Sid Roth - Woman Wakes Up from 2 Month Coma
After a tragic accident Mary Frances Varallo's daughter was in a coma for over two months. Doctors gave up. Today her daughter functions normally, even though her brain scans show severe brain damage. The medical community, they can't explain it. Next on this edition of "It's Supernatural"!
Sid Roth: You know, the worst words that a mother can hear is that her daughter was in a tragic accident. But there's a little bit more to that. The night before, she woke up - not at a normal time - and started praying, and was told why she was praying. Mary Frances, why were you praying earlier in that morning of that tragic day?
Mary Frances: Yeah, it was about 4:00 in the morning, and God woke me up and said, "I want to talk to you about your children". And so I went downstairs to pray with Him, and He said, "Ask Me for My graces and My mercies for your children," which didn't make much sense. I never heard Him say that before. And as far as I knew the children were great, you know, out of school and doing what they wanted to do. And so everything seemed fine, but He knew something was coming. And so He said, "Ask Me for My graces and my Mercies". And it was about five hours later when we got a telephone call about Christina.
Sid Roth: What did it say?
Mary Frances: Well they told us - or told me; my husband was already there. And they said, "Mrs. Vallaro, you need to come to the hospital. Your daughter has been in a terrible accident, and your husband's nurse is coming to pick you up". And so I hung up the telephone. But when I did, I believed...
Sid Roth: By the way, her husband is a dentist. That's why your husband's nurse - go ahead.
Mary Frances: Okay. And I believe - I hung up the phone - that I heard the words, "Life and wholeness, Mary Frances. Life and wholeness for Christina", and so I had that just tucked into me all the way to the hospital. And then when I got there family was there, and Nick my husband proceeded to tell me, or give me, the litany of Christina's injuries.
Sid Roth: What was Christina like before the accident?
Mary Frances: Five-foot-two, and blond and eyes are blue, brilliant, and an outstanding athlete. Very popular girl, student leader, and full of God, you know.
Sid Roth: And what was wrong with her after this tragic accident?
Mary Frances: In a coma. Her brain had been sheared. You want me to tell you about how it happened?
Sid Roth: Yes.
Mary Frances: She was on her way to work, and she came to a light, and went through the light, but so did a milk truck. And the milk truck came through and rammed her into a bridge abuttment. And a big utility pole came down through the roof and took her ear and broke her collar bone, and her arm, and her right hip, and then the car came in this way, and broke all of her - fractured all of her pelvis, and ruptured her spleen, and then broke her ribs, tore the aorta to her heart, and then took her brain and sheared it. And - but it just so happened that two cars behind her - she was trying to get up onto the interstate - was a paramedic truck. That's a little bit of mercy. And the paramedics made their way into the car. It was all crunched, but they made their way to get her an airway.
Sid Roth: Now when you saw her for the first time, describe what you saw.
Mary Frances: Oh my. That was that evening, even after all the surgeries - open heart surgery being one of them, you know, for the torn aorta. And so when we were allowed to go in, my husband and our son Nicholas and I, we stood there. And it's hard to believe that's your beautiful daughter. They shaved part of her head, and they have a brain monitor that can look like a thermometer you'd use on a turkey that goes down through your skull and into your brain to measure brain pressure. And then she was on totally full life support, and a little bed wrapping, and a diaper. And there was our wonderful 23-year-old.
Sid Roth: I mean, a girl that's got everything going for her.
Mary Frances: Yes.
Sid Roth: And then you see her. What was the prognosis by the doctors before the heart surgery?
Mary Frances: They weren't sure that she could even make it through the heart surgery. They didn't give her much of a chance of survival for the surgery. And then they said that even if she did survive, that the chances were that she would be a paraplegic because they were going to have to cut off the blood supply from the waist down. And depending on how long it took them to make the repairs on the aorta, would be the limit to the paralysis.
Sid Roth: And what's going through your mind, and what's going through your husband's mind when your daughter...
Mary Frances: Yeah.
Sid Roth: I mean, this happens to someone else.
Mary Frances: Yeah. It doesn't happen to you. Well in the emergency room after Nick had told me about all of her injuries, I told him what I believed God had said, and we held on to that; we really did; we had nothing else. And so we huddled together, the family that we are. Nick's family is huge. A lot of Italians were at the hospital, and a lot of friends, and we stayed together. And there were those that prayed and those that comforted, and believed that indeed there would be "life and wholeness".
Sid Roth: But what happened?
Mary Frances: Well we come out of the surgeries and see our daughter, as I described to you, in the intensive care unit, and that does not look like "life and wholeness" to you. Her face was all twisted like that and her hands had curled up already because of the brain shear.
Sid Roth: What does "brain sheer" mean?
Mary Frances: Well it's when - the skull is a certain size to contain the brain, and because it was hit at such a force, then the brain goes back and forth inside the skull, and like a part of it can go and it shears it. It's almost like it rips the brain, and that's what happened. Nothing came in on her head, you know.
Sid Roth: Just the force of going back.
Mary Frances: The force, yes, the force from where she was hit, it was like, I think the truck was going 45 miles an hour; Christina had gotten up to about 20; but that, combined into a concrete wall of the bridge, you know, took the brain and ripped it, and it was full of blood and air. And they said they didn't even know where to begin to operate; the damage was so severe.
Sid Roth: The truth. Were you getting angry with God?
Mary Frances: Angry? No. Honest and truly, I wasn't angry. Concerned, you know.
Sid Roth: Very concerned.
Mary Frances: It was never a good report.
Sid Roth: Did you just remind yourself those words you heard from God?
Mary Frances: Well it certainly was something, how He went about it, to wake you at four in the morning and say, "Ask Me for My graces and My mercies", and then five hours later your daughter is in a tragic accident. And you hang up from getting the call from the hospital, and God says again, "Mary Frances, life and wholeness. Life and wholeness for Christina". It's almost as if to say it's not what you see; it's not what you see that counts. Remember what I said, you know.
Sid Roth: It's not what you see that counts. But if you were in that situation, if it was your daughter, it doesn't get better in the natural; it gets worse. We'll be right back after this word.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm here with Mary Frances Varallo. Oh, what a tragic phone call she got. Her daughter was in a collision with a milk truck, and her aorta going to her heart was severed. She had to have open heart surgery; broken bones. Her brain though, I mean, very, very important; her brain had inside of it from the jolt, so to speak - what was inside of her brain?
Mary Frances: The MRI showed that the brain had been sheared. It's like taking something and ripping it. And then it's full of blood and air, and they couldn't tell where the air was coming from.
Sid Roth: Okay. She's in a coma. What happens next?
Mary Frances: Well every day was worse than the day before, it seems like. There was never a good report. All kinds of infections set in, and there was nothing to encourage us.
Sid Roth: But you did have that word from God.
Mary Frances: We had the word from God and - but it got challenged daily. And then after, as the two months carried on, I made a determination. At the beginning though, that I wanted the hospital to see Christina healthy and whole, because she was in the intensive care unit for so long, that we took a picture of her riding horseback, and had it blown up poster size, and then hung it over the hospital bed in the ICU.
Sid Roth: What was the motivation?
Mary Frances: So that because the young lady that they were looking at was not the daughter that we intended to return to us; it was the daughter there hanging on the wall on the horse. You know, that was the one that would come back to us.
Sid Roth: But that word, "life and wholeness", it sure didn't look that way. That's why you need the picture.
Mary Frances: Yeah. "Life and wholeness" was looking a little thin, but it was still there in our hearts. You know, when there just isn't anything else, you grab hold of something like that, and there wasn't anything else. The second day out they came to us, and they said that if she should survive, that the brain damage was so severe that we would need to put her in an institution, and that we needed to be considering that. That's just two days out from the accident; that's how bad it was, but she kept living to everyone's surprise. And after about 14 days, they had to do a tracheotomy on you, you know, and in order for her to continue to breathe they did that. And then they have to do a feeding tube so that your body can continue to be nourished, and remained in a diaper, and in a coma, and that was good as it was supposed to get. They said that even if she woke up, Sid, even if she woke up, that they said that she wouldn't know what planet she was on. She was marked PVS.
Sid Roth: Not a very good report. But you made a very interesting cassette for her. Tell me about it.
Mary Frances: Yes. Healing scriptures. You know, went to the Bible, and there's different scriptures that pertain to healing. And so I had done that, oh, a few months before the accident, and then I had that available just to put on Christina. And so that remained on her, because our spirit, they say, you know, your spirit is always awake, and - but your body rests.
Sid Roth: But it still had to be hard looking at your daughter like that.
Mary Frances: It was terrible. It really was, when you're used to someone being so active and so brilliant, and there she lay.
Sid Roth: So how long was she in a coma?
Mary Frances: A little over two months. We were two months in acute care, and then we had to move her. They said that we had to find a nursing home for her, and my husband and I didn't agree with that. We wanted more for her than nursing care. We wanted a rehab center that would receive her.
Sid Roth: And what did the doctors think about a rehab center?
Mary Frances: Oh they absolutely did not agree; did not agree.
Sid Roth: In other words, they had written her off.
Mary Frances: Oh yeah, well essentially; she was marked PVS, which is persistent or permanent vegetative state, and so it was a nursing home, you know, is all that they would agree to, which left us in a little bit of straits with insurance companies and other physicians. And so we were kind of on our own in what we were going to have to do, so we traveled to Washington, D.C.
Sid Roth: That just sounds awful; permanent vegetative state. How would you like that report on your daughter? Permanent vegetative state. But you decided you were going to take her to a little better than just a place to vegetate.
Mary Frances: Yes, right. We investigated; there were three rehab centers in the United States that would receive her, and we went to them. My family stayed with her in Nashville, and then we chose Houston. A Dr. Bonke was there that was wonderful, and we chose Houston, Texas, and here, the Institution for Rehabilitation and Research.
Sid Roth: But you got a little more than you bargained for when you decided to fly your daughter there.
Mary Frances: Yes we did.
Sid Roth: What happened?
Mary Frances: Well we had to get our own plane, because the hospital was not in agreement with us. And Nick really wanted to get her there as fast as we could, because there were such problems still with her heart and with her breathing that we knew we couldn't belabor her body in a long flight. And so my husband Nick got a Lear jet out of Atlanta and a medical crew, and they came to Nashville, and up into the room to get Christina. And she was in fever at that time, and no one was in agreement with this move. And there was one trauma surgeon, Dr. Ed Rutherford that said, "Well give her a chance; she’s so young", and that was about it. And so we had to get on a freight elevator, and all of us packed into the freight elevator - no physicians, no nurses, just the flight crew, you know, medical crew - and down we went and into a corridor to get our ambulance. And then we get to the door to go outside into the parking lot to the ambulance, and people are running toward us because the engine of the ambulance was on fire.
Sid Roth: Hold that thought. I mean, it's bad, but now they're taking their daughter out against the doctors - they wanted her to be a permanent vegetable - and the ambulance has a fire. We'll be right back after this word.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter, and I mean, it's gone from bad to worse with their daughter. I mean, permanent vegetative state, and then they're against the doctors' wishes. They're taking her to a place where maybe, I mean, she's still in a coma; maybe something good will happen. The doctors say, "No, there's no chance"; one doctor said "Give her a chance". And they're on their way taking their daughter to the ambulance, to the jet, and the ambulance catches on fire. Let's go to the control room because I want to talk to my producer Janie DuVall. Janie, our guest next week is Rick Amato and I am so excited about the discoveries that he's going to tell everyone. Tell me a little bit about it.
Janie DuVall: He'll be talking about the ten lost tribes. In the Bible it talks about the ten lost Israeli Jewish tribes that they would be found before the final war, before Armageddon of the close of the end of this age. And he has met rabbis who know where these ten lost tribes are.
Sid Roth: You know it's an amazing thing that God preserved the Jewish people for these thousands of years. But what is so amazing is the ancient rabbis read the Jewish prophecies and they found out that these tribes would be preserved as tribes and returned to Israel, and no one thought that was possible with intermarriage and everything else. But he's found them and the stories that he has, I mean, it sounds like the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Janie DuVall: What I find amazing is that these people, they'll be maybe just 5000 of them in India or Afghanistan or the other parts of the world that they've found them, and they'll have Jewish symbols or they'll be wearing prayer shawls, or they'll be having animal sacrifices just like in the Old Testament. It's just so amazing that this Bible prophecy has come to pass.
Sid Roth: You're not going to want to miss next week's It's Supernatural. But Mary Frances, the ambulance is on fire. What do you do?
Mary Frances: Well we were going to wait right there in the corridor until we were told. But then suddenly the portable oxygen tank that was hooked up to Christina's tracheotomy began to make noises; squeaking noises. And they looked at the gauge and it was just about out of air, which shouldn't have been. So one paramedic says to the other, "Where's the other tank"? And they said, "In the burning ambulance".
Sid Roth: Oy vey.
Mary Frances: And so now they know that they're out of oxygen, and Christina is starting to make a noise, and in other words, in need of air. And they said, "Where's the emergency room"? Well we didn't know because we came down on a freight elevator and nobody was with us, and we didn't know. And suddenly there was only one door out back into the hospital and one door from the outside to where we were standing. And suddenly there was this man standing there, and we all looked at him, and he says, "This is what you need to do. Go through that door". And he told us the directions to get to the emergency room, so we took off running with her and looked back, and he wasn't there any more.
Sid Roth: But how did he even know what you were supposed to do?
Mary Frances: We don't know.
Sid Roth: Do you think it was an angel?
Mary Frances: I think so. Who else could it have been?
Sid Roth: What happened next?
Mary Frances: And then we did as he had told us to do. We get into the emergency room. Well here we all are. We had no authority to be there. We checked out, in other words. And then the team, the medical flight team, they're calling out, and they're saying, "We need suction. We need oxygen for the patient". And they're saying, "Who are you? You can't be in here". And everyone started jumping and doing like this. And then suddenly this woman who appeared to be a nurse stops everyone, looks at me and she says, "I know you. Follow me". And I didn't know her, but I didn't tell her. And I followed her into another room where there was everything that we had need of, and they took care of Christina. And then we were told that it would an hour or so before there would be another ambulance. But then suddenly there was a knock on the door, and they said, "Your ambulance is here". And so we went on that ambulance out to the airport where the jet was waiting.
Sid Roth: And you would think that at least you could get her to this other hospital okay, but you're not even able to land. What happened?
Mary Frances: Yeah. We get up over Houston and Christina starts having difficulty in her breathing and with her heart. And so the nurse asks the pilot, "How much longer are we up - going to be here"?, because we were in a holding pattern because there was commercial traffic ahead of us, because we weren't marked as a medical flight, and just a private flight. And he said, "We're here about 20 more minutes". And so the team said, "She hasn't got 20 minutes. We need to get down". And so he talked to the people in the tower, and we heard the conversations, and they - and the different commercial aircraft that agreed to bank out, which is a cost in time and money. But they agreed, and they called our letters back, you know, "Lear", whatever our number was at the time, "Lear". And then one captain, we could hear him say, you know, "God bless you," another one saying, "Good luck", you know, and then we just dropped down through the funnel into Houston Hobby, and they're waiting for us.
Sid Roth: Someone is looking over.
Mary Frances: Yeah.
Sid Roth: You get to the hospital, but Christina is still in her coma.
Mary Frances: Yeah.
Sid Roth: The first time she recognized you, tell me about that.
Mary Frances: Oh it was a wonderful day. Suddenly, Christina's face untwisted. Her eyes were no longer yoked.
Sid Roth: Were you watching this with your eyes?
Mary Frances: Oh yes, yes, yes, I was there. When God did it, I was there. And she - her face began to untwist because it was all, you know, and then her eyes were no longer yoked, and they jumped into position, and she began to look around. And she couldn't talk because of the trache, but she said, "Mom. Mom, where am I? What happened"? And then...
Sid Roth: How long had she been in the coma?
Mary Frances: I think it's about 51 days, like two-and-a-half months.
Sid Roth: The doctors said she was going to be a vegetable.
Mary Frances: Oh yes.
Sid Roth: But she was like she was asleep and came out of it. Today, tell me what your daughter is like.
Mary Frances: She's wonderful. We have a family picture; I don't know if you all got it or not, but she's beautiful, and she's out and about. She runs in races; doesn't win them like once she did, but she's - the windshield had popped out instead of in, so no facial damage. She works in public relations for a big company in Nashville.
Sid Roth: What does the brain scan show today?
Mary Frances: The brain scan is just about the same, except no blood and air in there.
Sid Roth: In other words, should she be functioning, from a medical viewpoint?
Mary Frances: Oh no. That's why she's on a little computer chip, a medical computer in Denver, Colorado, where there are no known statistics concerning medical cases like hers.
Sid Roth: What's the reason that she's normal today? She's better than normal. She's better than normal.
Mary Frances: Yeah. Her dad said she woke up smarter in all testing, and she was already an outstanding student, and she is; she's smarter than she was then. And there can be only be one reason: God said "life and wholeness". God did it.
Sid Roth: And I say to you in the name of Jesus, "life and wholeness". Life - there's only one life. It's the life of God. When Mary Varallo played God's Word over and over again on the cassette, life - the life of God - went into her daughter. The life of God is Jesus. Do you need life? Then repent of your sins. Tell God you're sorry and ask God to forgive you. Because of the blood of Jesus, he paid the price for your sins, and ask "life and wholeness" to come into you. "Life and wholeness". Jesus, come inside of me. Say that. Jesus, come inside of me. Thank you for your life. Thank you for your wholeness. He is. He's coming inside of you. And a back has just been healed in Jesus' name. Thank you for your life. Thank you for your wholeness. Thank you, Jesus.