Brain Bleed on Vacation Led to a Breakout of Prayer!

“She came over and she was crying, and she just basically kind of collapsed on the couch next to me, just bawling her eyes out,” recalls Jerry Iverson. “And I said, what's wrong? And she said, ‘I don't know.’”

Jerry and Shannon Iverson were vacationing with their children when the trip took a terrifying turn. The first day, Shannon began complaining of severe headaches. Then suddenly, things got much worse.

“This fear just came over me,” Jerry remembers. “And, she said, the whole left side of my body is numb. We had her laying on her side and we were praying over her. And things did not seem to be getting better at all. It was just a very panicky moment, you know, we didn't know what was going on.”

Paramedics suspected a stroke and rushed Shannon to a nearby hospital, where doctors delivered chilling news.

“The doctor came out, this wave of fear came over me because I knew something was wrong at that point,” Jerry says.

“And he said, ‘so your wife has a bleed on her brain.’ And so I'm thinking, what if my wife doesn't recover? Or what if she dies? I started praying out loud, you know, and I just started crying out to God and just saying, God, please help my wife.”

Their daughter Emma vividly remembers her own response:

“I'm like, wow, my mom's in the hospital. She has a brain bleed. She needs prayer. She needs like, fighting warriors to pray for her. And I was like reading scriptures and all that. And I remember this one scripture – what satan meant for evil - God will turn it for good.”

Jerry also knew Shannon’s fears ran deeper than the diagnosis.

“She has this fear because her sister died in a hospital. And so I could just feel her fear. I mean, it was just like a terror. She just didn't want to die in a hospital.”

Dr. Reuland, a specialist in neuroradiology and intervascular surgery, assessed Shannon’s condition. “She was found to have a cerebral AVM, which stands for arterial venous malformation. That is something you are born with,” he explains.

“It's varying degrees of just causing a headache to catastrophic stroke and being in a coma—usually leaves you with permanent disabilities if it ruptures.”

Jerry admits the medical explanation was terrifying.
“He explained that we'll have to go up in there and how he was going to do it and everything - it did scare me a lot, you know?”

The family returned home. In the days leading up to surgery, Shannon’s symptoms worsened, leaving her nearly helpless.

“She couldn't walk. She needed help with everything, basically,” Emma says. “And I remember, sometimes she would start feeling numb and she'd, like, tense up and she'd, like, ‘I'm feeling now. I can't do this again.’”

“When she'd opened her eyes, it was double vision,” Jerry recalls. “We would feed her meals and bring her drinks, and anything that she needed, she had to rely on us.”

Despite her declining health, Shannon continued to volunteer at the Christian school her children attended. As her strength faded, the students gathered to pray—believing God for her healing.

“All the kids went up and prayed for her,” Emma says. “And I remember praying for her, and I remember just feeling the Holy Spirit coming. And I was like, something's going to happen, something's gonna happen.”

Jerry remembers that powerful moment vividly.

“All of those kids, I don't know how many were in there, but there was probably close to 100, and they all came down and just laid hands on her and started praying for her.”

With prayers lifted, the Iversons stepped into surgery day trusting God for a miracle.

“The doctor said it could probably be several hours,” Jerry says. “I want to say it was probably only about 20 minutes. And the doctor came in and he said, well, I'm done. And I just kind of looked at him and said, what do you mean you're done?”

Dr. Reuland recalls the moment:

“We were shocked. We had put her to sleep, ready to go do the arteriogram, and it’s gone. So we did not do anything — and I have never seen that in my career. An AVM is something you're born with. It's just there forever.”

“The nurse was crying and she said, God healed you, sweetie,” Jerry remembers. “And it was at that moment I realized, I said, okay, this was a God thing.”

Shannon was just as stunned.

“She goes, ‘Miss Iverson, Miss Iverson.’ I'm like, you're going home. The doctor didn't have to do anything. I said, I'm going home. And in my memory, I'm going home to Jesus. I mean, you know, I didn't know. 

She goes, no, the doctor didn't have to do anything. And I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, yeah, you were already healed.”

Their prayers answered, the Iversons give all the credit to God.

“When those moments of fear come, your faith has to override the fear, and that’s what faith does,” Jerry says.

Emma adds, “I was definitely thankful for Him and grateful for healing my mom because you think about it like, I haven't lived like a lot of my life yet and like, I want her to be there for that.. And you think, like, how much she does and like how grateful and thankful you are that she's still here.”

Jerry agrees wholeheartedly.

“I feel like she’s better than she was before the whole incident. Shannon is a blessing to me. She was a gift of God that He brought into my life, and I am so thankful He’s preserved her life.”

And Shannon, with renewed strength and joy, shares the same gratitude.

“I was so happy because, like, I'm back to normal. I'm back to myself. I am very thankful, you know, to still be a wife, to still be a mother to my children, to serve Him if it's at the school or if it's at the church. I still have that availability, and I think He's given me another opportunity to serve Him.”