The word miracle is from the Latin word miraculum, "object of wonder,” from mirari "to wonder at, marvel, be astonished.” The Latin word has its roots in Sanskrit, from the word, merah, which means "to smile, to laugh.” In Church Latin, miracle came to be known as a "marvelous event caused by God," but originally, it didn’t have religious meaning. To say something was a miracle meant that it was wonderful, marvelous, worthy of smiling and laughing. That’s how I am using the word when I say that my sister was released from the hospital several weeks early, due to the miracle of my cells engrafting in her bones at a rate not normally seen at the Dartmouth Medical Center! It all happened so quickly: first the transplant; then her initial reaction of extreme nausea and vomiting; then a few days later, a fainting episode where they worried she might have had a stroke, but later determined it was due to dehydration and anemia. Lots of family members and staff clucked around her, feeding her, visiting, loving her up. And then all of a sudden, a MIRACULOUS turn-around. Her low blood counts all spiked in the right direction, and suddenly, they were sending her home. I think one of the reasons for this miracle is that so many people have been rooting for my sister, offering prayers, good thoughts, and posts on this site and on her Caring Bridge site. And last week, on the very evening when she experienced the miraculous turn-around, I gave a speech at Omega Institute’s annual women’s conference, during which I talked about my sister and her healing process. 3,000 people watched the speech (2,500 of them via live-stream), and while I have no idea how remote prayer works, somehow it does. As my sister watched my speech online in her hospital bed, she must have felt all the people watching with her, sending loving vibrations and streams of “mirari” (wonderment, marvel, astonishment). And those vibrations met up with the love of her family and the care of the nurses and doctors, and the marvel of modern medicine, and together with her own indomitable spirit, they gave the new stem cells a kick, and hastened their engraftment into her bone marrow. Now she’s home! Today the sunlight feels like honey on this glorious autumn day, and the stem cells that were once my cells, flow like honey in my sister’s veins. Truly, a miracle!!
Posted on: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 16:14:02 +0000