‘Watch what I’m doing for you!’: Parma woman visits nurses after miraculous recovery

PARMA, Ohio. Walking can take you anywhere, but walking with meaning will take you exactly where you need to go.

Two years ago, Destiny Paulus didn’t go anywhere. A virus called Guillain-Barré syndrome struck her nervous system just a few weeks before the wedding. Then, after arriving at the Parma University Hospital Medical Center, she was also diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

“My husband just said I was very sick,” Destiny told us. “He tried to wake me up, but I didn’t react. I had six surgeries in six days.”

It was a race against time to save her.

“We didn’t have time,” recalls Dr. Abdullah Algamdi, director of intensive care at UH Parma. “We had to make a decision about where to go and what to do at that moment, because she was on the verge of cardiac death.”

Destiny was put on an ECMO machine to keep her alive before she was transferred to NYU’s main campus, where her heart failed again.

“By the time she got to the main campus, her heart had stopped and they had to restart it again,” Algamdi said.

She survived, but the virus paralyzed her from the waist down, rendering her unable to walk for the next two years.

“I definitely thought for a long time, like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to recover from this,'” Destiny admitted.

After several months in the hospital and rehabilitation center on the fourth floor of UH Parma, Destiny surprised the very people who helped her get back on her feet. Only they didn’t know she was walking again.

“Oh my God!” one nurse exclaimed as Fate approached her.

“Look what I’m doing for you!” – Fate said to one nurse on the go.

One by one, she gratefully embraced them—the angels, including Algamdi, who had helped save her life.

“This is my family now,” Destiny said, “so coming back is so much more than just seeing these faces. There are no words. It’s just amazing.”