PARMA, Ohio — A walk can lead you anywhere, but it's the walks with meaning that take you exactly where you're meant to go.
Two years ago, Destiny Pawlus wasn't walking anywhere. A virus called Guillain-Barre syndrome attacked her nervous system just weeks before her wedding. Then, after arriving at University Hospitals Parma Medical Center, she was also diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.
"My husband just said I was really sick," Destiny told us. "He tried to wake me up and I was unresponsive. I had six surgeries in six days."
It was a race against time to save her.
"We had no time," Dr. Abdullah Alghamdi, director of critical care at UH Parma, recalled. "We had to make a decision where to move and what to do at that point of time because she was on the verge of cardiac death."
Destiny was put on an ECMO machine to keep her alive before being transferred to UH's main campus, where her heart failed again.
"By the time she reached to the main campus, her heart stopped and they had to restart it again," Alghamdi said.
She made it through, but the virus paralyzed from the waist down, robbing her ability 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 months in the hospital and in rehab on the fourth floor of UH Parma, Destiny surprised the very people who helped her get back on her feet again. Only, they didn't know she was walking again.
"Oh my God!" one nurse exclaimed as Destiny approached her.
"Look what I'm doing for you!" Destiny said to one nurse as she walked.
One by one, she embraced them with gratitude — the angels, including Alghamdi, who helped save her life.
"That's my family now," Destiny said, "so coming back is so much more than just like seeing these faces. There are no words. It's just amazing."