Issue Story

Issue Story, By Breanna Sooter

Tina and Billy Gray were pregnant with their first child when disaster hit their family.

Tina was six months pregnant when she got a cold. She went to the doctor and they wrote it off as nothing to worry about, just a cold. Since she was pregnant, there are not many drugs you can take, and she was just told to wait it out. Gray also had asthma, so the doctor assumed that the asthma was a factor in her cold.

"The next thing I know, they're putting me in the hospital because it wasn't going away, so then I thought, they'll [the doctors] give me some medicine for a few days and then I'll be better...and I fell asleep, and as far as I knew I woke up the next day, but apparently it was eight weeks later."

But, Gray said, "I got antibiotics, but I was just getting tireder and tireder, the fever wasn't going away." Because she was pregnant and asthmatic, Gray believes her diagnosis was thrown off of what was truly wrong with her.

Billy Gray, Tina's husband took her to the doctor and they made the decision to put her in the hospital because she had now developed pneumonia.

Billy Gray said that after about four or five days in the hospital, they realized the situation was progressing and getting worse. His wife wasn't able to keep her oxygen levels up, so they induced a coma by intubating her and putting her on a respirator. At this point, the doctors at Baptist Medical Center in Jacksonville, Fla, felt that is was in both mother and child's best interest for them to deliver the baby via C-Section.

Gisele Gray was born at 27 weeks, weighing two and a half pounds. She spent two months in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Baptist Medical Center , coming home the week after Labor Day.

For those eight weeks, Tina remained in a coma, not knowing that her baby had been delivered. Her husband said that the doctors were constantly giving him bad news saying Tina showed no signs of improvement. She had developed a condition called ARDS, acute respiratory distress syndrome. Since her body was already weak from the pneumonia, she developed ARDS easily, leaving her lungs significantly weakened. According to ards.org, the mortality rate for ARDS is more than 40 percent and can be as high as 70 percent.

“Yeah that was a pervasive thing. For several weeks it was consistent message on a daily basis. The doctor would come to her room and basically say there was no improvement, things aren't looking good. There was this one doctor who continuously told me go look at the literature, go Google this, go Google that. I guess he wanted me to go see for myself. He didn't want to say it himself but the prognosis was very very poor. It seemed like he was trying to prepare me for the worst for quite awhile.”

While she was in the coma, she was on a variety of drugs and a respirator to keep her still and keep her body from doing any work. Since Tina was on all of these drugs to keep her from moving, her dreams also reflected this. In her dream, she was in a nail salon getting a pedicure, but she had been tied to the chair. For the majority of her time “sleeping” she had this dream or one similar to it and was always trying to figure out ways to escape.

Aimee McDonald, friend and neighbor tried to get information and updates about Gray whenever possible. She said that at one point during Gray’s eight weeks of “sleep” the doctors were concerned she wouldn’t wake up because she had nothing to fight for. “They [the doctors] briefly woke her up, told her she had the baby, she cried, saw pictures and then they had to put her back under because it was so traumatic and she started losing oxygen and having issues again. “Both her and her baby were against all odds,” said McDonald, “you know, I really do think it’s a miracle, she should have died, her baby should have died.”

Mother and child are now home and improving significantly. Gisele is now 8.5 pounds. And Tina is able to walk around the house and not lose her breath. After she was released from the hospital, Gray had to learn to walk again and went to rehab for several weeks. She is still on oxygen and cannot leave her home because of the flu season. It is imperative that she remains illness free because it could kill her. Her lung capacity is approximately 50 percent now and her immune system very low. A few weeks ago, McDonald said that Gray let a few people into her home and she developed a sinus infection. Friends and family are only able to wave from across the street, and if they want to leave gifts or food, they have to leave it on the front door step, ring the doorbell and leave. The doctors have warned her that if she gets sick again, she could die. While she isn’t out of the woods yet, she has improved significantly and the situation is being called a miracle.

“I honestly believe God sent an angel to me,” said Gray. Hundreds of people all around the country have been praying for Gray throughout these five months or so. Gray's friends all started to tell their friends about Gray, and the word spread all around the country.

McDonald still has people ask her about Gray and her baby. McDonald’s bible study group was all praying for the Grays and “I still think it’s a neat thing, because I feel like God is working through it still…and the most exciting part I think, I can't wait, years from now for us to look back and be able to hear her whole story and hear how God worked through it and Gisele is fine and she’s a couple years old and Tina's fine and life is back to normal; and then to be able to look back and see the story, it'll be a neat story.”