Classmates' prayers help 7-year-old recover from rare heart disease

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- In many ways, Meaghan Ababa is a typical 7-year-old girl. She loves playing with her Bratz dolls, going to the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant and attending catechism classes on Sunday. But after an astonishing total recovery from a rare and sudden illness that nearly killed her, some are calling her a "miracle girl."

The apparent cause of what many feel was a miracle? Her classmates' prayers. Meaghan went from being hospitalized in Honolulu with what seemed like the flu to being whisked to a Los Angeles hospital after doctors determined she had a rare, life-threatening heart ailment and would need a transplant. As she lay near death, her catechism classmates prayed for her. The girl's condition completely turned around, leaving even her doctor feeling her recovery was miraculous. Meaghan's remarkable journey began Feb. 2, when she began experiencing flulike symptoms. The Honolulu girl, the daughter of Fe Reyes and Alex Ababa, was admitted to Kapiolani Medical Center for Women and Children in Honolulu with a high fever. Doctors diagnosed her condition as fulminant myocarditis, a rare life-threatening viral infection that causes inflammation of the heart's muscular wall, making it difficult to contract and circulate blood. It was determined that Meaghan would likely need a heart transplant, but Kapiolani was not set up to perform one. She needed to be transferred to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. She was put on a machine to keep her alive until she could be transported. However, the only entity equipped with an airplane and the medical transport team and portable machinery she needed to get her on her way was a U.S. Air Force unit based at Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio. The Air Force dispatched a 12-member medical crew to Hawaii. They switched her to the portable machine and whisked her and her parents to a waiting plane at Hickam Air Force Base, which took them to Los Angeles. When Meaghan arrived there Feb. 4, her condition was critical and extremely unstable, according to Dr. Sylvia Del Castillo of Childrens. The girl's heart had stopped three times. At Kapiolani she had undergone CPR for an hour and a half. That meant she could have suffered brain damage. "Every time the body codes, that's very bad for the rest of the organs, including the brain," Del Castillo explained. "We were afraid her brain would have permanent injuries because of all these events where she was not getting proper circulation." In Los Angeles, Meaghan was placed on the national heart transplant list. On Feb. 5, as Meaghan lay near death in the Los Angeles hospital, her weekly catechism class at Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace was meeting 2,000 miles away in Honolulu. The students -- except for one, her brother Anthony -- were unaware of the condition of their little classmate. Anthony was in tears, recalled teacher Bonnie Moore. When she asked him what was wrong, he could only say that his sister had some kind of heart virus and was in a Los Angeles hospital. Moore stopped the lesson to lead the class in prayer to ask God to heal their friend and classmate. "I told the children that everything would be all right because the Lord will answer our prayers," Moore told the Hawaii Catholic Herald, newspaper of the Honolulu Diocese. The class prayed between 9 and 9:30 a.m. Meanwhile, at Childrens Hospital, according to Meaghan's parents, between 11 and 11:30 a.m. California time their daughter's heart began beating on its own. With two hours' time difference between Hawaii and California, the two events were occurring simultaneously. It was truly a miracle, Moore said. "Their prayers were answered really quickly," she exclaimed. "She's our miracle girl." Del Castillo, a Catholic, agreed. "I do believe that the reason she recovered is a combination of the Lord's intervention, along with the excellent care she received" at Kapiolani and Childrens and from the Air Force transport team, she said. "It's truly miraculous." Meaghan soon woke up, said she was hungry and asked if she could go to Chuck E. Cheese. The astonished doctors put her through tests over the next few days and found that she was 100 percent cured and had suffered no brain damage. Meaghan returned to Hawaii Feb. 15 and was back at Sunday school Feb. 19, where her classmates welcomed her with cheers and hugs. The class continued as usual, albeit with a new attitude toward prayer and miracles. According to their teacher, since that morning when they prayed for Meaghan, the students have become prayer advocates for a number of different people in different situations. "They've become much more global in their praying," said Moore. "They see that if we can send our prayers a couple thousand miles, we can send them all the way across the world where there's a tsunami or a landslide."

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops