After dire warnings and a life-and-death decision by her parents, sixth-grader has new hope
By Dennis Kellogg
Director of Communications
You’ve got one hour to decide.”
Hang Van and her husband Hoang Nguyen asked for some time to make the most important decision of their life – and their daughter’s life – and that’s what the doctor told them. One hour.
Their daughter, 11-year-old Mila Nguyen, lay in a bed at Children’s Hospital in Omaha where she had been getting progressively worse since they transported her following seizures in Lincoln four days earlier.
Mila was dealing with a rare autoimmune condition in which her own antibodies attacked her brain, causing swelling and injury to the brain. Hang said at least six surgeons and specialized doctors looked at the brain scans and all had reached the same conclusion. They said Mila would not recover, and even if she did, she would not be able to talk, walk, eat or ever leave a medical facility.
Now her parents were faced with that most difficult decision – approve a surgery that would remove the top half of her skull and relieve the increasing pressure on her brain, or continue to make her comfortable and wait for the “inevitable.” The surgery would not cure her; it would just give the swelling in the brain space to expand, providing temporary relief.
Mila (pronounced MEE-lah) is a sixth-grade student at Cathedral of the Risen Christ School in Lincoln, where her older sister Myra is in the eighth grade. Her mom said Mila has been playing the piano for several years, and described her daughter as a girl who is “not material at all and gets bored when she goes shopping.” She said Mila is more spiritual, even taking cold showers as a sacrifice during Lent.
Mila was sick the previous week, but had been feeling better. When she woke up Saturday morning, March 28, her mother asked her what she wanted for breakfast. Mila didn’t say anything. Her mother asked again. Still, Mila said nothing. Her mother then asked her to write her answer.
Mila then wrote on a piece of paper, “God, you should be my 7 and 8 too.”
Her mother, a nurse, realized something was not right and decided to take Mila to the hospital in Lincoln. Tests at the hospital offered no clues as to what was wrong. Shortly after being released, Mila suffered a seizure. She went back into the hospital before being transported to Omaha and the intensive care unit at Children’s.
Family gathered, doctors ran tests, and everyone prayed. Yet, they got no answers. By Monday, the situation looked very bleak.
“I asked the doctor, ‘Do you believe in miracles? This is what we need,’” Hang, Mila’s mother, said. “I remember I told him that. He didn’t say anything. He looked away.”
Hai Pham, Mila’s uncle, took a phone call about Mila from his wife that Monday morning.
“My wife said we are losing Mila because her brain keeps swelling and they can’t stop it,” Hai recalled. “I rushed to the hospital. I looked at her and instantly I left the hospital. I drove to Boys Town.”
Hai works at Boys Town, and he knew that just a few days earlier, Father Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town, had been declared venerable by Pope Leo XIV.
“Venerable” is the title given to a deceased person recognized formally by the pope as having lived a heroically virtuous life or offered their life. To be beatified and recognized as “Blessed,” one miracle acquired through the candidate’s intercession is required, in addition to recognition of heroic virtue or offering of life. Canonization requires a second miracle after beatification.
“I knew they were looking for two miracles,” Hai said.
Hai went straight to Dowd Memorial Chapel of the Immaculate Conception on the Boys Town campus and knelt before Father Flanagan’s tomb.
“I know getting a miracle is very rare,” Hai remembered thinking as he prayed intently. “God, please use your power and Father Flanagan to heal Mila so that your name can be glorified, number one, and number two, for Father Flanagan to become a saint.
When he becomes a saint, it will benefit so much for Mila, for Boys Town and for thousands of other kids.
“God, why not heal Mila?” he asked.
Msgr. James Gilg of Boys Town has prayed with Mila and her family at the hospital and he anointed her on Palm Sunday.
(Story continues below)
Photos by Dennis Kellogg, Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital and courtesy of the family
Those were far from the only prayers for Mila. Back at Cathedral of the Risen Christ School in Lincoln, students and families gathered two times to pray the rosary for Mila. Staff made spiritual bouquets and students made cards to send to her. The school also made prayer cards featuring a picture of Mila drawn by another student. Msgr. Thomas Fucinaro, pastor of the Cathedral, visited Mila in the hospital several times and offered Mass for her.
There was also a friend of a friend who was on pilgrimage in Medjugorje and prayed for Mila. In Lincoln, two friends passed each other outside St. Peter Parish, with one saying she was there to pray for an 11-year-old girl, and the other answering,
“You’re praying for Mila. That’s why I’m here, too.”
Mila’s mother knew the prayers could give them what the doctors couldn’t.
She recalled that she asked the doctors: “How long? How much time does Mila have? I’m losing my child, how much time does she have? He said, ‘I don’t know. Not much time.’”
Hang said the one thing they could do is pray.
“That’s our only hope. We’re going to pray. This is Holy Week. Everybody’s praying. This is our last hope.”
Mila’s condition showed no signs of improvement. She was not responding. It was Wednesday morning, four days since she was admitted to the hospital. That’s when the meeting with the doctors was held.
They told Mila’s parents again the pressure on the brain was intensifying. They had to decide – have the surgery to remove part of the skull, or not. They needed the decision in one hour.
Hang and Hoang talked. And prayed. They saw no good outcome from having the surgery to remove part of the skull. Hoang said he wanted to keep his daughter the way she was before she got so sick.
“If we do not do the surgery, the doctor said that she will not make it by the end of the day,” said Hai, Mila’s uncle who was there with her parents. “The brain will expand with swelling and a lot of pressure, too much pressure and with nowhere to go, it will cause problems. And slowly, Mila will go by herself.”
Mila’s mother and father made their decision. No surgery.
“Her mom said one thing,” Hai said: “God gave Mila to us for 11 years, and if God wants her back, we offer her to God.”
For Hai, it was just like Abraham offering his only son to God as recounted in Genesis 22.
“God tested him,” Hai said. “He felt the pain and completely lost when he had to offer his son to God. But he did the same thing.”
Later that afternoon, the doctor came to Hang. Mila’s blood pressure was well over 200.
“He said if this blood pressure is not controlled, Mila is not going to make it,” she said.
They administered blood pressure medicine, hoping to bring it down.
Hang remembered the prayer she prayed through her tears: “Jesus, we are suffering. If you are here with us, please show me the sign that you are here. I don’t know what to do now. This is the last blood pressure medicine that they give her. Show me the blood pressure going down.”
She said she was praying so hard. She also said she was mad at Jesus.
“Where are you? We needed you. We’re suffering, God. This is so hard,” she said.
And then, the blood pressure started to go down.
“It was 210 or 220, then it went down to 200 and then 198... I just said, ‘God, thank You...’ because any little hope you saw was lifted up. For the last few days that we were in the hospital, we never had any good news. All the reports were ‘continue to swell, continue to do this’ and Mila couldn’t do anything.”
Hai said the doctors told the family they weren’t certain whether Mila was breathing on her own or breathing by the machine.
“About 30 minutes later, they told us she is breathing by herself. And then all the numbers returned to normal. Her blood pressure, her heartbeat, everything went back to normal,” he said.
A day that started out with dire warnings and a life-and-death decision by her parents, ended with the hope of new life.
Hang said that hope she had so desperately prayed for was still there when she woke up the next morning on Holy Thursday.
“I’m not as depressed, or in a fog and heavy in my heart. I feel lighter,” Hang remembered. “I told myself, ‘Why am I not feeling as heavy as the last many days? My daughter still hasn’t talked, hasn’t moved much, hasn’t done many things. Why am I feeling not as worried?’ And I realized this is Thursday of Holy Week. Jesus starts suffering for people. Maybe I feel loved.”
Mila began to show more signs of improvement.
“Little by little. A blink of her eye. She follows commands. She starts moving a little bit. Day by day, we see improvements,” Hang said. “I feel like this is God healing her. There’s no way we would expect this.”
That Saturday, members of the family attended the Easter Vigil Mass. As the second reading from Genesis was being read, they recognized it immediately: the story of Abraham being called to offer up his son to God. A story the family knew well.
“It’s not a coincidence,” Hai said. “The more we experience with Mila every day, the more I see it’s God-planned. If we will believe and trust, put everything in God’s hands, because a miracle will not happen if you don’t trust and believe 100-percent in it.”
Mila celebrated her 12th birthday in her hospital room. A few days later, after about two weeks in intensive care and 23 days total, she walked out of Children’s Hospital under her own power.
She is now at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Omaha, undergoing physical therapy twice a day. She has been playing the keyboard and is able to play games on her iPad and practice math.
Mila is working to improve her speech and doctors are hopeful she will regain her voice. They don’t believe there is any paralysis of her vocal cords. Her family has returned to Father Flanagan’s tomb to continue their prayers for his intercession to God to help Mila with her speech and cognitive functions and fully recover.
For now, she is communicating by writing on a small whiteboard.
Hai said last week when he was alone with Mila in her room, while she was drawing a thank-you note to her nurses, he asked her a question.
“Mila, did you see Jesus?”
“She wrote on her board, ‘Yes,’” Hai said. “I was shocked.”
He then asked her if Jesus held her or talked to her.
“And then she wrote down ‘talk.’ And she also wrote down ‘long.’ It seemed to me they talked for a long time.”
During the time of Mila’s hospitalization, the family experienced what they consider a second miracle. Mila’s grandfather, who was a Buddhist, had for more than 50 years resisted the family’s urging to consider the Catholic Church. Two weeks ago, with Mila facing the fight of her life, he was baptized into the Church and received the sacraments. It’s been an Easter like no other for the family.
Meanwhile, Mila is striving to get back to where she was before her sickness. She works daily to develop her physical skills. All the while, she is surrounded by family, friends and visitors.
One of those visitors recently was Bishop James Conley of the Lincoln Diocese. Bishop Conley told Mila he has been praying for her every day since he learned of her sickness. He gave her a gift bag filled with a bottle of his Ordinary honey, a journal, and a rosary pouch with religious gifts from his pilgrimages in Europe. He then anointed her and blessed her.
When Bishop Conley was ready to leave, Mila wrote the message, “Thank You” on her whiteboard and signed her name.
It was about three weeks ago, on that Saturday morning on March 28 in her home in Lincoln, when Mila wrote another message on a piece of paper to her mom, just before she had the seizures that sent her to the hospital.
“God, you should be my 7 and 8 too.”
The family has since learned the phrase is a reference to the powerful promise found in Micah 7:7-8. They share with visitors that promise as paraphrased in The Message: “But me, I’m not giving up. I’m sticking around to see what GOD will do. I’m waiting for God to make things right… Do not rejoice over me, my enemy; When I fall, I will arise, when I sit in darkness the Lord will be a light to me.”
A fitting verse for the trials Mila and her family have been through, the many prayers to God made on their behalf and the many times they could have given up but refused to do so. Instead, they chose – and keep choosing – to put their faith in God to make things right.
Bolstered by the prayers of those close to them, and the prayers of many they will never know, Mila is getting better. Day by day.
Doctors think Mila could be discharged and go home in about two weeks.
“I got my miracle,” her mom said.
