NSPIRE Today! Magazine–There’s So Many Miracles that Happened

This entire article originally appeared in the February 2021 edition of NSpire Today! magazine, as written by journalist Jeff Fielder. Thank you Jeff, for listening and doing such a thorough job sharing the story of all the miracles our family and community witnessed in October 2020.

*If you would love to read more amazing, inspiring stories, be sure to subscribe at the link above for your own yearly subscription to NSpire Today! You will love reading the heartwarming stories about people from right here in the panhandle of Nebraska.*

Now, settle in and read the story of all the miracles that took place when I experienced the craziest week of my life. It’s an “incredible story about overcoming brain surgery just days after giving birth.”

HEMINGFORD

Around mid-July last year, Michaela Gasseling of Hemingford started getting frequent headaches. She also lost some of her hearing in her left ear.
It seemed odd, she thought, but she wasn’t too worried about it because she figured the headaches and loss of hearing were due to her being six months pregnant.
“At that point, I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal,” she said. “I thought it would all go away soon.”
Her headaches, however, gradually got worse, and other weird things started happening to the 36-year-old Gasseling, such as losing her balance at times.
“It got to the point where I could hardly walk in a straight line,” she said. “I joked with my husband [Matthew Gasseling] that if I got pulled over and had to walk a straight line, I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Michaela thought about seeing a doctor, but because of her busy lifestyle, which included taking care of three young children and helping on the family farm, she didn’t make a doctor’s appointment.
“I kept putting it off, thinking, ‘I’ll just deal with these things until the baby is born,” she said.
Unfortunately, her headaches continued to get worse – to the point where she often had to lie in bed, grimacing in pain.
Toward the end of September – about three weeks before her due date – Michaela said she had “a gut feeling that something wasn’t right.” But she told her obstetrician that she wanted her total focus to be on the baby – not on curing her headaches, loss of hearing or balance issues.
“I told them that since I’m so close to delivering, I’m just going to put up with the headaches until the baby is born, and then after that, I’ll go see my regular provider,” she said.

Baby Time

Although it was difficult, Gasseling dealt with the severe pain in her head until she went to Regional West Medical Center in Scottsbluff to give birth. The delivery went well, and Cassidy Gasseling was born on Tuesday evening, Oct. 13. Surprisingly, Michaela didn’t have any headaches that day.
“I got pretty lucky,” she said.
Unfortunately, that didn’t last long. Michaela’s headaches returned with a vengeance while she was still recovering in the hospital. When she was released from hospital two days after giving birth, her head was still throbbing.
“My headache was worse than ever,” she said.
Michaela spent most of the next two days in bed at home while Matthew took care of their newborn and three other children – Atlee, 9; TJ, 6; and Andi, 3.
“My husband would bring the baby to me when it was time to nurse, but I was still in so much pain,” she said. “It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt – worse than child birth.”
Michaela hoped that by sleeping, the headaches would go away – or at least decrease in intensity. Sadly, that didn’t happen.
“I was literally moaning when waves of pain would come over me,” she said.

Emergency Room Time

Michaela explained what was going on to one of her friends, Micki Votruba, a flight nurse at Regional West Medical Center in Scottsbluff. Votruba and the OB physicians, Michaela said, encouraged her to see a doctor.

So, on Saturday evening, Oct. 17 – four days after giving birth – Matthew took Michaela to the emergency room at Regional West. When they arrived there, Michaela was in so much pain that medical staff had to sedate her in order to get an MRI.
Not much longer after that, doctors learned why Michaela was having such terrible headaches, loss of hearing, and problems with her balance. She had a large tumor on the back side of her brain.
When Michaela woke up from being sedated, she didn’t know the results of the MRI yet. But she knew the results weren’t good as soon as she saw her husband.
“I took one look at my husband, and I said, ‘You have a terrible poker face. I have a brain tumor, don’t I?’” she said. “He came over and hugged me, and we cried together.”
At that point, doctors didn’t know if Michaela’s tumor was benign or malignant (cancerous). They would learn two weeks later that the tumor, fortunately, was benign.

Nevertheless, Michaela’s condition was still quite serious because the location of her tumor had caused considerable swelling in her brain. She needed to have emergency surgery to relieve the pressure and remove the tumor.
“My surgeon estimated that because of the size of the tumor and also because it’s a slow growing tumor, he thought it had been there for maybe five or six years,” Michaela said. “It finally got big enough that my brain couldn’t compensate anymore, and the tumor was blocking fluid from going out of my brain.”
Michaela felted shocked and saddened – but also relieved.
“I was happy to know the reason for my headaches,” she said. “I was glad that it wasn’t something that I would have to deal with my whole life.”
Michaela tried not to think about having brain surgery. Instead, she focused on her faith and family.
“Our God is a God of miracles,” she said. “I had complete faith that He would take care of me and that everything would be fine. I knew it was something that I had to get through so I could go home and help take care of our family, especially having a newborn. I tried not to think about the ‘What-ifs.’”

Get Her to Denver Fast!

As if having brain surgery wasn’t difficult enough, Michaela’s first hurdle was just getting to Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, Colorado, where the brain surgery needed to be performed. Since the weather was bad that night – snow mixed with sleet – flying to the Colorado hospital wasn’t an option. So, Michaela started preparing to go to Colorado in an ambulance. However, an ambulance wasn’t immediately available in the area. Hospital personnel eventually found one in Torrington that could take Michaela to Swedish Medical Center.
There was another stickup, too, that prevented Michaela from heading to Colorado right away. A nurse who was trained to administer the medications that Michaela needed en route to Colorado – to help keep the swelling in her brain down – was needed on the ambulance. As hospital staff was rounding up a crew to go to Denver, Micki Votruba, who had come to the hospital to be with Michaela’s family, offered to ride with Michaela on the ambulance. As a flight nurse for the hospital, Votruba was licensed to administer the medications Michaela needed.
A short time later, Michaela and her best friend were in the ambulance on their way to Swedish Medical Center.
“With the way everything went that night, that definitely showed me that I have guardian angels in my life,” said Michaela, who noted that she became good friends with Votruba years ago when Michaela worked at Regional West as an ultrasound technologist. “For Micki to be there and help me like that, that was a God thing.”
Once Michaela arrived at Swedish Medical Center, medical staff gave her medications to decrease the swelling on her brain enough to make the surgery safer.
Although Michaela remained optimistic about the surgery, she said she also was realistic, knowing that there was no guarantee that she would come out of surgery without any lifelong disabilities – or that she would even survive the surgery.
Therefore, she wrote messages and made videos on her cell phone to her family members so they each would know how much she loved them.
“My family was on my mind the whole time,” she said.
At one point while she was waiting for surgery, Michaela broke down, feeling disheartened that she couldn’t spend those first few precious days after birth bonding with her newborn daughter.
“I was using FaceTime to talk to my mother-in-law, who was holding the baby, and I started crying, ‘What if my baby doesn’t know me when I get home?’ I hadn’t really gotten to know her, and I didn’t know how long I was going to be in the hospital,” she said. “But my mother-in-law [Jeannine Gasseling], who is a saint, reassured me that my baby would still know me.”

Surgery Time

Just before Michaela was sedated for surgery, she felt extremely calm and confident.
“I think I was the only one feeling that way,” she said. “Everyone else – like my mom, my mother-in-law and my husband – were crying. But I knew I was going to be fine. It was so strange that I felt so calm because I had struggled with postpartum depression after my third baby. But at that moment, I was completely at peace.”
Michaela believes her faith in God was the reason she felt so relaxed going into her brain surgery.
“The year 2020 was quite a year for everyone, and it was definitely a hard year for me,” she said. “I went through a lot of things that grew my faith. Looking back, it’s easy to see that God was preparing me for something much harder. But I trusted Him, and He carried me through it.”
Michaela was grateful – and relieved – that she and her husband, who attend St. Bridget’s Catholic Church in Hemingford, were able to find a Catholic priest in Denver who could visit her and pray with her right before she went in for surgery.
“We had asked the hospital if they had a priest who could come pray with us,” she said. “The first guy who came in was married, so we knew he wasn’t a priest. We asked again for a priest. But the next person who came in was a lady, so we knew she wasn’t a priest, either. So, we called several Catholic churches in Denver, and one of the priests came and did an anointment of the sick ceremony with me. My surgery got pushed back a few times, but that ended up being a good thing because if that wouldn’t have happened, there wouldn’t have been time for the priest to come pray with me. That gave me a lot of peace.”
Michaela’s brain surgery was scheduled to last a whopping 16 hours. Fortunately, though, the surgery went so well that it lasted only about four hours.
“Going into it, the surgeon’s biggest worry was how the tumor encased my cranial nerve, which deals with hearing, balance and other things,” she said. “They wanted to try to preserve that nerve so I could eventually get my hearing back and also so I wouldn’t have trouble swallowing, breathing on my own, or walking. I got really lucky because everything went really smoothly. They said the tumor peeled away from the other structures more easily than they thought it would. They didn’t have to spend nearly as much time being super careful not to damage anything else in my brain.”
Following the surgery, doctors planned to keep Michaela on a ventilator for at least 24 hours because they weren’t sure if she would be able to keep her airways open on her own or swallow on her own.
Michaela said another miracle happened, though, when she was able to breathe and swallow on her own when she regained consciousness. Therefore, she was taken off the ventilator.
A few hours later, Michaela sat up in her ICU bed on her own, and then she began walking without having any problems with her balance or swelling.
“As soon as I was awake and realized that I could move my arms and legs and sit up and talk, that was an amazing feeling,” she said.

She’ll never forget the look on her surgeon’s face when he first saw her in the recovery room.
“When he walked into my room, he was shocked that I was sitting up in bed talking to him and then was able to walk around the room,” Michaela said. “He thought for sure I would still be on a ventilator. He was amazed. I just told him, ‘Well, I have a husband and four little kids, including a newborn, that I really want to go home to.’”
Michaela continued to make rapid progress. The next day, in fact, her headache was completely gone, and she hasn’t had a headache since then.

Recovery

Remarkably, Michaela was released from the hospital three days after having surgery. And she walked out of the hospital without needing any assistance.
“The doctors and everyone else said that was pretty amazing,” she said. “They thought I would need physical therapy and occupational therapy, but I didn’t need any of that. It truly was a miracle from God.”
Today – about three months after her surgery – Michaela said she feels great.
“Other than needing to get a little stronger, I’m pretty much fully recovered,” she said. “My hearing came back about six weeks after surgery, and it’s been fine since then. I also haven’t had any balance issues.”

All Thanks to God

Michaela credits God as well as all the people praying for her for her successful surgery and quick recovery.
“For all the cons of social media, the pro was that I had thousands of people praying for me, including my family, friends and people in the community,” she said. “I feel like that was a huge part of it.”
Michaela said she’s filled with joy when she thinks about all the miracles she’s received in the last few months – miracles that kept her alive so she could spend more precious moments with her newborn and other family members and friends.
“Looking back, if my husband had waited another day to take me to the ER in Scottsbluff, I probably would have started having seizures or a stroke – or some other terrible thing could have happened to me,” she said. “Also, having my best friend be my nurse on the ambulance ride to Denver was another miracle, and even getting to Denver was a miracle. It’s a long trip, so I was fortunate that I didn’t have a seizure or a stroke on the way down. And the way the surgery went was also a miracle. There’s so many miracles that happened that were all part of God’s perfect timing.”
Something else that Michaela said she’s grateful for is how the experiences she’s had in the last few months have caused her to focus even more on what’s most important in life and to appreciate every moment she has to enjoy life.
“Before this happened, there would be little things that would annoy me sometimes, like when a baby would wake me up in the middle of the night. But how I look at it now is that I get to be up and spend one-on-one time with the newborn,” she said. “Going through this has definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things, and I feel blessed because of that. Now, I’m grateful for every little thing.””