Meet our 2008 Children's Miracle Network Champion
Tanya and Keith Knudsvig would have given anything for a sign of life from Cora. Their 5-year-old daughter, whose big love was dancing, lay in a hospital bed, unresponsive in critical condition and dangerously near death. At her side every moment, they took turns reading aloud her favorite books, playing her favorite music, talking to her and holding her hand. They decorated the ceiling with enlarged photos of the family and her beloved dog. Hours of watching, hoping, praying - then days. "One doctor told us that this would be a marathon and we needed to pace ourselves for a long road to recovery," says Tanya. "Whatever it took, we would do. We just wanted our sweet little girl back again."
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For more than a year, Jeanne Aaker endured long periods of intense pain in her left shoulder blade, with pain shooting down her left arm. "Just trying to find a comfortable way to sit or lay was awful. For sitting, I'd get the best relief by holding my left arm high in the air. For sleeping, I'd use the recliner," says Jeanne, a 53-year-old nurse from Lakota, N.D.
When Noah Ness was born Dec. 16, 2005, everyone expected a healthy, full-term baby. But shortly after birth, the 8-pound, 4-ounce boy struggled to breathe, falling into respiratory failure. When early treatments failed, doctors in Bemidji, Minn., called MeritCare LifeFlight in Fargo. Within minutes, a specially equipped fixed-wing airplane complete with a neonatal transport team took flight.
Limping, extensive bruising, unexplained tiredness… When Tricia Roesler saw these troubling symptoms in her 18-month-old son, Brock, she knew something was wrong.
Two weeks after Dick Wente became the 500th person to receive a transplant in Fargo, he described another set of numbers. "When people ask me today how I feel on a scale of one to 10 (10 being best), my answer is 15. And some days it's even 26," says Dick, a farmer from Donnelly, Minn. "I can't believe how much better I feel, and my outlook on life is so much happier."
Allen Knopf didn't expect a miracle treatment for his chronic angina, but at age 71, he hoped there might be something that would help. His lengthy heart history already included a heart attack in his 50s, quintuple heart bypass surgery at age 58 and angioplasty several years later to open a blocked artery.