KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Alicia Darnell suffered a seizure last September, but nobody knew why until an MRI revealed the answer—a tumor deep in her brain.
“Why me? I have these little children. Why can’t — maybe I’m not going to be here for them for very long,” Darnell recalled her thoughts then.
A specialist soon told Darnell that he thought the tumor was slow-growing, and suspected it wasn’t cancerous. But there was no way to know without surgery to remove it.
“He was like ‘I would go ahead and have the surgery’, but I was like I don’t know if we would want to do that,” she said.
Darnell, thinking of the needs of her two young children, decided to put it off. Little did she and husband, Benjamin, know that they’d soon be expecting a third child. They found out in October.
“Significantly, if not completely overwhelmed with that news,” Benjamin Darnell said.
The pregnancy meant Alicia Darnell couldn’t have the brain scans scheduled for coming months to see if the tumor was growing. The dye used hasn’t been proven safe for fetuses. She went on a seizure medicine that was considered safe, and she and countless others prayed.
“There was a lot of faith and trusting God, okay, if anything’s happening then we will know that it’s happening,” she said.
Last week, baby Damien arrived. During the pregnancy, Darnell had no more seizures or any other symptoms of the tumor.
“Now we’re blessed with a super healthy baby, and now we get to enjoy the gift that he is for us,” she said.
Her husband added, “Even though we do not know at all what our future will hold.”
Next month, Darnell will finally have an MRI to see if the tumor has grown.
“God has a plan in all of this and he’ll protect throughout all of this,” she said.
The Darnells say they know He has so far.
