A Cincinnati couple believes that divine intervention, along with the power of prayer, is the reason why their infant daughter’s suspected brain tumor appearing on a Cat-scan suddenly vanished.
Carissa and Matt Hatfield had noticed soon after taking their new infant daughter, Paisley, home from the hospital, that something was wrong. At first they weren’t exactly sure if the slight droop on the left side of their daughters face was the result of Carissa’s difficult birth, or perhaps a temporary dropping of underdeveloped facial muscles.
“We noticed when she would cry, her eye would not shut all the way,” Carissa said “It would stay open, and when she started to smile, the same side of her mouth would not move.”
The condition however, rarely lasts beyond a day, which caused the couple to immediately seek out medical advice from doctors at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Liberty Township.
Once at the hospital, doctors suggested that a Cat-scan was needed to determine if there was something else causing the child’s face to droop.
Several hours later, the Cat-scan revealed the young couples worst nightmare, their baby daughter had a large mass near the base of Paisley’s brain. Doctors immediately scheduled a biopsy for the following week.
Carissa: “Right then and there, my-my heart dropped. ‘What is it?’ Like ‘What’s going on?’”
Matthew: “That’s when I’m like, ‘Okay, they saw something. It can’t be anything good.’”
Carissa: “The phone rang and immediately I picked it up. And she was just like, ‘She has a mass. It’s invading her brain. It’s compressing her facial nerves. It had already deteriorated her skull.’ I ran down to Matt’s office, and I’m just like, ‘She has a tumor,” to see the look on his face, to not know what was going to happen.”
Matthew: “I’m going to have to bury my daughter. And I don’t know how I’m going to do this.”
The mass had spread to her sinus cavity, eye socket, and middle ear.
That’s when Carissa and Matthew, devoted Christians, asked for God’s divine intervention. They reached out to family members and friends, to send prayers their way. The couple then gathered their entire family, along with friends and neighbors, and prayed together.
Carissa: “All I did was beg God, ‘God, please don’t let my baby die. Just please don’t let her die.’”
Matthew: “Please don’t take my daughter away from me. If anything, you know, let me trade places with her.”
Through those desperate prayers, Matthew found the strength to trust God.
Paisley Hatfield: Parents see ‘miracle’ when baby’s tumor vanishes https://t.co/QachXEsKM2
— bill metz1950 (@billmetz1950) December 3, 2015
Matthew: “I just made a promise to God and I told my wife, I said, ‘I don’t know how this is going to turn out, but no matter what happens, whether she lives or she dies, we gotta trust God.’”
Carissa: “He’s like, ‘He’s still good – no matter if He takes our baby away – there’s a reason. There’s always a reason. And there will be good out of it.’ As a mom, I didn’t – I was just like, ‘I cannot say those words.’”
The couple gathered for the last time on Sunday in prayer, at their church with family and friends, praying for a miracle.
Carissa: “I felt like at that moment, ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be just fine.’ I was just at peace, that peace that passes all understanding. I remember coming to that point and finally just saying like, ‘God, either way, you’re good.’”
Then came Monday, the day when doctors would perform the scheduled 3-hour surgery and biopsy on Paisley, expecting to find a malignant tumor. However when the surgeons reached the spot where the suspected mass was visible on the Cat-scan, they found NOTHING. The mass had miraculously vanished.
The hospital also released a statement: “Doctors at Children’s had expected the worst, a malignant tumor. But when surgeons reached the spot where the suspected tumor was visible on the scan, they found nothing. They couldn’t have been happier to tell the good news to the Hatfield family.”
Matthew: “I was literally, visibly shaking. I didn’t know how much I could take anymore.”
Carissa: “He was like, ‘I had a talk with God this morning about Paisley, and she’s going to be just fine.’ And so at that moment it’s reassurance that God’s got this.”
The actual procedure took only 45 minutes. After the operation the surgeon met with Matthew and Carissa in the consultation room.
Carissa recalls, “As soon as he opened the door, he started shaking his head. He’s like, ‘Your prayers must have worked. There was nothing there. Nothing.’ And the smile on my face, I was just like, ‘What, are you serious?’ Like ‘Oh my gosh!’”
Matthew: “We just praised God and we both started crying and just could not believe what the doctor was saying.”
Dr. Kelly, the family’s pediatrician concluded, “Somehow between Friday and Monday morning this large tumor, probably the size of a walnut or bigger, disappeared. They had no medical explanation for it.”
However, the Hatfield’s do…it was divine intervention!
This story syndicated with permission from My Faith News