The Healing of Hazel

When Hazel Randolph was born January 26, 2024, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, she appeared perfectly healthy: ten fingers, ten toes, and plenty of newborn adorableness that captured the hearts of her parents, Josh and Loren.

But within twelve hours of birth, Hazel’s oxygen levels dropped, and her color turned an alarming shade. Tests revealed a heart murmur, something the Bartlesville hospital wasn’t equipped to handle. Doctors sent Hazel by ambulance to Ascension St. John Medical Center in Tulsa.

Additional tests revealed Hazel had a serious heart condition. She was sent on to Oklahoma Children’s Hospital in Oklahoma City for better treatment.

After more tests, Hazel’s condition was correctly diagnosed: Tetralogy of Fallot with Pulmonary Atresia and Major Aortopulmonary Collateral Arteries. The short name is MAPCA’s, a congenital heart defect. Instead of an artery connecting her right lung to her heart, Hazel had a cluster of small veins.

When she was six days old, a stent was inserted to improve the flow of oxygen. While Hazel was improving in intensive care, more health issues surfaced. A small bone was missing in her left ear, and her bottom lip sagged to the right when she cried.

Test results finally provided the reason for these multiple complications: DiGeorge syndrome, a genetic disorder in which part of the 22nd chromosome is missing.

Nothing had prepared Josh and Loren for this news. Loren’s pregnancy with their first child, Hudson (age 3), had been normal, as was her pregnancy with Hazel. With their baby daughter critically ill, the Randolphs faced the greatest test of faith so far in their marriage.

First off, Hazel needed heart surgery. Josh and Loren learned that the only facility to perform it was Stanford Medicine Children’s Health in California, but MAPCA’s presented a challenge. Though surgery could be done, it would go better if those small veins grew bigger.

Three weeks after Hazel’s birth, the final gut punch came from doctors in Oklahoma City. Seeing no hope for successful surgery, they gave Hazel four to six months to live and sent her home on pediatric hospice/palliative care.

Josh, 28, remembers that dark time. “You're wondering how much time you have left with her, and you're trying to spend time with your other son and not make him feel left out. Every day was pretty heavy.”

Loren, 27, agrees. “I don't even have the right word for it, but it just felt awful because no parent should ever have to outlive their kids. And that's what it felt like was going to happen with Hazel.”

The Randolphs’ parents jumped in with support, as did their church family. Jason Fullerton, senior pastor of Spirit Church in Bartlesville, drove to Oklahoma City to be with Josh and Loren during Hazel’s hospitalization. Speaking of Hazel’s prognosis, Fullerton, 46, says, “We believe He is the God of the impossible, but we also believe that He is sovereign. We continued, as Scripture says, to fix our eyes on Jesus and trust Him.”

On Easter Sunday, Josh and Loren dedicated little Hazel to God at Spirit Church. Fullerton told his congregation that Hazel needed a miracle and that God needed to intervene in the situation.

A movement of prayer began, and God responded. On May 3, the Randolphs received a call from a pediatric cardiologist at the Stanford pediatric hospital. Hazel, he said, was perfect for the kind of surgery they perform, even though she had no artery from the lung to the heart.

Elated, the Randolphs made plans for the surgery, set for July 11.

But after arriving in California, the family contracted Covid and were forced to head back to Bartlesville, discouraged and fearful. Loren recalls, “Doctors weren't really optimistic she would live past six months. We were approaching six months, but we were being sent home without the surgery. So it was very scary to go home.”

At such a busy hospital, another surgery date could be months away. But God intervened. While the Randolphs were driving home, the Stanford hospital called with a new surgery date: September 3.

In quarantine, Josh and Loren persevered in faith but struggled to understand God’s ways. Fullerton explains, “The Word of God says that His thoughts and His ways are nothing like ours. So we just took confidence that He was doing something in that season of waiting that could not have been done otherwise.”

God did do something. Before surgery began, a lab done on Hazel showed that Hazel still had the collateral arteries (veins), but they were connected to her pulmonary artery, which doctors hadn't seen before on previous echocardiograms. This thin, healthy artery would make the heart surgery easier to perform — thanks to God’s delay.

Josh and Loren recognize God’s intervention in another way. During quarantine, they struggled to keep Hazel’s oxygen levels up, not knowing that the stent inserted shortly after birth was closing in on itself. When doctors at the Stanford hospital performed the surgery, they said the stent would have soon closed completely, cutting off blood flow to her left lung. Surgery was done just in time.

Today, Hazel has a healthy heart and lung system and will celebrate her first birthday in a few weeks. Josh and Loren have a stronger faith, grown in the darkness and in the waiting room. Every time they look at their daughter, they’re reminded that God is the God of the impossible and that they can trust Him and His perfect timing.