By Thea Jarvis

Collen Datelle is a Christmas child.

With soft auburn curls framing an angel face, playful hazel eyes and a splash of freckles across her little nose, she might be a present you’d find under your tree on Christmas morning.

Colleen will be three years old this December 26. She proudly shows a visitor just how many fingers this means on her small pink hand. With grace, Colleen pours “tea” from her play set on the kitchen table and introduces Miss Lucy Daisy, a fiery redheaded Cabbage Patch persona given to her at Henrietta Egleston Children’s Hospital just two Christmases ago. Lucy is not a pretty as Colleen, but does have a certain appeal that has won her heart.

Christmas is a special time for Colleen and her parents, Hank and Kathy Datelle of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Atlanta. Their family, including 16-year-old Marc and 14-year-old Lisa, is deeply aware of the magic and mystery of the Christmas feast. Their home is filled with the sights and sounds of the season – a tall evergreen in the living room, stockings on the hearth, a welcoming wreath on the front door, and music in the air.

But the surest sign of Christmas in the Datelle household is young Colleen, their Christmas child, for she is a cherished gift.

Just four days before Christmas in 1982, Colleen Datelle was admitted to Egleston Hospital in Atlanta. She was, in the words of her pediatrician, C. Robert Metzger, M.D., “acutely and totally blind.”

Colleen had just spent 17 days at Egleston over the Thanksgiving holidays. An inner ear infection had developed into pneumoccocal meningitis, a very severe form of the illness, which, Dr. Metzger observed is “easily a killer,” often resulting in “permanent brain damage and neurological handicaps.”

Colleen’s meningitis, with its resulting seizures, high fever, loss of head control and constant pain, was eventually brought under control with antibiotics an intensive care from a team of physicians and nurses. Hank and Kathy remember those 17 days as a time of fear and faith, of terrible despair and strong hope.

“The thought of my baby dying was incredible,” Kathy says, recalling the friends and strangers alike who offered the family consolation, prayers and physical help.

A miniature flower arrangement sits on the Datelle’s kitchen windowsill as a reminder of the ordeal, the gift of an Hispanic mother and her eight-year-old daughter. The child was a victim of meningitis herself, and she and her mother came to the hospital to share the story of a successful outcome.

The daughter translated as her mother related their own encounter with meningitis, but the message attached to the flowers they had brought needed no translation. “Everywhere, miracles tell us He is real,” it said clearly.

The miracle seemed real enough when Colleen was discharged from Egleston. She was alert, with good head control, her ears appeared clear and her temperature was down. When she arrived home December 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, the tree was up and Colleen immediately began grabbing at the ornaments.

But just six days after discharge, her parents noticed that she was missing objects when she reached for them. By December 19, Colleen wasn’t reacting to people unless they spoke to her.

“Hank said he went into her room and she was lying in her crib with her eyes open,” Kathy remembers. “When Hank spoke to her she was very startled. She obviously didn’t even see him standing there.”

Kathy’s own acid test was holding Colleen up to the bright sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows. Colleen usually reacted strongly to the sun, rubbing her eyes and fussing because she was sensitive to the light.

This time, however, “She didn’t even flinch,” says Kathy.

By December 20, Colleen had been readmitted to Egleston with total vision loss, what Dr. Metzger calls "“cortical blindness."” Her eyes themselves were in no way damaged, but the meningitis, he judged, had caused hydrocephalus, a buildup of fluid in the brain. The pressure of the fluid was impairing Colleen’s visual function.

“Quite honestly,” Metzger remarks now, “cortical blindness is a rare complication of meningitis. I never saw it in 20 years of practice. We had no great hope that the child would recover.”

The Datelles were distraught. Just when they thought Colleen’s medical problems were behind them, the vision loss loomed as a new nemesis that threatened their baby.

“We were suddenly very anxious. It wasn’t a problem that could reverse itself,” Kathy explains. “Colleen had severe hydrocephalus. Immediate surgery was mandatory.”

When Colleen was taken into surgery for a shunting procedure that would control the level of fluid in her brain, Kathy cried in the hospital room with Hank and her stepdaughter Lisa.

She wrote in a journal she was keeping, “The Lord is my Shepherd. I shall not want. Colleen is the Shepherd’s little lamb. He’ll take care of her.”

Following the operation, there was immediate relief of the pressure on Colleen’s brain. Hope that her vision could return over a period of time surfaced, although nothing was guaranteed.

Ophthalmologist Mac McDowell, one of the many physicians, neurologists, neurosurgeons and infectious disease specialists who had entered Colleen'’ life since November, gave the Datelles one of their greatest boosts during this time, Kathy says. Calling in at the hospital to check on Colleen’s progress, he reassured them over the phone, “What a better time (for this to happen) than Christmas. It’s the time for miracles.”

Indeed, Christmas was getting closer, though the Datelles had lost a sense of time and place. By the time Colleen had recovered sufficiently from her operation to return home, it was the later afternoon of December 23. The neurologist had cautioned the family that it generally would take as long for the swelling from the fluid in her brain to subside as it did to grow. He reasoned that if Colleen’s swelling began with the onset of meningitis they might begin to notice vision return in four to five weeks. For now Colleen was still not reacting visually to brightness or those around her.

At home, the whole family was mobilized around Colleen. Little else seemed to matter. When Kathy got a call from a friend inviting her to a Christmas even candlelight service at a Methodist church in Decatur, she consented without thought or emotion.

“It was the first time in my life I ever celebrated Christmas in a church other than Catholic,” she says with lingering surprise. She left Hank with Colleen and the older children and set out with her friend Christmas eve night.

Though moving as if in a daze, Kathy was able to hear the sermon preached by the wife of the Methodist minister. It was the story of a young girl with a crippled back who lived in Bethlehem. The girl noticed that when a strong light shining in her window fell on her twisted back, she immediately felt better. The child eventually followed the light to a stable nearby, finding within the source of its warmth and brightness. A child in the stable haybox touched her and her crippled back was healed.

The message, for Kathy, was bold and powerful. Colleen, too, was a handicapped child, open to love and healing. Her spirits were beginning to lift. As each person in turn lit each other’s candle, the darkened church sprang to life and Kathy was moved to tears. Leaving the service her friend whispered, “I think Colleen is going to see.”

“Everyone was making me really believe in the miracle of the day, the miracle of Christmas,” Kathy says now, looking back on that time as renewal of her own faith.

When she returned home, Kathy and Hank ate dinner quietly and turned on Christmas music. Around 10:30 p.m., Hank went upstairs to check on his little Colleen and rushed down with news that the baby had reached out and touched his nose.

Kathy raced upstairs with Hank on her heels. They decided that Kathy would walk quietly to the crib and Hank would turn on the light to see if she reacted.

“And she did!” Kathy says with an enthusiasm that still surfaces when she speaks of that Christmas Eve. “She was extremely restless so I picked her up and tried to comfort her in the rocking chair but she didn’t want to sit still.” She was stimulated by something and wasn’t about to be quiet.

Kathy continued to hold Colleen on her knee while Hank sat on the floor next to her. She seemed to be looking at him, but her parents still couldn’t be sure that she was actually seeing.

“Finally, Hank said, ‘I won’t believe she can see unless she reaches for me,’” Kathy remembers. “He said it and she did it! We cried like babies.”

The Datelles’ “Christmas miracle,” as Kathy calls it, remains fixed in their minds and hearts. Today, Colleen is a bright and cheerful preschooler whose outward appearance belies her medical history.

Her vision has returned intact. The only reminders of Colleen’s brush with meningitis are a yearly checkup to insure the proper operation of her shunting device and daily medication to control seizures. She is the Datelle angel, a focus for playfulness in the family, a kitchen sunbeam who lights up the house.

Dr. Metzger, Colleen’s pediatrician, says of her recover, “It was like a miracle, the way it all happened, the timing of it all.” His own expectations were that, if anything, Colleen’s returning vision would be a matter of slow improvement over some months.

“I had held out very little hope,” he admits, adding, “She came back so dramatically, it was great to see.” Colleen, he feels, is like “a little gift that God gave us.”

At this time of year, the memory of Colleen’s return to health and wholeness is especially keen in the Datelle household. Each time Kathy hears the words of “O Holy Night,” she is reminded that, for her, there was a presence of angels in Colleen’s room that Christmas Eve. “Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices,” is the lyric that gives her pause for wonder.

“That’s what we did,” Kathy Datelle says with a smile.