Risen from the Death Sentence of Cancer!

“They told us they were going to put her into a medically induced coma but she would wake back up. And my mom didn't wake up.” Kim Haar remembers. 

In 2014, 69 year old Dorothy Enns was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her husband Peter says she went into radiation and chemotherapy confident God would see her through. He says, “We were startled. We were alarmed. We didn't like it. But for some reason, there was a calmness there. There was a faith there we that believed that God was bigger than any mountain we could see or cannot see. And that, that included cancer.”

Partway through her chemotherapy treatments, Dorothy came down with pneumonia. Her daughters Kim and Brenda took her to the hospital. Kim recalls, “Her fever was, I think, at about 103, close to 104.”

Brenda says, “She just wasn't communicating, couldn't communicate. They put her on some really high antibiotics and it just shut down her kidneys. And just they put her in the coma to try to figure out what was going on. and then they decided to go ahead and leave her in the coma for a few days just to kind of let her brain settle. And then they took all the medicine off and she just didn't wake up.”

Days turned into weeks as Dorothy was unable to wake from her coma. Her doctors were puzzled,  brain scans indicated she would probably not recover. Brenda says, “There was so much damage, that they could show on these tests that they had done on her, there really is no hope and if she ever did come out of it she would just be a vegetable.”

“We had seven doctors told us that my mother would not wake up. one doctor in particular told me, he said, ‘Your mom has doll eyes.’ And he explained that, you know, if you've got a doll and the glassy eyes, he goes, ‘There's nothing behind those eyes.’ He goes, ‘There's no activity in, in her brain.’” Kim recalls. 

Despite the bad report, their community of faith, including the Bible study Dorothy led for 25 years, continued to pray. Hoping for a miracle. Her husband Peter says, “The peace that I had really was beyond human understanding. There was a confidence there that what God had started in us, he was going to finish.”

“Every moment, every time there was a discouragement, it was like the Lord would bring somebody along to bring encouragement. We appreciated and we respected the doctors, but we knew that God's, God is the sovereign one.” Says Kim. 
“It was that gift of faith that we just knew that something was gonna come out of this.” Says Brenda, “We knew, we didn't feel like her, her time was done. There was a lot left that she needed to do.”

After five weeks in the coma, doctors encouraged the family to pull Dorothy’s feeding tube and allow her to pass away. Before making the decision, Peter went to church where their friend Terry prayed for him and Dorothy. Terry says, “I wasn't just praying at that point. I was pleading with God. I was pleading with him to either let her fall asleep in his arms and take her to Heaven or at that point to bring her back whole and complete.”

Peter says, “I was too tired to pray. I was prayed out. There was nothing left. I had talked to God. I had done everything I knew. ‘I cannot control this. This is in your hands.’”

At that same moment , Kim and Brenda were at the hospital sitting with their mom.  Kim remembers, “And my sister rubbed her leg and my mom gave her this really irritated look and she mouthed the words, ‘Ouch.’”
“And it was like, okay, what, and so Kim and I were like, ‘Okay, we've got to go find the doctor. This is not a reflex. There, this is an actual, she's understanding that something's going on. Brenda says, “He looked at her and he said, ‘Dorothy,’ and she went, ‘What?’ And he looked at us and he said, ‘This changes everything.’ Just like that, it was that moment where he realized that something was, something was happening, something was different.”

“I think it was Kim that called me and she said, ‘Dad, you may want to come back to the hospital because we think mom is waking up.’ I believed that God, that, that something had started, that God was going to finish. There's, there's a spark of life. There's a spark of hope. It's not a finished product, but it's a spark. Says Peter. 

Over the next few days, Dorothy did wake up. Brenda says, “It was amazing to see how quickly we went from no response to working in the rehab, trying to relearn how to walk and how to talk and how quickly it all, it all turned around.”

After a month of rehab, Dorothy returned home - full of life and cancer free. She says, “I came home on Good Friday and it was a good Friday. I walked around every room. I'm home. And then we went to our kids for Easter dinner. We cried. We laughed. We thank God. That was my miracle. I'm alive.”

Peter says, “We have discovered that nothing is too difficult for God.  We believed God and we expected God to keep his word. And when we do what we can do, then God does what only he can do. There’s a power that goes beyond doctors, there’s a power that doctors cannot explain.”

“Her doctor, who was a Muslim doctor, told us, he said, ‘This is nothing that us doctors did. This is your relationship with your God.’” Says Brenda. 

He says, ‘I have never seen a miracle like this. can I give you a hug?’ And I was just so excited. I’m back, I’m back alive again.” Says Dorothy. 

“God wasn’t done with her. She definitely has a mission that she is still doing.” Brenda says. 

Kim says, “Going from us being told she was gonna be a vegetable to where she was back behind her little pulpit at her Bible study and she was proclaiming the goodness of God, you couldn't deny  it was a miracle.”

“I had so many opportunities that I never had before.” Says Dorothy, “God was good and he still is good. Five weeks in a coma and look what God did.”