Student's Eyes Healed

Allie Broaddus was ecstatic about returning to ORU for her sophomore year. She was excited to start her new role as chaplain on her dorm floor and see all her friends after a long summer. Her plans for a great year were almost derailed, though, on a Thursday night just two weeks before the start of the semester. Allie was experiencing extreme blurriness in one of her eyes. She thought it was just an irritated contact so she took them out and went to bed. At 4:15 in the morning, she woke up feeling incredible pain in her eye. She called her Dad, who is a veterinarian, to figure out what might be causing the pain. He assumed it was a simple scratch on her eye and sent her back to bed. Allie tried to go back to sleep but the pain was too much. She felt nauseous and couldn’t go back to sleep. “I had never experienced pain like that before,” she said. Three hours later, still restless and the pain increasing, she called her Dad again. This time he went to his clinic to get medicine to numb the pain.

Allie’s mother thought she might know what was going on but she didn’t want to accept it. When Allie’s Mom was younger, she nearly lost her vision to something called an acanthamoeba; a parasite in the eye that literally eats at the cornea and can potentially lead to blindness. The worst part is the excruciating pain that comes with being in a lighted room. It took more than a year of treatments and two corneal transplants to save her Mom’s vision and reduce the pain.

Allie’s mom called their eye doctor and set up an immediate appointment for Allie. By this time, the pain was affecting both of her eyes. When they got to the doctor’s office, Allie couldn’t see well enough to walk into the clinic on her own.

The doctor immediately set Allie up with a cornea specialist and he confirmed what they did not want to hear. Allie probably had an acanthamoeba. “The pain was so intense…I thought if it’s going to be a year and a half of this, just take my eye ball out and give me a new one,” recalled Allie. She was given medicated eye drops and tried to prepare for what was next.

Over the next couple of days, Allie’s mother called family, friends and church members to pray for Allie’s healing. They believed they would see God move on her behalf. Allie woke up one morning and noticed less pain. As the day went on, the pain continued to decrease and the vision in her right eye began to improve. The next day, the Broaddus family returned to the cornea specialist for a follow-up. The doctor was extremely surprised by the regression of the pain and explained that acanthamoebas rarely resolve themselves. By the end of the weekend, the pain was completely gone and so was the acanthamoeba. It was a miracle. God had intervened and healed Allie’s eyes.

Allie believes being at ORU her freshmen year taught her about healing but she never imagined it would open her eyes, literally, to God’s healing power. The same God who healed Oral Roberts of tuberculosis decades ago, healed Allie’s eyes. “Healing is very real,” said Allie. Oral Roberts’s words still ring true; “This is your day for a miracle.”