Huntsville-area Baptist shares ‘miracle’ healing

One of the first things Sue Fallin of Shiloh Baptist Church in Sommerville shares with those who come to hear her story is a beat-up old Bible. In its margins she has recorded her 12-year struggle with four life-threatening diseases and a miracle no less spectacular than those written of in the Gospels.
   
Fallin began using her Bible to chronicle her illnesses shortly after she was diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome — a disorder that inhibits the body’s ability to produce moisture — in 1984.
   
During the next eight years, Fallin would add to her Bible the dates she was diagnosed with Addison’s disease, lupus and myasthenia gravis — all incurable auto-immune disorders that cause the body to attack itself. She also recorded more than 75 hospital visits, many times to the Cardiac Care Unit (CCU).  Each new entry confirmed her fears — that she was losing the battle despite the combined efforts of physicians from North Carolina, Ohio and Huntsville.
   
By 1990, her condition had deteriorated so drastically that she was forced to use a walker to get around. Soon after, she had to start administering her own nebulizer treatments because of severe respiratory problems brought on by the myasthenia gravis—the most aggressive and potentially deadly of the four diseases. Years of steroid treatments had added more than 75 pounds to Fallin’s small frame.
   
To make matters worse, Fallin’s husband, Durwood, was laid off twice, leaving them uninsured and without an income during much of her 12-year ordeal.
   
“Part of my miracle was experiencing God’s sustaining grace during the illness,” Fallin said. “For example, I had to travel back and forth between here and North Carolina all the time to see the specialist there, but I never once had to pay for a plane ticket.”
   
Despite her worsening condition and the constant lack of steady finances, Fallin, Durwood and their two daughters remained hopeful that she would be able to manage the diseases. But their hope quickly faded in June 1995 when Fallin received a letter from her specialist in North Carolina stating he had exhausted all treatment options.
   
“I said, ‘That’s it.  I’m dying,’” Fallin recalled.  “That summer I planned my funeral.”
At that point Fallin’s immune system was so damaged that even a minor infection could have killed her.
   
“In August [1995] I left the hospital CCU for what we all thought was the last time,” Fallin said.  “The nurses thought that they would never see me again, I was so sick.”
   
“A few days later a friend challenged me to think of what it would be like to be totally healed.  So I started going through all the New Testament accounts of healings, and I realized that Jesus had not changed, that He could still heal,” she said.
   
The account of the woman with the hemorrhage particularly spoke to Fallin, as she too had suffered for 12 years.
   
“I asked God if there was anything in my life that was keeping me from being healed. He showed me that I was a very controlling person and that I needed to turn control over to Him,” said Fallin. “I confessed this and asked for a total healing just like the woman with the hemorrhage.”
   
When it came time for her morning regimen of pills, she remembers hearing God telling her not to take the pills. Without the medication, her throat muscles would grow so weak that she would no longer be able to swallow or breathe and would eventually suffocate.
   
“It came down to trusting and obeying,” Fallin explained. “When you spend time with the Lord you get to know His voice, and I heard Him say, ‘Don’t take your pills.’”
   
“I was so weak that morning, but I could feel myself growing stronger. I flushed all my medications down the toilet as a sign that I believed the Lord completely,” she added.
   
When her husband came home from work, Fallin had abandoned her walker and was all but ready to race him down the street she had so much energy.
   
Doctors examined her and found no trace of the auto-immune diseases or the hereditary genetic disorder that caused them. Dr. Gary M. Kammer, professor of Internal Medicine at Wake Forest University and Fallin’s longtime physician, called her healing nothing short of a “true miracle.”
   
Today Fallin has been granted a clean bill of health and has returned to a normal weight. The biblical record she kept during the years has served as the inspiration for her book, “Gathering Manna.” She also began a ministry fittingly called Gathering Manna Ministries.