A Miraculous Healing That Left Doctors Amazed

Frank Vivacqua had studied at Bible college and felt confident in his faith—until one night, when an unsettling dream shook him to his core.

Frank recalled a moment that pulled him back to the roots of his spiritual life.

“I used to pray on my knees all the time,” he said. “And I stopped doing it for a while. But this particular night, just in my room, I felt apprehended by the Spirit just to get on my knees. And I said a simple prayer. I said, ‘Lord, don't take me. I'm not ready to die.’”

His wife, Shelly, remembers that night vividly.
“He had had a dream that he was dying,” she said, “and he kept begging God to not take him.”

Not even a week later, the dream began to feel like a warning.
Frank said it started with something small:

“I felt a numbness in my left arm. And I looked at it, and she said, ‘What's going on?’ I said, ‘My arm's a little numb.’ And then, next thing you know, my teeth were numb. Then I got a little nervous and told my wife, ‘Maybe I better go to the hospital tonight.’ She says, ‘Okay.’”

Shelly knew something wasn’t right.

“As we got going, he starts calling his brother,” she recalled. “And I knew this had to be serious, because he wouldn’t involve him unless it really was. I thought, ‘Well, this is pretty serious. We need to get the prayer chain going, get to the hospital, get everybody praying,’ because I didn’t want to end up—” she paused, voice cracking, “—having to make that call later.”

Friends and church family lifted them up in prayer, still, Frank had no idea what awaited him at the hospital.
At the ER, things moved quickly.

“I got to the hospital that day, they wanted to know what was wrong,” Frank said. “I told them, ‘My left arm went numb. My teeth are numb. I feel kind of numb.’ They said, ‘Come on back here right away.’ They took me in the back immediately, asked me a couple questions. Before I knew it, the stroke trauma team was coming in. I said, ‘Who’s having a stroke?’ And they said, ‘You’re having a stroke.’ I said, ‘I’m having a stroke? How? Where?’”

Shelly, standing nearby, was gripped with fear.

“Then all of a sudden you hear this commotion,” she said. “They’re yelling, ‘We need you in here now. He’s… stroke.’ I’m thinking the worst thing.”
Initial tests revealed that Frank was experiencing a thrombotic stroke—a blood clot in his brain.

He was transferred by ambulance to St. Francis Medical where doctors attempted surgery to insert a stent to restore blood flow to the blocked artery.

As medical staff prepared for the procedure, Frank stood firm in his faith.
“I told the doctor, ‘I need to call my pastor because I want to have prayer before I go under. What are you going to do?’” Frank recounted. “He said, ‘No, no, you're going to do this before prayer.’ I said, ‘No I’m not, doctor. I'm calling my pastor right now because I need prayer.’ And by the grace of God, I got ahold of him. He prayed for me and said, ‘Frank, I can tell you received my prayer. You're going to be okay. This is going to be a big testimony for the Lord.’”

But when the team tried to insert the stent, they hit an unexpected roadblock.

“What they needed to do was go through and open that back up,” Shelly explained. “They said they got going in there, but they couldn’t because it was such a like a corkscrew. And they said every time they went through, it would stop the blood flow. So there was no way they could put a stent in.”

Although the doctors were unable to place the stent, their efforts led to a surprising yet welcome discovery.

“The doctors told us it was amazing,” Shelly said. “The left side of his brain had actually grown bigger, and all these blood vessels had even come over to the right side, all behind his eye. They said they had never seen it before.”
Frank remembered one physician’s reaction clearly.

“He said, ‘This is something I’ve never seen in my entire life being a doctor. There was so much blood coming from the left part of your brain that it's compensating for the right part. We've never seen that happen that way.’”

Shelly added, “And they said, ‘For some reason, this is all grown. This is what’s keeping him alive.’”

Doctors said that blood vessels enlarged on the left side of Frank's brain—miraculously compensating for the stroke, leading to a full recovery.
One nurse was overcome by what she witnessed.

Frank said, “So the nurses came in—one of them was crying at the bedside. She said she knows this is a miracle of God. ‘This is the Lord. This is God doing this.’”
Shelly, reflecting back, was still emotional.

“You sit there later, and you just cry,” she said, “because it's such an emotional feeling. Thinking, in that split second, he could have been gone. But God had other plans. So he is still here.”

With hearts full of gratitude, Frank and Shelly marvel at God’s healing touch, and the quiet strength found in prayer.

Shelly shared what the experience taught her.

“I have learned that you have got to believe and be thankful for every little thing. He wants you to come to Him. He wants you to believe in Him and have that faith. He will always be there because He loves us.”
Frank’s conviction was just as strong.

“God showed me how mighty and great He is, so I want Him to get all the glory out of this,” he said. “I'm very thankful that I'm here and I survived, and I'm going to open my mouth and be a mouthpiece for Him on this earth. People are going to know that there are miracles in this day and age—2025. There are miracles from God. People can be healed. People can, you know, be raised off the sick bed. It's possible. I'm living proof.”