IT HAPPENED TO ME

The Whispering Nurse

By Joanna Adino, Brazil

In the eighteenth week of my ninth pregnancy, I started to bleed a little. I went for some tests, and that’s when my doctor discovered that I had a tumor. He said it would be a miracle if the baby survived.

I prayed and asked Jesus to let me keep the baby because I felt that this was going to be my last pregnancy, and the Lord did a miracle and brought the baby to full term, in spite of a lot of pain in my back and uterus. She was delivered by cesarean section—beautiful, big, and healthy!

After the birth, my doctor said I would need to wait for two months before he could operate to remove the tumor, which by that time had been found to be malignant. Shortly before I was scheduled for that surgery, I woke up hemorrhaging. I called the doctor and went to the hospital immediately. There I was told that I had lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion right away. Apparently the tumor had erupted inside me, causing the hemorrhaging. The doctors couldn’t stop the bleeding. Though I was given 18 bags of blood, the hemorrhaging continued. My husband phoned the other members of our community of volunteers and asked them to pray for me.

I didn’t want any of my children to see me, because I believed I was dying and I didn’t want them to remember me in that condition. The nurses who were attending to me called for the doctors, because they saw I was rapidly getting worse. I couldn’t feel my legs at all. “All the blood we put into her is just going out again, and nothing we do is helping,” the head nurse told the doctor. I was certain at that moment that I was on my way to meet Jesus face to face.

By then I couldn’t feel any part of my body, and I told Jesus that I was willing to go if He wanted me to; I wouldn’t fight His will, if that was His plan for me. That was quite an experience—telling the Lord that I was ready to go to Him right then and there!

Later, when they took me into the operating room, there was an older, dark-skinned nurse with a very sweet face. She took my hands, looked at me and said, “Don’t worry! The angels are all here waiting. Jesus is here waiting!” She kept looking into my eyes and petted my face, head, and hands, and I started to relax. She said, “The Lord is here with you. He loves you. I’m here with you, too, and I’ll stay by your side always. You are going to sleep now, but I’m going to be right here.”

She started whispering when all the doctors came in and everything got very hectic in the room. A cancer specialist had come in, as well as several nurses, and they were all talking very fast. The dark-skinned nurse started whispering Bible verses in my ear. One of them was, “The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him, and delivers them” (Psalm 34:7). She kept whispering that verse in my ear, and it was life to me as I went under anesthesia. I was in surgery for four hours.

When I woke up, I had a strange sensation, and the first thing I thought of was that nurse. I wanted to talk to her and looked around for her, but I couldn’t find her. When my husband came, I tried to tell him how the nurse had helped me and what she had said about the Lord and angels being all around me in the operating room, but I was so tired and weak that I couldn’t express myself well.

Later, after I had recovered from the anesthesia, I asked one of the doctors who had operated on me about the nurse, but he and the others who had been present said that there hadn’t been anyone by that description in the operating room. Had she been an angel? It seems so!

The cancer specialist told my husband that the tumor had been there for as long as seven years, but had been hidden. What the doctor had seen while examining me during my pregnancy was only a very small part.

Another thing I learned later was that at the same time I had been bleeding so heavily, our friends and coworkers had gathered and were praying for me, and several of them saw visions in which angels were at my side. When I told them about the nurse, I found out that the things she had said and Bible verses she had quoted to me were the exact same messages that they had received from the Lord for me in their prayer meeting. Amazing! 

Joanna Adino is a member of the Family International in Brazil.