Grace, Mercy & Miracles

My mom, Deanie Bowen, passed away in 2008 after being misdiagnosed and grossly neglected by hospital staff. While under their care, she became septic. Her body fought for nearly two months in the intensive care unit, but one by one, her organs began to fail. The infections kept returning, and eventually, she was sent to Hospice.

We were told she would never recover from the damage done to her body while she was at St. Luke’s Hospital in Phoenix (it is no longer a hospital).

She wanted to live, but we were told it would be “cruel” to keep her alive because she would require a permanent feeding tube, because they said she had forgotten how to swallow and that she was in the final stage of Alzheimer’s disease.

She was only 56 years old.

There was no medical proof to support that diagnosis only one neurologist’s opinion after a single appointment and one MRI. Years later, that MRI was compared to another taken just before she entered the hospital with a severe urinary tract infection. After five years between the two scans, there were no significant differences nothing to indicate she had progressed from early Alzheimer’s at 51 to late-stage Alzheimer’s at 56.

Tragically, that comparison was not done until after we were told to remove her feeding tube so she could die “without further suffering.” She did not pass quickly. For seven days, we watched her body deteriorate before our eyes until she could no longer hold on. She passed at 11:58pm on Feb 6, 2008.

We laid her to rest on February 11, 2008, in Mesa, Arizona on one of the worst days of my life.

Six months after her death, we received a detailed report from the USC Brain Bank. They had studied her brain to better understand Alzheimer’s disease. What they found was devastating and infuriating: she had no signs of Alzheimer’s disease or any other form of dementia. Her death contributed nothing to their research because the diagnosis was wrong.

We will never fully know what happened to our mom or whether the doctors ever intended for her to recover. We do know that mistakes were made, responsibility was avoided, and our family was not told the truth. The hospital eventually offered to “talk” with me, but no one returned my calls or emails. I hired an attorney, but I could not endure reliving her suffering over and over again.

For 3 years, the guilt and anger consumed me.

It was in that unbearable place that I discovered God was not a myth.

I heard a message about casting our cares on the Lord because He cares for us. In desperation, I gave God all the guilt, all the pain, and all the sorrow surrounding my mother’s death. The moment I did, I felt it lift from me physically, completely like a weight being removed from my shoulders. Instantly, it was gone. There was no more guilt. No more anguish. Only peace.

Even when I tried to revisit the pain later, it was no longer there.

God’s salvation is real. His love is real. And His ability to heal what feels unhealable is real. He carried me through the worst loss of my life and set me free from sorrow, despair, and fear.

My mom was deeply loved.
She is dearly missed.
And her life mattered, but to honor my mother I don’t need to hold anger or cast blame on anyone else, because that doesn’t help but only creates more suffering and misery for more people. Sometimes we want to get justice by making people pay for what they did to us or the people we love, but the day that I decided to let God have all of it, was one of the best days of my life.

https://youtu.be/y8ex6q9nHf4?si=0UDJSYiBLkcZSTHO

I wanted to share this lengthy testimony because I want to give glory to God who will work everything together for good and make for us the best path to move forward after suffering severe pain and trauma.

His word is meant to be lived out. If he said to cast all of our cares to Him, He said it for a reason! He also said to not be weighed down with the cares of this life, so release all of them to the Lord Jesus and see how much better life can be when you are completely free from all of those burdens and responsibilities and past events or whatever you think you have to carry yourself everyday.

We are not going anywhere when we are buried under all of that garbage! Give it up and soar free with the King of Kings! That is why He gave His life up-so we could live free!