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When Braden West came into the world, nothing about his future looked promising. Doctors warned his parents that he wouldn’t survive the day. If he did, they said he wouldn’t make it to 18 months. His mother, Cheri, received the diagnosis two weeks before giving birth, and the news was crushing. Braden had Pfeiffer syndrome Type 2 — a rare and severe condition that affects skull formation and brain development. His skull was misshapen, parts appeared to be missing, and specialists told her the situation was hopeless.
Cheri admitted that in those final days of pregnancy, fear overwhelmed her so completely that she prayed for the unthinkable. But everything changed the moment she held her son. The grief she expected never came. Instead, she felt an instant bond and a surge of determination that cut through the despair. Doctors predicted he would be gone within months. She clung to hope anyway. “Dear God, please, just let me have him for a little while,” she remembered saying.
Braden’s condition was obvious as soon as he was placed in her arms. His skull bore the telltale cloverleaf shape of his syndrome. After one month in the hospital, doctors made a heartbreaking recommendation: take him home so he could spend whatever time he had left with family instead of surrounded by medical equipment. That should have been the end. But Braden wasn’t done fighting.
The months that followed were grueling. He endured surgery after surgery — more than thirty in total. At just three months old, doctors performed a tracheotomy. Later, he underwent a high-risk procedure with a reported 10% chance of survival. His parents were asked to sign Do Not Resuscitate orders, convinced they were about to lose him. But Braden kept surviving the impossible. When surgeons emerged from the operating room after that high-risk procedure, they delivered the news no one dared expect: he had made it through.
Amid the constant medical chaos, Braden formed a remarkable bond with one of his nurses, Michele Eddings Linn. She cared for him during some of his worst nights, including a moment when she truly believed he was about to slip away. “Lord, either take him home or make him better,” she prayed, prepared for the worst. But again, Braden defied every prediction. He became the first hospice patient Michele ever watched return to life instead of fading from it. Their connection only grew stronger over the years, so much so that he asked her to take his senior photos when the time came.
Seventeen years after she thought she was about to lose him, Michele watched Braden prepare for graduation — an event she once believed she would never see. She wrote about the moment with raw emotion, calling it surreal to look back on all the fear and uncertainty that marked his early life and then see him standing proudly in a cap and gown.
For Cheri, seeing her son cross the graduation stage was overwhelming in a different way. She remembered every bleak prediction doctors had made, every warning that he would never speak, never walk, never hold a pencil, never see or hear well enough to learn. But there he was, not only walking but thriving. “He isn’t supposed to be doing this,” she said through tears. “And here we are.”
His parents didn’t let the moment pass quietly. They orchestrated a surprise that turned his graduation day into an unforgettable celebration. A helicopter flew Braden to a live concert featuring his favorite country singer, Cam Thompson. After everything he had endured — surgeries, therapy, months in hospitals, endless battles — he described that day with one word: perfect.
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