, I found her holding her head and twisting back and forth on the bed. “My head, Daddy, it feels like it is going to burst open.” The only thing that seemed to relieve the pressure was the blaring noise of the radio. By blaring, I mean so loud that not one of the rest of the family could sleep. Sheryl would go to sleep with her little radio going full blast. Later, I would slip into her room and turn the radio down so the rest of us could get some rest. Finally, during the first week in November, we made an appointment for Sheryl to begin a series of tests as an outpatient at the Cleveland Clinic. I watched the first tests as the doctor took a needle and gently ran it back and forth across her forehead. She could feel it on the left side but not on the right. The same testing was done on her stomach and the soles of her feet with similar reactions. Seemingly, she had lost most of the reflexes on the entire right side of her body. We also learned that she was developing double vision and that the hearing in the right ear was being impaired. Her facial features were beginning to change as her right eyelid began drooping over her eye. By mid-November, her headaches had become so severe that we had to keep her home as many as three days at a time during the week. She was losing strength as well. Then, Friday night before Thanksgiving, Gwen and I were preparing for bed when we heard a dull “thump” in Sheryl’s room. We rushed in and found her inert body lying at the foot of her bed. My heart was in my throat as I picked her up and tried to revive her without success. Nothing we did brought her back to consciousness. My anxiety was surpassed only by my frustration and hopelessness in the situation. I put her on her bed and bent my head to pray. When I looked up, I saw Carol standing in the doorway, her childish face pale with fear and her eyes wide with horror. “Dear God, why does she have to see this?” I moaned. That night Sheryl was admitted at the clinic as an emergency case. Our trip home was depressing and our whole world seemed to be falling apart. Neither Gwen nor I slept much the rest of the night and in the next room I could hear Carol’s soft whimpers as she sobbed in her sleep. “Please God, do something. Help us, please,” I prayed. The next morning about eleven o’clock, a doctor from the clinic called. “Sheryl is all right,” he said, “but this morning she got out of bed and fainted again, hitting her shoulder as she fell. We X-rayed it and the pictures show the right arm is broken about an inch below the shoulder and the bone in her right shoulder is chipped. You can see her after lunch, but I wanted you to know you would find her in a cast and sling.” What is happening, I asked myself as I hung up the phone. Everything was going so smoothly and now it is all going wrong. As a deacon and treasurer of our church, I was definitely spiritually-oriented, but this was more than I was prepared for. I could sense something was horribly wrong, yet I felt totally helpless in the face of it. Gwen called our pastor. He was kind and sympathetic and came to the house to pray with us. Carol, however, decided to take more positive action. That afternoon while Gwen and I were visiting Sheryl at the clinic, she wrote a letter. Unknown to us, she had listened occasionally to Kathryn Kuhlman on the radio. Sensing our anxiety and knowing that something was wrong with her big sister, she sat down and wrote out a prayer request to Miss Kuhlman. While we were gone, she walked the mile and a half to the post office and mailed it. Three days later the doctor called us and said they had taken new X-rays of Sheryl’s arm. The new pictures indicated that the arm had not been broken at all, only badly bruised. The only possible explanation, he concluded, was that a technician had misread the first X-ray. However, the coincidence of the prayer request and now the healed arm caused Gwen to begin to give serious consideration to the probability of spiritual healing. It was the beginning of what was to be an entirely new way of life for all of us. Sheryl stayed in the Cleveland Clinic for two weeks. They had run a full battery of tests including electroencephalograms (brain wave tests). The tests indicated that a part of her brain was not functioning in a normal manner under certain given conditions. This was the cause of the fainting spells. They were still hesitant about making a diagnosis, but, for the first time, I heard the doctors using the word “seizures.” Before leaving the clinic, Sheryl was given medicine which was supposed to cut down on the number and the intensity of the seizures. She was advised to go to school as much as she was able. However, the seizures continued and each time they seemed to last a little longer. The school officials were most sympathetic and understanding, and the principal even assigned one of her close friends to stay with her and watch over her. The dangers associated with Sheryl’s condition were painfully evident, and we realized after the fall in the hospital that she should never be left alone. We tried to watch her when she went up and down the steps at the house, but this was not always possible. Gwen still had meals to fix, housework to do, and I still had to go to my job. Constant anxiety settled upon our daily lives. Just before Christmas, while Gwen and Sheryl were shopping in the big Zayre’s Department Store, Sheryl fainted. She was rushed to Fairview Park Hospital in the Fire Department ambulance, but was dismissed after emergency treatment. Although we somehow managed to get through the Christmas holidays, there was always a dark, foreboding cloud of the unknown hovering over everything that used to be bright and cheery. Each day seemed to bring new reasons for discouragement and further despair. We now noticed the seizures were becoming more violent and their frequency was increasing. Sometimes Sheryl would go several days without fainting—other times she would pass out several times in one day. When she returned to school after the holidays, it became an accepted act that she would probably have a seizure before the day was over, often right at her desk. “Surely,” I said to Gwen late one night after we had sat up with Sheryl, “there must be some place where we can get help.” That night we prayed a humble, sincere prayer for divine help. In January, I heard about a doctor who had had good success treating patients with similar conditions. We checked and found he was one of the most respected neurologists in the Cleveland area. We called and made an appointment. After a series of examinations, the doctor called us in for consultation. “Sheryl seems to have had an injury to the left side of her head in the section of the brain that controls the reflexes on her right side. However, there is no doubt that our diagnosis of epilepsy is correct.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Epilepsy! And not only was it epilepsy, but the doctor said it was the Grand Mal variety, the most serious type. The doctor was encouraging and said he could almost guarantee that the seizures could be reduced to no more than two a year through the use of drugs. This was the first encouragement we had had and we went home willing to face the future bravely and wait for the drugs to perform their promised miracles. We learned a great deal about epilepsy during the next several months. For one thing, we learned that there is a certain amount of electrical current that flows through the brain, much the same way electricity passes through the wiring of a house. If there is some kind of injury to the wiring, it will often cause a short circuit and blow a fuse. In the same way, if there is an injury to the brain, under certain conditions it can cause a short circuit in the brain’s electrical system—resulting in a seizure. We also learned that almost ninety-five percent of the cases of epilepsy are caused by injury to the brain — either at birth or later in life. Suddenly, that series of bumps on the head that Sheryl had received the previous summer and fall grew increasingly important Any one or all of them could have caused her present disability. At the present time, there is no cure for epilepsy. In rare instances, an operation on the brain can relieve the condition, but even this will not bring about a cure. “It can be arrested,” the doctor counseled, “but never cured.” He also warned that precautions should be taken to protect her from further falls, which could prove to be fatal. We were advised to prohibit all activities such as swimming, bicycle riding, and other sports. Since even the exertion of playing her clarinet often brought on a seizure, she would no longer be able to play in the school band. So Sheryl’s once active and athletic world was circumscribed by restrictions and enforced inactivity. High-spirited adolescence gave way to sedentary routine. But her seizures continued, taking on frightening aspects. At first she had fainted quietly; now she would clench her fists and thrash her arms and legs convulsively when the attacks began. Often I would have to force her jaws open to pry her tongue from between her teeth. Even in limited activities, there seemed to be danger. Hearing about one young person who drowned in a bathtub during a seizure increased our anguish. Sheryl’s hearing was another source of anxiety after two ear specialists determined she had now lost sixty percent of the hearing in her right ear. By spring, we were averaging between two and three trips a week to various doctors. Then one of the drugs prescribed for Sheryl had an adverse effect on her gums, which became swollen and began to grow over her teeth. Dental surgery would be required to remove the excess gum tissue. Helplessly, we watched our daughter’s decline as her appearance and actions changed. Her movements became sluggish and slow. The drugs often caused her to stagger like a drunken person and she would clutch a chair for support or lean again the wall while walking. Although our hearts ached, we tried to put up a brave front, not only for Sheryl’s sake, but for Carol’s. But deep inside we felt that all hope was being drained away. I was desperate. I’m a Baptist deacon, I thought, active in every phase of my church’s life, but I am powerless in the face of this. It never occurred to me to pray for divine healing. Miracles happened in biblical days, I had been taught, but not any more. Healing in our day was accomplished by doctors and nurses and “miracle” drugs. All this added to my frustration as I found myself praying to a God whom I thought no longer performed miracles such as we needed for Sheryl. Gwen had begun listening to Kathryn Kuhlman on the radio occasionally. She had a sneaking suspicion that Sheryl’s “broken arm” had been healed through the ministry of prayer. She tried to persuade me to listen, but women preachers just did not fit into my theology. Most of my life I had been taught that women were not supposed to have authority to lead men. As a deacon, I had joined with the others in our church to make sure that no women achieved such status. When women missionaries visited our church, we went to considerable lengths to see that they did not occupy the pulpit, allowing them instead to speak to women’s classes or give their testimonies. I was also chairman of the Ohio Council of Evangelical Baptist Missions, and part of our task was to examine the prospective missionaries and make recommendations to various boards. One of the requirements we imposed was that women missionaries would not teach men on the foreign fields. Thus, when Gwen asked me if she could take Sheryl to a “healing service” in Pittsburgh conducted by a woman, I was reluctant to give my approval. I wanted nothing to do with “faith healers,” especially women. “I have heard of too many fakes,” I demurred. However, Gwen pointed out that Miss Kuhlman made no claims to being a “healer.” Disarmed by Gwen’s persistence and Miss Kuhlman’s disavowal of peculiar healing power, two weeks later when Gwen again asked if she could take Sheryl to a miracle service in Pittsburgh, I gave my reluctant approval. Gwen and the children were accompanied on the trip by Gwen’s father and her sister Eunice. After the service had started, Gwen’s father said, “Don’t you think you ought to take Sheryl down to the platform and have Miss Kuhlman pray for her?” Gwen, uncertain of the order of the service, was hesitant. However, when Eunice pulled Sheryl by the arm and said, “Come on Sheryl, we are going down,” Gwen consented. Halfway down the steps at the back of the auditorium, Sheryl turned and looked at her aunt with a strange, almost weird look. “What’s wrong, honey?” Eunice asked. “I don’t know,” Sheryl said. “Something just popped in my ear. I can hear.” Although Eunice and Sheryl did not hear it, at that precise moment Miss Kuhlman was saying from the platform, “Somebody’s ear has been opened.” Gwen immediately thought of Sheryl. Desperately hoping it was, she was still shocked to see Miss Kuhlman come down off the platform and meet Sheryl and Eunice halfway down the aisle. Miss Kuhlman reached out and gently touched Sheryl’s head. Immediately Sheryl collapsed to the floor under the power of God. Almost overcome with awe, Gwen met them in the lobby, tears of rejoicing streaming from her eyes. Driving back to Cleveland, the little band of pilgrims were still elated. Over and over they spoke of what they had seen and heard. Sheryl’s hearing was definitely restored and Carol seemed as enthused about it as her sister. That evening, Gwen said to me, “If God can do this, then surely He can heal her epilepsy as well.” Yet, if another miracle was in store for Sheryl, we received no advance notice. That night she had another seizure. “Chuck,” Gwen said to me shortly thereafter, “Miss Kuhlman also holds a Sunday service in Youngstown. Why don’t we drive down next Sunday?” My responsibilities at the church and the press of other duties made it necessary for me to postpone the trip for almost two months. In the meantime, Sheryl’s seizures grew much worse. Some of them lasted up to two hours and left her body in such a state of shock that her recovery was painfully slow. Moreover, we realized that not only had her body changed, but so had her personality. She was becoming highly rebellious, creating almost palpable tensions in our home. We hated to discipline Sheryl, for that could provoke another seizure. Yet we also had Carol to think of, and we could not let Sheryl have her way about everything. What could we do? Nothing seemed to be right. Gwen’s weariness and strain were obvious. Contrary to our hope, Sheryl’s seizures had not been controlled by the medications. Our family life showed signs of breaking under stress. Nothing could have made this more plain than Gwen’s admission to me that she had reached a stage where she would rather see Sheryl die than continue living in the poor health that seemed to be her destiny. Just after Sheryl had reached her fourteenth birthday, a missionary conference was held at our church. At the close of the conference, I glanced up and saw my afflicted daughter coming forward to dedicate her life to the Lord’s service. Watching her, I shook my head in pity. Poor child, I thought. What can she give God? What could God do with a deformed body, a damaged brain? Sheryl virtually dropped out of school the last two weeks of the term. The seizures were now coming almost daily and their duration could not be predicted. Her teachers passed her, I think, mainly because they admired her spunk. We made plans to begin our vacation the second week in June. We would be going to our small cottage in the country, and I agreed to take a route that would allow a stop in Youngstown on the way. A week before we were to leave, Sheryl had her worst seizure. It was almost fatal. It began around midnight on Saturday night. We had been sitting in the living room and Sheryl was on the sofa. Suddenly she jumped to her feet and said, “Oh, Daddy....” Then she stiffened. I rushed to prevent her from falling against the coffee table. Gwen helped me stretch her out on the sofa as her body went into one spasm after another. Every muscle in her body was tensed; her fists were closed so tightly, it was impossible to pry them open. It took every ounce of strength I possessed to pull her jaw down and force a wadded handkerchief between her clenched teeth. The seizure showed no signs of abating, so about 1:00 A.M. I finally called the neurologist. He told me to try to get some medicine into her. “If it doesn’t work,” he said, “bring her to the hospital and we will see if we can do something here.” Gwen and I sat at opposite ends of the sofa trying to hold Sheryl’s writhing body. In time I managed to get a few pills down her throat, but the seizure continued for another hour as one convulsion followed another. “Oh, God,” I prayed out loud in my desperation, “please help us.” Then almost as if I heard an audible voice, I remembered a passage from Jeremiah that Gwen and I had long cherished: “Call unto me, and I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not” (Jeremiah 33:3). A great peace swept over me as I recalled these words. I looked down on the writhing, twisting form of our young daughter and consciously committed her to the Lord’s keeping. Moments later I sensed something taking place in her body. The convulsions ebbed and a peacefulness came over her face. She fell into a deep sleep. I reached down, picked her up in my arms and carried her across the living room and up the stairs to her room. Gwen went before me to prepare the bed and we gently tucked Sheryl beneath the sheets. That night I lay awake until the first streaks of rose-colored dawn lit the eastern sky. “...Great and mighty things which though knowest not....” The words whispered over and over again through my mind and strangely assured me. A week later, on Sunday morning, we started our vacation. First we drove from Cleveland to Youngstown to attend the worship service conducted at the Stambaugh Auditorium by Kathryn Kuhlman. Because we were late arriving, Gwen and Carol ended up sitting in the balcony, although Sheryl and I found seats on the ground floor, three rows from the front. The music was heavenly. There was something alive, something vital about the entire service. For the first time in my life I could actually feel the presence of the Spirit of God in a group of worshipers. We joined in the singing and then, about halfway through the service, Sheryl turned to me and said simply, “Daddy, I’m healed.” Her voice was soft and confident. Her eyes glittered like sparkling stars on a winter night. “How—how do you know?” I asked, stammering in disbelief. “I don’t know, Daddy,” she whispered, “but it felt like something came down and took all the pressure off my head. The ringing has gone. My eyes don’t hurt any more. My head doesn’t hurt. I’m healed, Daddy, I know it. It was as though God put His finger on my head and took away all the hurt.” As I looked deep into her eyes, my own eyes began to fill with rare tears. I tried to talk, but could not. Leaning over, I pulled her close to me, embracing her in the presence of all those people. I was oblivious to those who turned to watch the little drama between father and daughter. I suppose one of the workers sensed what was happening and told Miss Kuhlman, for when I looked up she was there beside us. Her whole face seemed to smile and her eyes sparkled. “Dear Jesus,” she said softly, “from the bottom of our hearts, thanks!” Still awed, we staggered to our feet. Miss Kuhlman gently touched Sheryl’s cheek, and she dropped to the floor under the power of the Spirit. “This is a marvelous healing,” Miss Kuhlman said to me. “God will use this girl as a testimony of His power.” And He has. My own faith has been greatly strengthened as well. I had come face to face with a miracle and knew that from that time forward my actions and reactions would be based on faith, as well as knowledge. After the service we returned to the car and together we thanked God for what He had done. We agreed that the miracle we had shared must be accepted on faith. We continued our vacation. More than twenty-four hours had passed since Sheryl’s last seizure — the longest she had been free in months. The doctors had said that failure to give Sheryl her medicine could result in continual, eventually fatal, seizures. That afternoon she walked seven holes with me on the golf course. Any exertion, the doctors had warned, would bring on a seizure. Sheryl was weak and tired, but it was a healthy exhaustion. The next day, for the first time in almost a year, she went swimming. No seizure. I had no more doubts. She was healed! From that time, Sheryl has been completely surrendered to God’s care and no medication, not a single drug, has been administered since that glorious day in Stambaugh Auditorium. Later that summer, Sheryl returned to the same camp she had attended the summer before. She participated in all activities and won the outstanding girl camper award. One year later, Sheryl entered Houghton Academy in New York where she competed and excelled in a variety of athletics: girls’ football, basketball, and track. Competing against both college and high school students, she won seven ribbons at track meets. The reader will appreciate, I am sure, the joy I take as a father in sharing with you an experience that is dearer to my heart than anything else that ever happened in my life. Gratitude is the hardest of all emotions to express. There are no words capable of conveying all that one feels. Until we reach a world where vocabulary knows no bounds, we have chosen to express our thankfulness to God by giving our lives to Him and telling people everywhere what He has done for our family!” A Doctor’s Quest: Chapter 10 |