Support of many helps pastor’s wife overcome brain damage
Published: June 12, 2005
Debbie Yeske came home from her job at a church day care center with an excruciating headache. She took a bath while the rest of her family sat down to eat.
“I was still sitting there eating supper,” recalled her husband, the Rev. Mark Yeske. “I heard her flailing around in the bathroom. It sounded strange, compared to someone normally taking a bath.
“Then all of a sudden, I heard nothing. I thought that was just as strange, but I still didn’t do anything.”
Mark Yeske estimates it was about five minutes before he realized something was wrong.
“I opened up the door, and she was totally under the water.”
Thus began an ordeal that would try the faith of the Yeske family and involve spiritual leaders from throughout the community. Many believe that Debbie Yeske was lifted from a hopeless condition by the hand of God.
Back on March 7, when Mark Yeske lifted his wife’s head out of the bath water, she had stopped breathing.
“I used my faith,” he said. “I just spoke: Live in Jesus’ name. And she started breathing.”
Before the paramedics arrived, she stopped breathing again.
Mark Yeske, pastor of Real Life Assembly of God and a chaplain at St. Mary’s Hospital, prayed again. She started breathing once more.
After arriving at the hospital, Debbie Yeske had to be hooked up to a respirator.
She was diagnosed with bacterial spinal meningitis, which caused the seizure that laid her out in the tub. Doctors said the infection had spread to her lungs.
During the days that followed, Debbie Yeske remained in intensive care. Although she opened her eyes, she gave no indication that she recognized anyone.
Dr. Ajay Verma, a pulmonary critical care specialist at St. Mary’s, recalled that Debbie Yeske’s brain was damaged by oxygen deprivation.
“She had very poor cognition,” he said. “She was awake but she would not respond appropriately, so that was a big issue.”
Verma said that he has seen patients recover from similar injuries, but usually they became responsive within the first three days. In Debbie Yeske’s case, she was unresponsive for two weeks.
“Then you are thinking: Is there permanent damage to the brain from hypoxemia?” Verma said.
A neurologist ordered an electroencephalogram. The results were grim, Mark Yeske recalled.
“The doctors explained it to me this way: A normal person functions with brain waves of 12. A person with a full-blown Alzheimer’s has brain waves slowed to 8. Debbie’s brain waves were 4.”
After an additional test turned up no treatable abnormalities, Mark Yeske hit rock bottom.
“The prognosis at that point was devastating. They just confirmed that she had permanent brain damage and that it wasn’t going to get any better from that point.”
From the beginning of the ordeal, pastors from many churches and denominations poured into the intensive care waiting room to comfort the family and pray.
“We just had a tremendous amount of prayer support,” Mark Yeske said. “It was very impressive to see the body of Christ come together.
“At one time there were 30 pastors at the same time in the ICU waiting room. We formed a circle and prayed right there.”
After a night Mark Yeske spent in prayer at home, the following morning he found his wife sitting up, apparently recognizing people. She still was not talking or walking, but she rapidly regained both those functions in the days that followed.
She returned home on Saturday, April 2, three days before the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary.
Debbie Yeske said the only lingering effect she has is a lack of memory of anything that happened during the past six months or so before the illness.
Mark Yeske said the ordeal has made him a better pastor and chaplain, one who deeply appreciates people and deeply appreciates God for restoring his wife to him.
“We complete each other,” he said. “That was such a devastating thing, thinking that my completer wasn’t going to be with me.”
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