Patsy's Miracle

A STORY OF PRAYER & HEALING
AN INSPIRING STORY OF GOD’S AWESOME HEALING AND THE POWER OF PRAYER

An oversized thank you: Billboard shares husband’s belief in miracles as wife recovers from life-threatening disease.

BYLINE: BILL SANDERS

Staff DATE: July 11, 2007 PUBLICATION: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The (GA) EDITION: Main; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution SECTION: Metro News PAGE: D1

If your spouse recovered from a “death coma” and you were convinced it was a miracle, what would you do?

Would you be diligent in making it to church on Sundays? Put an extra few bucks in the collection plate? Or would you put up massive billboards with your spouse’s picture on some of Atlanta’s most traveled highways? Drive either direction on Ga. 92 in Woodstock, drive south from Cherokee County on I-75 or head north up I-85 and you’re likely to see the billboards with Patsy Tripodo smiling down on you. “Jesus healed my wife: Patsysmiracle.com.” Who is Patsy, and what’s with these billboards?

Ron Tripodo is glad you asked. “I put them up as a way to say thank you to God for healing my wife,” said Tripodo, a born-again Christian and a member of Cobb Vineyard Church who lives in east Cobb County. Patsy Tripodo, 58, suffered the onset about 18 months ago of a rare virus that attacks the brain. Herpes simplex encephalitis, which hits about 9,000 people a year in the country, usually leads to a high fever, seizures, brain lesions — and often death. Neither the Tripodos nor the physicians know how she contracted the virus, which can enter the central nervous system through infections in the head and neck, including the ears.

Patsy Tripodo became disoriented while visiting her daughter in Chattanooga. One morning, she applied eyeliner to her cheeks, and soon she was talking incoherently, as though she might have had a stroke, her daughter told Ron.

He quickly arranged for a week’s worth of testing at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., which showed nothing, and Patsy’s odd behavior diminished. But just before they left for home, she changed dramatically. “All hell broke loose,” Ron Tripodo said. “Her fever was high, she was oblivious and a spinal tap showed she had the infection on her brain. Doctors were telling us it didn’t look good.”

Duke physicians diagnosed the virus and started treating it with antiviral medicine. Patsy eventually was transferred to the brain specialists at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta. Her case is unusual, said Darryl Kaelin, medical director of Shepherd Center’s Acquired Brain Injury Program.

”I’ve maybe seen a couple dozen cases in 10 years, and very few as bad as Patsy,” he said. Kaelin has been surprised by Patsy’s recovery.

“It’s usually pretty catastrophic,” he said. “Patients tend to struggle with short-term memory deficit and almost never become really independent again. Her recovery is remarkable.”

Today, Patsy smiles a lot, communicates freely and while not at 100 percent yet, is close, Ron said. Occasionally, she’ll have to think carefully before finding the right words. That’s the 5 percent or so that’s still healing.

“I thought it was really sweet of him,” Patsy said of the billboards. “I didn’t really care that my face was up there. So many people have prayed for me. It’s amazing.”

Ron had the first billboard go up a year ago, even though doctors were saying a full recovery was almost out of the question.

“What if it doesn’t pan out?” Ron was asked by friends. “Don’t you want to wait a little while?” Nope.

Count family friend Lisa Ragsdale as one who didn’t have quite the faith that Ron did. “I feel most of us were thinking, ‘What doesn’t he see?’ ” Ragsdale said. “I saw how crippled and hopeless it was when I saw her at Duke. But Ron’s faith was one that went beyond what he saw.” Ron said he and Patsy are fortunate to be able to afford the care she needed, but he declined to say how much he spent on the billboards.

He’s had up to seven billboards hanging at one time, a cost that can easily run in the tens of thousands of dollars. Tripodo, who owns a business building cell towers, said he got a break on some of the billboards.

Tripodo never thought of the billboards as being an evangelical tool — at least not at first. “But one thing that blew me away is how many people have gotten on the site, e-mailed us, and told us what they were going through and how our story had been an inspiration to them. We now pray for them, just like people we didn’t know were praying for us.”

A quick scan through the testimonies section of Tripodo’s Web site gives an indication of the people the billboards have reached:

“I too saw your billboard. It took awhile to go online, but I’m so glad I did. … Please pray for my son, Ben. He is 32 yrs. old. He has MS & has been unable to work for app. 6 weeks now. His recent MRI showed a lot of lesions, & his care is being transferred to Shepherd Spinal Clinic. … We believe he can be completely healed. PRAISE THE LORD!!!” — Debra, March 27

Today, Patsy pays the family bills on their computer, walks three miles a day and drives as far as Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on her own.

Kaelin sees no reason to think that Patsy will relapse. He just has a hard time saying exactly what healed her.

“Whether it’s a miracle of science or faith or all of the above is sometimes difficult to distinguish. But I will say this: Ron’s faith that Patsy was going to be healed never wavered. And now, medically speaking, I see no reason to suspect Patsy’s condition will worsen again.” Neither does Ron.