“Miracle Girl” Recovers from “Non-Survivable” Event

“I was just in total shock,” Craig Packard said as he recalled one of the hardest days of his life. “She had no medical problems other than seasonal allergies. Why in the world would a healthy person's heart just stop? In my mind at that time was, ‘I'm going to lose my wife.’”

June 29, 2011. Karey Packard and her 16-year-old daughter, Melanie, had just finished packing to move to a new house when they stopped to have lunch – Karey suddenly collapsed. Melanie immediately called 911 and began performing CPR. Meanwhile, Karey’s husband, Craig, was in his car when he received the news.

“I got this phone call from the fire chief,” Craig remembered. “He said, ‘Were you aware that an ambulance is at your house?’ And he says, ‘They're performing CPR on your wife.’ And I mean, you talk about shock. I could not imagine being more in shock. So, I floored it.”

Craig rushed home to find Karey unconscious and being loaded into the ambulance. She had suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and it was only Melanie’s quick use of CPR that kept her alive long enough for EMS to arrive. But things would take a turn for the worse once they got to the hospital.

“She arrested again,” Craig said. “They were instituting CPR again and pushing drugs and shocking, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, you're taking her right here.’"

Craig was a medical doctor in the Air Force and so was allowed to observe Karey’s condition in the ER. The hospital chaplain came in and they immediately began praying.   

“I'm looking at the monitor and it's asystole, the flatline, the line of death,” Craig said. “We said the prayer and I looked back up and they had her in sinus rhythm again. And I thought, ‘Wow, I saw something that shouldn't have come back, that usually doesn't come back.’ And I thought, ‘Gee, that was a strong prayer.’"

Karey’s heart was beating again, but during the resuscitation she vomited and aspirated. Peanut butter from the sandwich she had for lunch was sucked into her lungs.   

“As a doctor I can tell you, peanut butter is the worst possible thing to get into your lungs,” Craig said in earnest. “It creates a tremendous inflammatory response in the lungs. The lungs are just socked in with fluid and junk. So, she was essentially suffocating. Seeing my spouse in that position – it hurts.”

Karey was put on a ventilator, but her condition deteriorated through the night. Finally, at 3:30 am the doctor came to Craig and told him they had done all they could and that he should gather his children to come say goodbye.  

“We stood around the bedside and we prayed, Craig said solemnly. “It was a prayer of desperation and we said, ‘God, we don't understand what's happening, but we know that you're in control. Please have mercy on us. Please, if at all possible, spare her life.’ From that point that we prayed, things stopped getting worse. It stabilized. I’m just continuing to pray and saying, ‘God, please keep this going.’”

Karey stabilized, but at a horrible level. A neurologist checked for signs of brain activity, but he could only find four out of twenty. He told Craig this was a non-survivable event and if she did survive she would be profoundly brain damaged.  

“Everything from my medical training, from my experience as a doctor said agree with the neurologist that this is non-survivable,” Craig said. “But there was that hope that perhaps God would spare us. I was in the room holding her hand and her eyes flickered. And I'm like ‘Wow! Karey, can you hear me?’ And of course, she couldn't talk. So I had her right hand and I said, ‘If you can hear me, squeeze my fingers.’ And I could feel a squeeze with her right hand. ‘Can you wiggle your right foot? Can you wiggle the toes?’ And I'm like, ‘This is unbelievable because the doctor just said she's brain damaged.’ I mean, it was a tremendous relief. ‘Praise God, thank you, God for what you're doing.’”

Seeing the evident power of prayer, Craig immediately began contacting friends he had made around the world asking them to pray for each of Karey’s specific health challenges. They responded, and one by one her list of medical issues began to improve. After twenty-one days in the ICU, she was finally transferred to a rehabilitation facility.    

"The nurses started calling her "Miracle Girl" because they hadn't seen anybody come back from that,” Craig said happily. “The doctors had not seen anybody come back from the condition that she was in. There's no explanation other than a miracle. It's just a tremendous relief, it's a tremendous feeling of gratitude to God for what He's done.”

It was later discovered that Karey had a genetic condition that caused her cardiac arrest. An internal cardiac device was implanted to prevent that from happening again. She has since recovered and is back to living an active lifestyle with Craig and their children. They credit God for her miraculous survival and healing.

“I'm very grateful that He allowed me to stay here,” Karey said about God saving her. “I can't express that enough. I’m so very grateful for the extra, and I consider this extra, time with my family. Prayer for sure works. It really does. I want people to know that God is still active, He is still working on our behalf, and that He does still perform miracles – You just have to be watching.”

“You could see God's sovereign hand through this entire scenario,” Craig said enthusiastically. “We couldn’t have gotten through this without Him. I am eternally grateful that Karey is still here with me. God answers prayers.”