The Pantagraph from Bloomington, Illinois • Page 31

Pantagraph C-3 Bloomington-Normal, III. Fab. 10, 1980 Parents say prayer brought 'miracle baby' By this time. Mrs. Stringfield said, By Harriet Hahn In June, Mrs.

Stringfield learned she'd i A hundreds of people were praying for her and her unborn baby. The people were friends, neighbors, relatives, felfow-members of Four Square Gospel Chuch and strangers. "We'd had a subscription to a religious book club. I had to write to cancel because we couldn't afford it. I wrote them a little about our situation and asked them to pray for us they wrote back and said they were praying and were in touch with people all over the country and they were praying, too.

And with the letter, there was a check. I could hardly believe it, a check from a book club." But she did believe it, she said, because "it was the Lord answering our prayers." In November, radiation treatments done, the Stringfields faced the next problem. "The doctors decided on immediate surgery. They said I had to have it. They couldn't guarantee that the baby would come through it OK." "We prayed." Once more, Mrs.

Stringfield said, "We knew the Lord wouldn't bring us this far, send all the little miracles, without bringing us all the way through." They decided against surgery and drove to Champaign to tell the doctors. At Mercy, the doctors greeted them with the news that they'd re-thought the surgery plan. They believed, now, they said, that surgery could wait until after the baby's birth. Also In November, the Stringfields began La Maze classes. "This was one birth Kin was determined not to miss," Mrs.

Stringfield said. And he didn't. Neither did daughter Lesley, nor niece Judy Kauffman, nor Four Square Gospel Church pastor Helen Harvey. conceived the baby she and her husband had wanted so long. In June, a doctor recommended surgery to remove both cancer and baby.

"Kin and I prayed. We knew the Lord wouldn't let me conceive and not bear." In June, Mrs. Stringfield felt compelled, she said, to visit Champaign obstetrician Dr. Bradley D. Adams.

He's treated her before and she felt comfortable with him, respected him, but had decided not to use him for this pregnancy. Snow-covered roads might make the Champaign hospital where he practiced impossible to reach when it was time for the baby's January birth. "But I felt I should go see him." She did and, she said, if conception was one little miracle, his attitude was another. "He examined me and said, even at 37 and with cancer, I could have a healthy baby. He arranged for me to see cancer specialists who also practiced at Mercy (Hospital)." That led, she said, to another little miracle: linear accelerator radiation, used at Mercy in place of surgery to treat certain cancers.

Hers was one, she learned, that was responsive to the laser treatment that could pinpoint the cancer. It guaranteed no external radiation would reach the stomach behind which her baby was growing. There was no guarantee that, inside her chest, radiation would not bounce from bone to bone to uterus. "We prayed." By this time, Lesley, 19, and Jamie, 14, Mrs. Stringfield's daughter and son by her first marriage and fulltime members of the Parmon Road household, also were participating in prayer.

"Lesley reminded me of something," Mrs. Stringfield said. "She reminded me I'd been reading Scripture and had happened on 'you shall bear fruit in your old It was kind of a joke, because to Lesley and Jamie I'm pretty old." But Lesley's reminder strenghthened resolve. "We decided to go ahead." In August, Mrs. Stringfield began the first of the 25 radiation treatments she would receive over the next three months.

She also began taking the potent muscle relaxants and pain killers she would need over the next three months. Coincidental ly with the treatments, pain had become intolerable. That timing, Mrs. Stringfield said, was yet another little miracle. "The first three months and the last three months, Dr.

Adams had said, the baby is the most vulnerable to the effects of radiation and drugs. The way it worked out, I had no radiation or drugs during the first three or the last three months. And that wasn't doctors' The man and the woman who live In the small, plain house on Parmon Road are happy. The man is a musician a guitar player and song writer. He doesn't earn enough at that to pay the bills, so he works also at a garage.

Between music and mechanics, he earns barely enough to keep food and utilities coming into the house. The woman was a factory worker. She can't work now. She has a disease in her lungs large-cell carcinoma. The disease is a form of cancer for which there's a percent recovery rate.

But Carl "Kin" and Sandra Stringfield are happy. They glow and grin and seem about to burst with the joy. They have their baby daughter. The Stringfields call her their miracle baby. Hear their story and you believe she Is.

Mrs. Stringfield told the story last week. She sat in her living room, looked across the room to her sleeping baby daughter and talked. She told of her first marriage and her first two children and her divorce. She told of her second husband's first marriage and his first two children and his divorce.

She told of the marriage she and he have shared for nine years. She told of working to build one solid family from parts of two broken ones. She told of poverty and problems and she talked happily. She told of a usual desire of a husband and wife. "From the beginning, Kin and I wanted a child together.

But I didn't get pregnant. Tests, treatments, fertility pills nothing helped." What did help, she said, was the religious faith on which the Stringfields, from their beginning, had vowed to base their marriage and lives. "We knew we wanted a child and we knew that if the Lord wanted us to have a child, he would give us one." Then one day early in 1979, with Mrs. Stringfield at home doing housework, thinking about problems of money, children and a newly persistent chest pain, something happened. "I stopped thinking worrying and felt calm.

I felt the Lord was saying we were going to have a new beginning." Through the next couple of months, she said, she was confident, calm, although some money and child problems continued, although the chest pain grew, spread to her back and arms. The pain finally sent her to a doctor who ordered X-rays taken. In May, Mrs. Stringfield learned she had cancer. In May, Mrs.

Stringfield missed a menstrual period. Pantagraph photo by Jed DtKalb Esther and Sandra Siringfield mi YOURLOVE DESERVES THE Keepsake" Registered Diamond Rings A Keepsake diamond Is guaranteed in writing, forever, to have perfect clarity, fine white color and perfect cut. Choose a perfect Keepsake ring to express your love. When Mrs. Stringfield labor began the morning of Jan.

22, they all went into the hospital birthing room with her. They stayed there, praying, laughing, commiserating with her until, at 8 p.m., Esther Adams Stringfield was born. Two weeks later, mother and daughter are feeling fine. Esther, Mrs. Stringfield said, has checked out perfectly no sign of radiation or drug damage; just a beautiful baby with lots of blonde hair.

Mrs. Stringfield had just finished a week of tests, including body scans, when she told her story. She'll learn the results Friday. Friday, she may learn she still faces surgery. But she's not worried.

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