‘I am a miracle’: Woman tells story of accident, recovery

The following excerpt is from The Advocate — Baton Rouge, LA

Pamela Avellanosa, who made a personal appearance in a Baton Rouge church Saturday, is officially declared by the Roman Catholic Church to be a miracle.

When she was 14 years old, she suffered a head injury in a bicycle accident on Jan. 2, 1995, and slipped into a coma.

Physicians told her family that even if she survived emergency surgery, she’d spend the rest of her life in a vegetative state.

But her grandmother and her aunt and the “Pink Sisters” of Baguio City, Philippines, never stopped praying for a miraculous recovery. First, she survived the surgery. After two weeks, she regained consciousness and eventually fully recovered.

“I am a miracle,” Avellanosa, now 31, declared to about 200 people gathered in the sanctuary of St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church after Saturday morning’s Mass. “If you do not believe in God, then you should not believe I am standing here in front of you.”

“God is good...” she asserted to members of the congregation, who enthusiastically responded, “... all the time!”

“I was riding my bicycle down a steep hill going very fast, and I did a somersault over the handlebars and hit my head,” she said.

Avellanosa related how, after one trip to a hospital where doctors told her aunt she’d be fine, she became violently ill upon returning home and was taken to another hospital where she lapsed into a coma.

“I was brain-dead for two to three hours,” Avellanosa said. “I saw a bright light and looked down to see myself lying on the bed. I went toward the light but an angel told me to go back. I slept for two weeks, a deep, restful sleep.”

The Pink Sisters, so named because they wear pink habits, daily prayed a novena, also called an intercession, to their founder, St. Arnold Janssen (1873-1909), asking God to heal her.

Avellanosa awoke from her coma on Jan. 15, the Feast Day of St. Arnold. Her recovery sparked an effort by the Pink Sisters and other Philippine Catholic Church officials to have Avellanosa’s case declared a miracle.

The full name of the Pink Sisters’ order is the Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration. Members of the order take turns praying 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said St. Paul’s pastor, the Rev. Vincent Alexius.

Read More: Pamela Avellanosa