Recovery and a Laying On of Hands

December 22, 2002

Bill Spears answered the phone at 7 a.m. Sunday morning, Sept. 15, and heard the voice of Phil Ranford trying to speak but instead breaking into sobs. Ranford, 40, lives in Milford, N.J., with Spears' daughter, Vanessa, 25.

A different voice broke in, a man who identified himself as an emergency medical technician. He said Ranford was too upset to talk and told Spears that they were taking Vanessa to the Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington. Spears and his wife, Siobhan, who live in Harmony Township, N.J., a 40-minute drive from the medical center, leapt out of bed and dressed to rendezvous with Ranford, who would tell them what had happened.

Vanessa, the second of their five daughters, has suffered from asthma since she was 2 and uses a nebulizer to inhale her medication, Siobhan Spears explained. "She has spent many days in hospitals all of her life. The last very severe attack she had was in 1996. She was in an ICU on a ventilator for four days and in the hospital for two weeks.

"Her health had been getting better, and she had not been in a hospital in over two years. She woke Phil at 6 a.m. She was quite calm and relaxed and said she needed to use her nebulizer and possibly would drive herself to the hospital. Her calmness was very unusual. In hindsight, the doctors at the medical center believe she was already oxygen deprived.

"Phil would not let her drive alone. He couldn't tell that she needed an ambulance, because in the past, she was always beginning to panic and show signs of having difficulty breathing. They got in the car. They live about 20 minutes from the hospital. They drove for about 15 minutes, Vanessa using her nebulizer all the while. About five minutes from the hospital, she stopped breathing and had a seizure. Phil frantically pulled into the driveway of the first house he saw and banged on the door for help. He was not able to get a signal from his cell phone. When he realized he was losing time, and that he was two minutes from the Hunterdon Township 911 communications center, he drove there, honking his horn all the way to get their attention. It worked.

"By this time," Siobhan said, "Vanessa had gone into cardiac arrest. Phil took her out of the car, and an EMT told him to put her on the ground and immediately began CPR. Many employees of the center came out to help. They had a defibrillator. We learned later from the records from the defibrillator that she had no heartbeat from 7 a.m. to 7:10. We don't have any records as to how long Vanessa was without oxygen.

"At the hospital, we were not given much hope. If she did pull through, they told us, the chances for severe brain damage were great."

Vanessa went into a coma. Often her eyes were opened, but nobody saw any indication that she could see. Doctors speculated that the part of her brain most likely to have been damaged by oxygen deprivation probably would render her blind. Her coma was torturous and disturbing to observe. She clenched her fists. Her legs moved constantly, almost as if she were riding a bicycle.

The Spears took shifts, staying by Vanessa's bedside. "We're a close family," Siobhan said. "Phil's been living with her for six years. He and I were there almost all the time. He's an electrical contractor with his own business; Vanessa is a Mary Kay consultant, and I've been with Mary Kay for nine years, so I could be there, too. My husband, who teaches high school chemistry, came every day after work. At nighttime, [the hospital staff] would send us home. I would set my alarm for every two hours and call the medical center. The nurses were tremendous. They accepted all my calls and answered all my questions. It was always the same, though. 'She's having a rough night.' 'We had to add to her medication.' 'She's really agitated tonight.' Same thing, every night."

From the beginning, Siobhan Spears regularly kept other family members informed of Vanessa's condition. Among them were her uncle and aunt, Bernard and Nancy Beal, of Huntington. Huntington natives, the Spears moved to New Jersey 26 years ago. Beal is the brother of the late Robert Beal, Siobhan's father, a chiropractor who died when Siobhan was 3.

The Beals also are patients of chiropractor Andrew Forelli of Huntington. They told Forelli about Vanessa. He said, "If they want, I'll come and give her an adjustment.

"They didn't tell me it was 2 1/2 hours away," Forelli said, laughing, "but it turned out to be all right. It gave me time to think. I'm not the most religious guy in the world, not born again or anything, but it gave me time to pray, too."

Siobhan greeted Forelli in Vanessa's room on the evening of Sept. 30. She told him that the doctors had been talking that day about putting Vanessa in a nursing home.

"He put his hands on Vanessa's face and spoke to her," Siobhan said, "and she looked right at him and furrowed her brow, as if to say, 'Who the hell are you?' At that moment, we knew that she could see. He adjusted her neck. She winced, and then she smiled. He went around to the other side of the bed, and she furrowed her brow again, and he adjusted her neck from that side, and she smiled, closed her eyes, and went to sleep. He and I then spoke for maybe 15 minutes, and he got in the car and drove back to New York.

"That night, I called every two hours, and the nurses said she was really quiet, almost still," Siobhan said. "The next morning, October first, she was sleeping, no agitated movements, no clenched fists. At 11 o'clock, the nurse came into bathe her. The nurse said to me, 'I think she's trying to talk to us.' She said to Vanessa, 'Do you know who that is? That's your Mom.'"

"That's Siobhan," said Vanessa.

Siobhan called Forelli to tell him what had happened. He whooped, and then he wept.

Vanessa spent five more days in the hospital and 16 days in the St. Lawrence Rehabilitation Center in Lawrenceville, N.J. Forelli saw her one more time, with remarkable results. She now has resumed her old life and is a regular patient of his friend, chiropractor Jon Mastrobattista of Bernardsville.

"Her whole health system has done a complete turnaround," said Siobhan. "She used to always carry a hand-held asthma medication called Preventil. She doesn't even carry it any more."

Nobody knows what to think or believe about her recovery. Siobhan leans heavily on the combined effects of prayer and chiropractic. Forelli says he has adjusted six people under similar conditions and never before gotten a dramatic result. He confesses to being uncomfortable thinking about Vanessa's turnaround. Doctors shrug and suggest it might just have been good timing. Nurses at the medical center call Vanessa "the miracle girl."

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