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For a small child, Christmas Day can feel like the most thrilling day on earth. For Destany Hawley, Christmas Day 1999 felt like a struggle for every breath.
T he day after Christmas, then 2-year-old Destany was taken to Children's Hospital at Providence where she was soon diagnosed with strep A bacterial pneumonia. Then she rapidly took a turn for the worse. With her treatment likely complicated by her premature birth and weakened lungs, Destany developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and an irregular heartbeat. Despite around-the-clock intensive care, her condition continued to deteriorate until one evening her only lung that had been partially functioning filled with fluid and she began to turn cold and gray.
Yet Destany was not ready to give up the fight. Within just a few hours her color returned and both of her lungs began to function again. A devote nurse spent that entire night making minute adjustments to Destany's heart medications to help keep her alive.
Within a month of her near-fatal illness Destany was walking on her own and learning to talk again. Today this bouncy second-grader has other tasks on her mind, like mastering the piano and learning the ins and outs of Irish step dancing.
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