David’s Story

When You Storm The Gates Of Heaven

My 6-year old son David came out from the hospital on May 25, 2006, miraculously surviving the worst state of Dengue 4, also called Dengue Shock Syndrome, which is the terminal stage of the hemorrhagic fever and which only a handful survive. The miracle that David received is a story of the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ who rescued David from death in an extraordinary way. I cannot put the event into a few words. I must write a book about it and a film script to capture the incredible drama that only the Author of the parting of the Red Sea and Author of life itself can weave.

As God rescued David, HE mobilized an outpouring of help in funds and blood donations and non-stop mighty prayers and vigils from the Christ Commission Fellowship and its home school The Master’s Academy from where my eldest child Nicole just recently graduated, from the Ateneo community and the amazing networks of people connected with the Ateneo Grade School and Ateneo High School parents in Metro Manila, in the provinces, and in other countries, from Centro Montessori where my husband Syd is the P.E. Coach and our second daughter Jireh is a student, from WordCom – the church to which my husband’s friend Jojo Lastimosa and the pediatrician who attended to David in Cardinal Santos Hospital belong, from the families and coaches of the Alaska Basketball Power Camps and the players and coaches of the Alaska Aces PBA team, and from close relatives. Jojo Lastimosa played a most crucial role in the rescue of David, and this I will fully relate in the book and the film script. David was a Prep student of the Ateneo Grade School in the last school year and incoming Grade 1 this June. Cardinal Santos Hospital was overwhelmed by the number of visitors and blood-donor volunteers that went to aid David during the days when he was in the Cardinal Santos ICU.

On May 23, my birthday, David finally came back to full life, after having been in the ICU for several days. David’s life is the greatest birthday gift that I had ever received. Yet, God still granted me one more wonderful birthday gift — one Ateneo High School co-parent generously offered us her vacant house in Xavierville I so that David could have the best environment to recover well and be near the Ateneo de Manila University. We brought David home to Xavierville I in Loyola Heights, Quezon City on May 25.

In the morning of May 18 when David died and was resurrected by the LORD, Metrobank took over our home in Cubao. My husband left David and me the night before David’s unexpected death to evacuate our four other children who were left by themselves in our Cubao home. I was all alone in the first hospital to which a colleague in a political movement that I was part of took us.  Only when I was walking on the Ateneo soccer field where David and his little brothers and older sisters were happily running and enjoying a wonderful late afternoon, as they had always done, did I understand the role this man played in the whole dramatic rescue of David from the grave. Not having funds to have David hospitalized, we went with this rich colleague when he offered to bring David to the hospital not knowing that he would bring us to the charity hospital Quirino Memorial Medical Center until it was within my sight from his chauffered car, which we were riding in. After he left us in that hospital, the agony of David began. By our second early morning in Quirino, David had a cardiac arrest and was about to be wrapped in a post-mortem blanket when I stormed into the charity ICU and fell prostrate on the floor, facing David and the three residents and two nurses who were attempting to revive him, and I stormed the gates of heaven. “I WILL STORM THE GATES OF HEAVEN, LORD!” I declared and wailed with all my might and I prayed like I had never prayed before, declaring who God is and all His miracles in the Bible and His Will for David, which I knew was for a full and long life on earth.

My friends, the story is much more. Pray for me as I write this true story of God’s resurrection power. I am the only witness who can tell the story as it fully happened, particularly those 45 minutes when David laid lifeless on a three-and-a-half foot bed, his legs sticking out of the bars of his tiny bed, his whole body lying on a thin cushion white and frigid, and his eyes protruding out of their sockets and those 20 more minutes when a mechanical vent was forced into his throat to aid him in breathing after his first breath finally came out. The CPR was done by hand by the residents. There were no equipment used to help bring David come back to life except for a green plastic bag connected to David through his nose and manually pumped by the attending resident to supply air into David’s lungs. Quirino denies that David had a cardiac arrest and was given CPR. Why the Quirino residents who attended to David are denying, I can only speculate, giving them the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they are thinking that they cannot report something which they cannot explain, for what happened during those 45 minutes and the 20 minutes that followed right after David had his first breath was supernatural. Or perhaps their reason for denying is different and selfishly ignoble, like the fear of losing their residency and their chance to be doctors. I will leave that to the medical community to handle, for I will also furnish the exemplary doctors of Cardinal Santos Hospital my narrative of David’s story for them to be able to act on the state of medical services that Quirino, which is a government hospital, renders its patients, many of whom, as I witnessed, die unnecessarily, including my beloved David.

My friends, God has honored all my “widow’s mite” and has opened the floodgates of heaven to bless my family right now. The LORD did not allow us to be homeless, and HE turned my sorrow into joy, my mourning into celebration, when HE gave David back to me, back to this world among the living. In our family’s new life, I now have this chance to write a book and a film script to permanently record the magnificent power of God over death. Please continue to wrap us with your prayers. We are living on the grace of God, who is supplying our needs faithfully as we live out our new life.

David is back to full life, and even a greater life than he ever had. There is no damage to his brain, eyes, heart, kidneys, liver, lungs, and any other vital organ nor to his senses. This is the answer to my cry to God when I was on the floor of the Quirino ICU violently pleading God for David to come back to life, and not only life but full life and a greater life than he ever had. If you see David now, it is as though nothing happened, but he still has his “nail marks” like peeling skin because he bloated with blood and water which escaped from his cells at the height of his Dengue 4 – his torso from scrotum upward and his brain had water and his skin was stretched to the maximum, he still has wounds from the needles recklessly stuck into him at Quirino and a slightly bloated abdomen because the base of his lungs still has water. On June 5, 2006, I walked David to the Ateneo Grade School for his first day of Grade 1 class. He was the first to stand in the Grade 1 line. He arrived in school early, and full of new hope. His Prep teachers, who saw him in the Cardinal Santos ICU, were so happy to see him back to the Ateneo. By the time David turns 7 years old on September 21, 2006, he will be fully well. Oh, my son, when I look at him, I remember his lifeless body, his lifeless face with his eyes staring upward, and the immense suffering his body underwent in Quirino, but when I see his face now, his smile, his beaming innocent eyes, I can only praise God, and I will praise HIM forever for my son was dead and now he is alive again, and he is living life to the fullest!

When I write the book, the title that I have in mind is the very first statement spoken to me by David’s attending physician at Cardinal Santos Hospital when she arrived in ICU # 12. She did not know what I did at the ICU of Quirino six hours earlier nor, as I came to know later on, was it reported to her by Quirino that David arrived in Cardinal Santos post-arrest. While standing beside David, who was unconscious and was lying on a large push-button ICU bed getting the best ICU care with high-tech equipment attached to him but whose vital signs were all at the edge of death, pediatrician Dr. Dolly Bustamante said to me, “WHEN YOU STORM THE GATES OF HEAVEN, HOW CAN GOD NOT ANSWER!” When she said this, I knew that David was already in the very hands of the LORD GOD Almighty, and HE Himself had just answered me. It was as though God Himself said to me, “WHEN YOU STORM THE GATES OF HEAVEN, HOW CAN I NOT ANSWER?!” The hours and days ahead were full of miracles, moment by moment, each improvement was a miracle, and David’s speedy recovery amazed the doctors and the medical staff of Cardinal Santos. When David was finally out of danger and the role of the intensivist, who took care of David for four days at the Cardinal Santos ICU, was over, I thank him repeatedly. As I held his hand, my tears flowed, and his eyes also turned bleary, and he pointed upward and said, “The LORD!” For truly, David surviving was all in the hands of God, even when he was finally placed in the care of the best doctors and one of the very best hospitals in our country. I asked God while in Quirino, when David came back to life, “LORD, give David doctors who fear You,” for I knew that the little amount of life that David had when God restored him in Quirino had to be nurtured with compassion, so when I heard Dr. Dolly speak with faith and saw how skillfully the intensivist Dr. William Bayhon handled David, I knew God answered my prayer. And even when the intensivist said to me that David had less than 50% chance to survive, I took that “less than 50%” with hope, for I had seen David come from zero – from no life – and I knew that through the mighty prayers and the continual storming of the gates of heaven by the many who had come to know about David’s condition, God would answer and make David recover miraculously. In Quirino while lying prostrate on the floor lifting up my voice to God with violent passion, I had a vision of the Spirit of Jesus carrying the spirit of David back toward life, but I saw only the LORD’s footprints as HE walked on the sand. It was Jesus, the Son of the living God, who was in-charge now, and HE was using every one who came to David in the Name of the LORD to restore David to full life – this I knew.

If I communicated with you by text or conversation, or a text about David’s condition reached you during those days in May, or you visited David at the ICU and/or donated blood and hospital funds for him, please write me back. Let me thank you for being part of God’s miracle in David’s life and let me know your end of this amazing story. I want to reconstruct those days in the book and the film script. I know that many, many people were involved in this miracle. David’s story is also a story of the unity of the Body of Christ. Please email me at rubycalo@yahoo.com or rubycalo@gmail.com. Let your stories be woven into this story of the resurrection power of the living God and together let us testify to the whole world that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and HIS resurrection was for real, and HE reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Ruby Ann Kagaoan – Calo
Mother of David Elyon Shammah Calo (David’s name literally means, “Beloved of the Most High Who Is Always There”)