A child on loan from God
By JENNIFER STROBEL
The Free Lance-Star
Maigan Ferstl defied the odds for 2½ years.
But on Monday, the toddler lost her lifelong
battle with a chromosomal abnormality.
“It hurts. It will hurt every day of my
life, but I know that Maigan was God’s
child, and he loaned her to us for a very short
time,” said her mother, Melinda Ferstl.
“I’m at peace.”
Ferstl and her husband, Scott, who live in
Spotsylvania County’s Lake Wilderness, had
wrestled with many difficult decisions concerning
care for their daughter. She had been born with
3–P deletion syndrome, a chromosomal defect.
Three weeks after her birth, a geneticist
explained that just the tiniest piece of one of
Maigan’s chromosomes, the third one, was
missing, but it was an important one.
He told them that fetuses with the defect
rarely survive, and that of the 12 who made it to
full term, all were severely deformed, and all
but one were dead.
Maigan was number 13.
An article about her appeared in The Free
Lance–Star in August of 1996.
Recently, for unknown reasons, part of her
heart began enlarging, and her health became
increasingly precarious. She was in and out of
the hospital.
When Melinda Ferstl called the doctor Sunday,
Maigan’s temperature had begun a climb that
would peak at 107.7. Her mother sat in the
ambulance with Maigan for the all-too-familiar
ride to a Richmond hospital.
There, Melinda was told if Maigan didn’t
show signs of improvement within a few hours, she
probably wouldn’t pull through.
Once again, Maigan surprised them: Just after
her father arrived, her fever went down, and she
began breathing more easily.
It was still obvious that her heart was
beating far too quickly and working far too hard.
Monday, her breathing became painfully
difficult and the fever returned, but then again,
her condition stabilized and her parents felt
confident enough to return home briefly to tend
to their four boys.
They were close to home on State Route 3 when
their pager sounded. Melinda recognized the
hospital number.
When they called to check, their fears were
confirmed, and the couple drove as fast as they
could back to Chippenham Hospital. Maigan’s
heart rate had plummeted. There were no more
treatments to try.
Her father and mother ran to her bed.
Maigan looked like she was sleeping, no longer
struggling to breathe, no longer in pain.
Melinda sensed her daughter was still holding
on, still showing that will to live.
As the couple cried, Ferstl said to her
husband: “She’s still trying. Why
doesn’t she just let go?”
As she said that, Maigan’s father looked
up and said, “Melinda, she just did.”
Ferstl believed Maigan was waiting for her
parents to say, “It’s OK.”
After Maigan was pronounced dead at 7:30 p.m.,
her parents freed her of oxygen equipment and
other medical connections.
They stayed with her for three hours, bathing
her, lying in bed beside her. Ferstl carried her
daughter on a walk around the room, unhindered by
the medical paraphernalia that had been part of
their lives together.
The next day, the Ferstls faced the most
difficult moment of all: telling the boys their
sister had died. Robby is now 11, Justin 10,
Jacob 7, and Zachary 5.
Robby helped pick Maigan’s burial dress,
a peach-colored affair with white lace and little
bows.
The family will receive friends from 2 to 4
and 7 to 8:30 p.m. today at Mullins &
Thompson Funeral Service, Fredericksburg Chapel,
with a rosary service to begin at 8 p.m.
A funeral Mass will be said at 1 p.m. Saturday
at St. Patrick Catholic Church.
Burial will be in Laurel Hill Memorial Park,
in a section named “Garden of Love.”
“We thought that was appropriate, because
she was loved by so many people,” her mother
said.
Soon after her birth, Aug. 24, 1995, at Mary
Washington Hospital, Maigan needed emergency care
because of a heart abnormality and was
transferred to Henrico Doctors’ Hospital.
Heart surgery was risky with no guarantee it
would help, but the Ferstls insisted that
everything possible be done for their daughter,
nicknamed “Girly-Girl.”
When she was released from the hospital, she
joined in family life even though she needed
extra care.
Several months before her second birthday, her
mother put Maigan in her stroller and walked her
to meet her brothers’ school bus for the
first time.
“Those little simple things mean so
much,” her mother said.
Typically, the interview this week was
interrupted by her boys’ needs. Life was
going on in the Ferstls’ busy household.
“Miss Maigan would want it that
way,” Melinda Ferstl said.
She is now expecting her sixth child, a boy
who, according to the first sonogram, looks quite
healthy. He’s due this summer and already,
Ferstl said, she can feel him kicking and moving
around.
©Published January 30,
1998, in the Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg,
Virginia. Used with
permission from The Free Lance–Star,
Fredericksburg, Va.
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Miss Maigan's
