The night before my daughter’s 18th birthday, so the day before her 18th birthday — well, for actually a few weeks prior to it, my daughter had been in and out of the hospital. They had given her Benadryl and some other things and it had just made it worse and she didn’t know what was wrong with her, but her roommates drug her back down to that hospital for a third time. And finally, the hospital really started to pay attention, and we got a call to rush to Kalamazoo. We live near Detroit. That [our daughter] might have meningitis. And, you know, meningitis can be deadly.
So we — our car couldn’t even make it. We took someone else’s car that could make it and we drove straight there as fast as we could. And right when we got there — it was right at midnight as my daughter was turning 18. And right as we got there, she was having a spinal tap. And then we came into the room and the doctor came back in, and he told us what was going on and my poor daughter was just — her head was down. She couldn’t look up at all. Her brain was just hurting so bad, she was just moaning, she couldn’t even talk.
And I said — the doctor said, “It’s meningitis. We won’t know until we get cultures back if it’s bacterial or if it’s viral.” You know, “We’ve gotta quarantine her.” And this, that, and the other, and I said, “But she’s gonna be okay, right?” And that doctor looked at me, and he said, “I can’t tell you that right now.” And that was one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve ever heard in my entire life. And they went to go take my daughter up and put her in a room and me and my wife went outside. This is back when I still smoked, I went outside to smoke a cigarette.
And there was a homeless gentleman out there. And he asked what we were — he asked for a cigarette and then he asked what we were there for and we told him. And he said, “Can I pray with you right now? Can I pray for your daughter?” And we held hands and we stood there out in the freezing cold in the middle of the night, and that man prayed for my baby to be completely healed. And she was.
It ended up being — I can’t remember now. Viral’s the one, I think, that’s the real bad one and hers was bacterial, or viral is the good one and bacterial is the bad one. Either way, hers was the one that you do usually recover from. And it took her months at home to recover from that. And it was heartbreaking watching her barely be able to stand, crawling to the bathroom on her hands and knees ‘cause her head hurt so bad. But I will never forget the kindness and the gentleness of that homeless man, who as repayment for a cigarette prayed health and healing to my baby.