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The Miracle of Life

  • Published Aug 25, 2003
The Miracle of Life

When Lesvia was eight months pregnant, a doctor called to tell her a recent test revealed that her baby had a brain tumor. Lesvia and her husband, Anthony, thanked the Lord for their child and asked God to remove the tumor.

When doctors compared the previous test with new tests, the scan showed no tumor. The doctors were perplexed. After additional testing, they discovered David's brain was hemorrhaging and his heart-beat was fading. The diagnosis: "Your baby is going to die. We need to take the baby and let him live a little while hooked to machines."

Anthony said, "We know who we believe in!" They decided their baby should stay in Lesvia's womb until he was due. A few days later, David's heartbeat returned to normal, and his brain stopped hemorrhaging.

Due date

David was born Oct. 24, 1997, his due date. But the doctor gave grim news: David had hydrocephaly (water on the brain) and was blind, deaf and paralyzed on his right side. "There is no hope for your baby," the doctor told them. "If he lives, he will be nothing but a vegetable." When an ophthalmologist examined David, she emphasized that David would be blind forever; nothing could be done.

"There is something we can do!" Lesvia answered. "We can pray for his healing." Later she thanked the Lord that her baby was alive and had no brain tumor, that his heartbeat had returned to normal, and that the hemorrhaging had stopped.

Lesvia treated David as if he could see. She read books to him and showed him the pictures. While most parents would have been devastated by the medical reports, Lesvia and Anthony chose to trust the Lord.

Help on the way

When David was 2, the Kellys learned of a brain injury center in Philadelphia. Here they were trained about brain patterning, an experimental process by which a brain-injured person's head and limbs are manually moved in specific patterns, theoretically training other parts of the brain to function in place of the injured areas. With the help of family and friends, Lesvia, Anthony and Anthony Jr. began patterning David every evening. By 3 years old, David was crawling on the floor, and his hearing loss had improved from "total" to "severe."

In June 2001 another ophthalmologist declared that David now had "functional vision." Additionally, David's pediatrician administered a hearing test, and when David passed, he exclaimed, "David can hear!"

David now freely sits in a chair without being propped up and eats with a spoon. When his mother says, "Kissee Mama," David puckers his lips and kisses her on the cheek. This summer, Lesvia took David to the Ocean Hyperbaric Neurologic Center in Florida for treatments that some think may bring dormant brain neurons to life and stop seizures.

Another miracle Lesvia hopes to see? Her bright eyes sparkle and a wide smile comes across her face when she answers. "David loves music," she says. "Someday I want to hear David sing 'Amazing Grace' [including the line] 'I once was blind, but now I see.' "

This article appeared in Focus on the Family magazine. Copyright © 2003 Focus on the Family. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.