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Any mother who has cradled her newborn child in her
arms knows the profound power of that moment. When that
child is tiny—far tinier than nature ever intended—that
power is frequently blanketed by worry and fear. For
Michele O’Donnell, a pediatric nurse, the sight
of her newborn daughter, born more than two months early,
was terrifying. She knew what the chances of survival
were for an infant who only weighed 2 pounds, 3 ounces.
Today, it is a challenge; 30 years ago, it was a miracle.
But O’Donnell is all about miracles.
Through a combination of Christian faith and New Age
holistic health attitudes, she now helps guide others
to their own miracles.
O’Donnell has been a nurse for most of her life.
In the 1960s, she was instrumental in setting up the
first pediatrics ICU and the first pediatric coronary
care unit in the nation. She was already mother to a
2-year-old daughter when her second daughter was born
too soon.
“Lara had hyaline membrane disease when she was
born,” O’Donnell recalled, “and she
was unable to breathe in the air she needed. She had
multiple cardiac arrests and soon the staff came in
and told me that she would not make it. I refused to
accept it; I was thinking with my heart and not my medical
training,” she continued. “I snuck into
the ICU to see her and when I did, I fainted. She was
having seizures trying to breathe.”
The next morning, O’Donnell’s first miracle
appeared in the form of a physician who had just arrived
from Germany. It was his first day at the U.S. hospital
and he was here to train American physicians in how
to treat hyaline membrane disease.
“I was told that Lara had lung, heart and kidney
disease,” O’Donnell said. “She also
was blind in one eye and mentally retarded from lack
of oxygen.” Despite this, the physicians continued
to try Germany’s new treatments on Lara for a
long and agonizing four months.
It was a terrible time for O’Donnell. Not only
did she have a toddler at home and a critically ill
infant in the hospital, but her husband had left her
the day after she had Lara. “I was very scared
and alone,” O’Donnell said.
Lara began breathing on her own when she was a little
more than 4 months old; at 1 year, she was finally allowed
to come home.
“She was a silent baby,” O’Donnell
said. “She didn’t play or coo or smile.”
In fitting with the hospital’s dire diagnosis,
Lara was unable to hold her head up, roll over or make
eye contact with anyone. She still struggled with breathing
and for many nights, O’Donnell slept with her
small daughter on her chest, skin-to-skin, so that if
she stopped breathing, she would feel it and could jostle
her back awake. The family was living in the basement
of a nursing home; that was all they could afford at
the time.
For the first time in her life, O’Donnell turned
to a higher power for help. “I fell on the rug
and sobbed,” she said. “When no angels came
and God didn’t make an appearance, I knew there
was no God at all.”
Despite this, her life began to change after that night.
A local church was praying for her also and O’Donnell
began reading the Bible incessantly, almost obsessively.
“It gave me hope that I wasn’t alone,”
she said. “I devoured it.” Days and nights
began to be filled with prayers for her daughter. “I
just had this growing feeling inside me that everything
was going to be all right,” she said.
It certainly didn’t seem to be all right. In
fact, Lara’s condition did not improve in any
way as the years passed. By age 3, she was still unable
to support her head, her eyes were crossed and she was
unable to make voluntary movements. All of that changed
in O’Donnell’s most amazing miracle.
“I was at a friend’s house in the kitchen
and I was holding Lara on my hip as always,” she
said. “I was feeding pieces of cracker to her
and when I paused, Lara reached out and grabbed a piece
from my hand.”
The world stopped spinning in that moment. As O’Donnell
looked at her daughter in amazement, Lara turned her
head, her eyes uncrossed and she smiled at her mother
for the first time in her life. “It’s like
she ‘woke up,’ ” O’Donnell said.
In the next couple of years, Lara continued to improve.
“She learned how to crawl and then to walk and
by age 6, she was in school.”
Lara’s recovery was nothing short of astonishing.
In high school, she was a cheerleader. At Southwestern
Texas University, she received a degree in criminal
justice, then at St. Mary’s, she became a lawyer.
Now, at 32, she is the assistant to the attorney general
of Austin, Texas.
Quite understandably, O’Donnell wanted to know
why her daughter recovered. It became her new life mission
and it led to three years of Bible college and being
ordained into the ministry.
“After I graduated, I still had no answers other
than I didn’t want any part of this kind of religion,”
she said with a chuckle. Although she taught some classes
at the Bible school, she was soon asked to leave. “I
had too many nontraditional ideas and methods,”
she admitted.
Ironically, it was a pastor who introduced O’Donnell
to the concept of alternative or holistic healing. “I
thought he was nuts,” she said. “I didn’t
want any part of it.”
However, after he had asked her three times to help
him with the health concerns of his 300-plus congregation,
she reluctantly agreed. She performed such diverse tests
as hair analysis and urine tests. “I thought it
was all some kind of voodoo,” she said. The incredible
results she saw soon changed her mind—and set
the course of her future.
Today, O’Donnell operates the nation’s
first alternative care center in the Southwest. The
stories she has to tell from her years there are astounding.
Her secretary and “right-hand woman” Kay,
for example, started out as one of her patients.
“The first time she came here,” O’Donnell
said, “she was carried in by her husband. Due
to multiple sclerosis, she had not been able to walk
in five years.” Within seven months at O’Donnell’s
clinic, Kay was walking. Within two years, she was—and
continues to be—symptom-free.
Clients come to O’Donnell’s clinic from
all over the world now. Most recover from diseases as
devastating as lupus and cancer, according to O’Donnell.
What does she do that is so effective? It seems to be
a combination of the traditional—exercise, detoxing
diet and rest—and the untraditional—a new
attitude.
“We each have a consciousness of disease,”
she said, “and so many of us talk about when we
are going to get sick, not if. We are locked into expectations
of disease and this raises fear within us. Belief, fear
and the perception of certain disease can actually change
our genes,” she said. “If we stand and stare
at disease, gasping at its horror, intensity and power
to utterly devastate, we have totally empowered it over
our lives. In short, our very thoughts need to be ‘detoxified.’
”
O’Donnell also advocates that people get in touch
with something inside themselves that is whole and quiet
to help them find healing. When asked if that something
is God, she replied, “It is whatever a person
wants it to be … for some it is change; for others
it’s DNA—whatever higher power they choose.
That is their god.”
In an attempt to share her thoughts and experiences
with the world, O’Donnell wrote and self-published
a book, Of Monkeys and Dragons: Freedom from the Tyranny
of Disease.
“This book is my feeble attempt to tell people
what has happened to me,” O’Donnell said.
To date, it has sold more than 20,000 copies and her
clinic has an eight-month waiting list. O’Donnell
is traveling the United States lecturing on her theories
and techniques, and she sponsors regular retreats. In
addition to this, she has her own radio show on three
different stations in Florida and Texas.
O’Donnell’s advice for nurses is clear.
“We don’t choose nursing,” she said.
“It chooses us because it intended for us to heal,
not just comfort, but heal. If nurses open up their
hearts to the possibilities, it can happen. I talk to
nurses and they cry because they feel like they live
under a cloud of despair and hopelessness. The belief
that life and love are stronger than disease can give
them hope.”
For more information on O’Donnell, her clinic,
retreats, radio shows and book, visit www.micheleodonnell.com.
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