Easter prayers answered

Easter prayers answered; toddler recovers

By: Dwain Lair
Harrison Daily Times
April 15, 2002

Gerald Allen, Christina, Rebecca and Shari Cartwright
relax on the couch in their home Saturday afternoon.

Squirming back and forth between her parents' laps,
Christina Cartwright is a typical toddler.
Less than a month from her second birthday,
she wants down, wants to clasp her "Get Well" balloons,
wants to crawl across the hardwood floor.

Christina struggles to walk because of a cumbersome splint on her right leg, and her eyes are bloodshot. But those are the only visible signs left after a truck ran over the youngster on Easter. With time, those injuries will heal, a miracle that her parents said reaffirms their belief in the power of prayer.

Easter afternoon, Gerald Allen and Shari Cartwright and their two young daughters, Rebecca and Christina, were at a relative's home for Easter. Gerald Allen was flying a kite; Shari was visiting with family members; Rebecca was climbing a tree; Christina was running around in the yard.

Shari said she hadn't seen the toddler for a couple of minutes, when she looked up and saw Christina running to where other family members were playing basketball. Gerald Allen was walking to free Rebecca's foot that was stuck in the tree.

At that instant, according to a family member who witnessed the incident, Christina darted behind a truck that was backing up. The bumper knocked her down, and she started crying as the rear tires straddled her tiny body.

Hearing screams for the driver to stop, Gerald Allen ran to the driver's side as the truck turned and ran over the child, rolling up her right leg, across her body, then off her left shoulder. Gerald Allen said he tried to pick up the truck as it rolled off his daughter's body. From his angle, he thought the truck had rolled over her head.

Picking up the crying child, he saw blood coming out of her mouth. "I thought, my child is possibly dying. How can I comfort her."

Then he handed the toddler to her mother. "I was hysterical," Shari remembered. "I said, 'Oh God, don't let my baby die.'"

Shari, a nurse at North Arkansas Regional Medical Center who previously worked in the emergency rooms of Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock and the children's hospital at St. Paul, Minn., said she had seen other babies come in the emergency room after being struck by cars. Some lived, others didn't.

Looking down at Christina, she saw blood coming out of her child's mouth and ears, and her right temple was bruised. The toddler's eyes were bulged out and she thought they were "pinpointed," usually a sign of severe head trauma.

As another family member dialed 9-1-1, they took off for town in a van. "We prayed and sang to God," both parents remembered. "Can something good come from this?"

The family transferred Christina to an ambulance at Bellefonte, and the toddler was still crying when she reached the hospital. Just over an hour later, the child was placed aboard an Air Evac helicopter, since the Children's Hospital's Angel Flight helicopter was two hours away from Harrison, along with Dr. Still from the emergency room for the flight to Little Rock.

A couple of days after the incident, Christina was still in the pediatric intensive care unit. She had suffered a lacerated liver that was healing. Pelvic exams were negative; CT head scan was negative; fears of an enlarged heart were negative. Her face, including eyelids, were swollen, and her eyes were bloodshot because of the pressure generated when blood was forced out of her midsection.

Christina did have a bruised lung, that caused congestion, and two fractures of her right leg. "No permanent damage," her parents agreed.

Gerald Allen and Shari credited much of their child's survival to the "power of prayer. We're truly thankful. She's a blessing . . . all children are blessings."

Within minutes of the accidents, they said prayer chains that started in tiny communities started stretching across the country.

And in the minutes, hours and days following the accident, they were repeatedly greeted by encouraging signs. Christina was placed in a room at Arkansas Children's Hospital the Thursday after Easter and was dismissed the next day. She remained lethargic for almost a week, then returned to normal this weekend.

"My perspective of the power of prayer has changed," Gerald Allen said. "I know medical advances played a role in her recovery, but recovery is all from God. She's here because of prayer."