Ana before operation Ana after operation

"A brain aneurysm," said the doctor when Ana, five months pregnant, was taken to the hospital by the paramedics. "Her only chance of survival is brain surgery. The possibility that she will make it through is 5%. For the baby the chances are nil." It starts here, a story of great pain, incredible odds, extreme courage, will-power and hope against all hope.

Are they alive, doctor?

Assyria Freitas de Mello

This is the story of Ana and Randy Carranza. A love story similar to many other tales, in which there is a man, a woman, a look, and the will of sharing lives. It all started in 1992 when Ana, then 29, decided to come from her native city of São Paulo, Brazil, to Southern California to start a new life. Three months later, through friends, she met Randy. There were boat rides, candle-light dinners and soon what had started as a friendship between two solitary souls blossomed into love. Ana and Randy, Randy and Ana became inseparable. They were always finding excuses to be together: sailing, biking, skiing, partying, going to the movies.

Marriage couldn't be too far off. Traveling alone in the Fiji Islands Randy found that he didn't want to live without Ana anymore, that she was the one. Randy used the Easter celebration to hide several chocolate eggs, each one accompanied by a love poem. Following the trail Ana ended up reading the last note-poem which was nothing less than a marriage proposal. "It took her two hours to say yes," revealed Randy.

Everything was going fine for the newlyweds, with their dreams of buying a house at the beach, having children and dogs. Ana was working as an executive assistant at a candy company and Randy had just started a new job in Orange County. Even though they hadn't planned children for another year or so, they were very happy when the news hit home: the stork was dropping by.

A workaholic by nature, never ending his tasks before 9 o'clock every evening, Randy started to get home earlier to enjoy the pregnancy with the wife. On one particular night, he brought Ana some flowers and was very happy to see her exercising and enjoying her pregnancy (after some hard periods at the beginning). Randy took a lot of pictures of his wife showing her five-month stomach.

The next day, a Friday, in mid-May, Randy whilst working started to feel very weird. He couldn't explain the urgency he felt to go home and see Ana. He did so. Thank God! She hadn't arrived yet and he started working upstairs on his computer. It was around 5 o'clock in the evening when Ana returned from her job. She was downstairs getting ready for a trip they had planned to Catalina Island, when all of a sudden Randy heard a scream.

"It wasn't a normal scream. It was something deeper, and just the fact that she used my first name scared the hell of me — They call each other Cora, an abbreviation for coração (heart in Portuguese) —," recalls Randy.

Ana was in a lot of pain. She was sitting on the floor, her left side paralyzed. She complained about a horrible ache in the back of her head, the room was spinning around and she couldn't see very well.

Randy called 911 and the paramedics took her to Brotman Medical Center. The diagnostic was somber: she had suffered a brain aneurysm. Her only chance to survive is to go through brain surgery immediately or she was going to die in the next 24 hours. But they told Randy that it was almost impossible for the baby to survive the surgery.

"It was my worst nightmare. They were talking about my Ana having just a 5% chance to pull through the surgery and none for the baby," says Randy. "The only thing I could think of was to ask the doctor to save my wife's life. I felt very sorry for the baby that we already learned to love, but I couldn't have another Ana, said Randy."

Randy's job before the operation was to make sure that Ana wouldn't slip into a coma. He talked and talked to her, but a few minutes before he left the room to let the nurses prepare her, he thought he had lost her. She wasn't responding. Randy got desperate. To his surprise, however, she was holding her x-ray chart over her head when the doctors wheeled her out towards the operating room.

"At that time, I realized that Ana was a fighter and there was a good chance that everything would be fine," said Randy.

The faith and love in that waiting room were amazing. Dozens of the couple's friends came to the hospital. The operation was supposed to last four hours, but took seven instead. When the operation ended and the doctor came to talk to Randy, he froze. "He told me Ana was doing fine, that they had lost her heart once during the surgery but that they had got her back very quickly," recalls Randy. "And the most surprising thing, was that the baby had survived all of this. He told me my wife was a fighter, and then he gave a hug and started to cry."

When Ana was able to talk and understand things, Randy asked her if she remembered what happened during her surgery. "The three angels didn't let me go. They told me to come back. And my grandmother was there with me all the time. (Her father's mother, Cleonice, passed away in 1990, and Ana was very close to her.)," said Ana.

Just when they thought everything was fine, the baby started to try to come out. It was a hard time. They had the option to take the baby out giving him no chances to survive, but giving Ana more conditions to get better sooner; or keeping the baby sewing her cervix and slowing down her treatment. Ana opted for saving the child. Randy tried for hours to make Ana understand the difficulties of having the baby in her condition. But nothing would convince her of the contrary: she wanted to have the baby.

"She told me she would have her baby no matter what, that everything was going to be fine," says Randy. "I couldn't believe how strong she was." If you ask Randy now, he will tell you that he doesn't take life for granted anymore. "After you've been through something like this, you can't disregard the power of love, faith and prayer," he says.

Ana stayed in the hospital 35 days. She has just a faint memory of this time. She talked to a lot of friends normally, she recognized then and even translated English phrases into Portuguese. Ana's parents, who came from Brazil to be at her side in the hospital, witnessed her looking around the room searching for an imaginary little girl and her dog.

"Sometimes she looked underneath her blankets saying the dog was playing with her. You could've caught her smiling for this little girl and dog many times during her stay in the hospital, but no one else could see them," said Ana's mom.

Ana's family thinks that she is being protected by a power bigger than they can explain. On the other hand they cannot find an explanation or a similar story to that of Ana in the family. She was always very health-conscious., she loved sports and was very careful about food and keeping herself in shape. Just a few days before her aneurysm, she was biking and sailing with friends.

Now Ana is back home. She's still half blind, feels dizzy all the time, suffers from nausea and can't walk by herself. But there are signs that she is getting better each day. She still needs care 24 hours a day and is lucky to have her parents living at her home, supporting her through this tough time.

"There are days when she feels very depressed and can't understand why this happened to her. I think she needs to have a therapist helping her now," said Ana's father. Ana can't do the simple things she was used to, and more than that, she needed to be very careful with her medications, so it won't affect her baby. But despite all of this, Ana and the baby are doing fine. She has a cesarean planned for September 18. The ultrasound revealed that the Carranzas will have a girl. Sure to be a very special and strong girl. Her name is going to be Alexis, which means "the little helper".

Big diseases also bring big bills. Since Randy had just switched jobs, he didn't have medical insurance when everything happened to Ana and her job didn't provide insurance either. When he was in the hospital with her before the surgery, he wanted to make sure she would have the best, so he signed all the papers the hospital asked for. Their bills now have reached almost half a million dollars. The Carranzas have already spent their $40-thousand life savings.

They got the help of friends who are organizing fundraising events, and received donations from people they don't know. Through the Internet, Randy has been contacting people who have been through a similar situation and Ana will soon talk to them to help her healing process.

Randy has no idea how they will come up with all the money they owe the hospital, when they are already having a tough time to pay the day-to-day bills like rent, food and gas .

"And we still have her cesarean to worry about, but I'll never blame the hospital for the bill, because they saved Ana's and the baby's life," said Randy.

Ana and Randy are trying to overcome this together. They love each other a lot, and decided to take small steps in her treatment. She exercises her face and eyes daily and walks with the help of a walker. Hopefully, everything will be back to normal in the not too distant future.

"I want to be able to enjoy my little baby and the joy she will bring to our life. For now , I just want to get better and have a health baby," Ana says. Randy calls Alexis a "miracle baby", because he's convinced that little Alexis saved Ana's life giving her the strength to fight."

If you would like to contact the Carranzas send E-mail to bytes4fun@aol.com , call (310) 358-5139 or you can write to: Ana Carranza - PO Box 661633 - Los Angeles, CA 90066

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