By the time Meghan Johnson first held her baby Ryan in the hospital, they both had gone through immeasurable lengths of survival against all odds.
Johnson, a Mayfair resident in Northeast Philadelphia, was just over 25 weeks pregnant with her son Ryan in 2010 when tragedy first struck. The expecting mother was found unresponsive upstairs in her home one summer morning by her then fiancé. Johnson was blue from the neck up. 9-1-1 was quickly called.
Paramedics rushed to the scene and Johnson was flown via helicopter to Temple Hospital where an emergency cesarean section was performed as doctors determined Johnson had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke.
Ryan was born more than three months premature and taken to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia for lifesaving surgeries while Meghan remained at Temple on life support in a medically induced coma.
Johnson’s future looked bleak for both and difficult questions were surfacing.
“I assumed she was gone,” said Johnson’s best friend Rita Hertzog. “All you can do is really just pray and hope.”
About a week into Johnson’s coma, doctors ran an electroencephalogram (EEG) test, which measures brain activity. There were no traces to be found.
“But at some point that afternoon, a nurse came in to do an assessment for reflexive responses and she started responding to the pain,” Hertzog said. “That came out of nowhere because there was no brain activity that same morning.”
Meghan’s spontaneous brain activity was a sign of hope and she woke from her coma soon after. As she opened her eyes, Hertzog was at Johnson’s bedside with a shaved head as a loving sign of solidarity.
“I knew she was going to be upset about her hair,” Hertzog recalled with a laugh. “She had really long, beautiful hair that had to be cut off. You’re so powerless in that moment and you don’t know what to do. I had long hair, too. But, really, hair means nothing. It’s so trivial.”
What came next was a long road to recovery. Still hospitalized three months later, Johnson was able to visit CHOP and finally hold Ryan for the first time. She then endured several months of rehab, learning to speak and walk again. At the same time, Ryan was fighting a critical uphill battle of his own. He was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and profound autism and had a shunt implanted into his head, which needed repeated adjustments over the years. He has relied on a wheelchair for mobility ever since.
When Ryan turned 3 years old, tragedy struck the family again as Ryan’s father and Meghan’s fiancé, Rick Lewis, suffered a brain stem stroke and succumbed to his injuries a few months later. Although another crushing blow to the family, Meghan and Ryan continued to fight on.
“She says it all the time. It’s her quote: ‘He needs me and I need him,’” Hertzog said. “They very much have flourished together in the circumstances they have now.”
The Johnsons even overcame the loss of Ryan’s custom wheelchair, when it was stolen about seven years ago. Hertzog led a successful campaign to raise money for a replacement as well as the installation of a wheelchair ramp and a stair lift at their home as Ryan has undergone more than a dozen orthopedic surgeries during his growth spurts.
Now she’s hoping to help make life a little better for the Johnsons by raising money for a wheelchair-accessible van. Although Meghan’s full recovery has included the ability to drive a car again, she isn’t able to transport her son to therapy sessions. They regularly use public transportation to get Ryan to school at the Widener Memorial School in Germantown. However potential critical therapy sessions located outside the city aren’t a possibility without a wheelchair-accessible van.
“He’s not strong enough to use a walker full-time, even with rehab,” Hertzog said. “He continues to have corrective orthopedic surgeries to enable him to have the muscle mass to support his weight. And there’s a possibility of walking and his progress has been almost miraculous. With continued therapy, when he reaches his full potential as a grown male, he can probably get there. But he’s not there today and he relies on a wheelchair for mobility outside of the home.”
Hertzog set up a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-meghan-and-ryan-get-a-wheelchair-van with the hopes of raising $16,000. The ongoing campaign coincides with Ryan’s 15th birthday.
A big Philadelphia sports fan, Ryan also enjoys bowling and visits to the library and local coffee shop with his mom. Meghan unselfishly wants nothing more than a better life for her son.
“It has always been Meghan’s dream to get Ryan to walk,” Hertzog said.
It could be somewhat a miracle given the circumstances. But miracles are known to happen around the Johnson family. They just need a little help.
“If you ever had the privilege to know Ryan, despite his physical limitations, he is the most happy, sweetest, loving, caring person,” Hertzog said. “This is the true miracle — that in all of this trauma and survival, neither one of their spirits has been deterred, and I have never seen an advocate for their child, like I have seen in Meghan.”
