Pam Moore’s Decomposing Body Balloons to Three Times Her Normal Size as She Fights to Live Hattiesburg, Miss - Rotting flesh reminiscent of living corpses. Prayers for the dead and life after certain death. At his most terrifying, Stephen King himself couldn’t have scripted the scene that unfolded in Room 241 of the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC) in Jackson, Miss., in late July of 2003. And unlike a Hollywood horror set, no one stood by to yell “Cut!” when Pam Moore’s hellish ordeal became too real. Fighting for her life, Pam lay lifeless as her near 350-pound body decomposed before the very eyes of her praying friends and family. “The stench was so bad, it was hard to stomach being near her, but we never left her side. And we never gave up hope,” said Pam’s sister, Aundrea. “I know the doctors thought we were crazy, wondering why we were insistent upon lingering around what they believed to be a dead person.”
The Moores’ nightmare began to unfold on the steamy morning of Friday, July 25. Pam, then 33- years-old and a trim 140 pounds, was traveling to college on Highway 84 East in Collins when a white truck slammed into her red Geo Prizm. “I remember having a funny feeling go over my face and I begged God not to let me die,”
“I remember having a funny feeling go over my face and I begged God not to let me die,” 
recalled Pam. Although Pam survived the crash, she’d sustained massive injuries, suffering a liver and spleen laceration, a crushed chest, broken ribs, punctured lungs, split kidneys, broken right femur and a broken knee. Pam said the other driver walked away from the accident with only a scratch. As her relatives learned of the collision, Pam was taken to a nearby hospital and then flown to UMMC, the backdrop of the real battle for her life. At first, the youngest of 13 children appeared to be on the road to recovery. But after five days of hospitalization, her condition took a turn for the worse. “Pam seemed to be doing OK. She was in good spirits until Wednesday afternoon,” said Aundrea. “She kept saying it was hard to breathe and she complained of chest pains. When the doctors arrived, they rushed us out of the room.” Pam had suffered a heart attack and had been put on life support. Her doctors were convinced she wouldn’t pull through.
 “That Thursday morning was absolutely devastating, just horrible,” Aundrea said. “One minute Pam was alive and praying, and the next minute the doctors said she was gone. After the doctors told us around 6 a.m. that she was on life support, my mother and I remembered that Pam had said earlier in the week that she would never give up on God. And, in that moment, we determined that we would also not give up on Him.” Members of the Moore family, including Pam’s late 90-year-old father who could barely walk, spent the day kneeling beside her bed, praying to God for a miracle. As they meditated over a period of three days, Pam’s body ballooned and began to smell of decay. Meanwhile, doctors urged the family to remove Pam from life support.
Just when the situation began to become too unbearable for Aundrea, she said she received confirmation that her family was doing the right thing by refusing to pull the plug on her sister. While sharing Pam’s story with a friend at a convenient store, a stranger approached Aundrea and told her he was once on life support and insisted that if he could make it out alive, so could Pam. The encounter was a prelude to a series of surreal events. Four days after doctors told Pam’s family she was deceased, they received astonishing news. Pam was beginning to show signs of life. “The doctors called and told us to keep praying, because it seemed Pam was trying to make a comeback,” recalled Aundrea. Aundrea said the doctors worked feverishly to figure out how to give Pam a second chance at life. They determined that an induced coma and surgery would be the best option, but warned the family of a 50 percent chance that Pam wouldn’t survive the drastic measures. Their efforts gave way to a remarkable discovery. A fluid vital to Pam’s existence was the very thing killing her. “Doctors found a quart of blood settling within her stomach from internal bleeding,” said Aundrea. “This explained why her organs were rotting.” Following the surgery, Pam’s family watched helplessly as her condition fluctuated over a period of seven days. But on Aug. 8, Aundrea’s birthday, the Moores’ emotional rollercoaster came to a screeching halt. “When I walked in her room, Pam’s eyes were wide open. I couldn’t believe it,” said Aundrea. “I just kept thanking God for giving her back to us. The awesome power of God was manifested to our family that day. It just goes to show that you should never give up, no matter what the circumstances are.” The Long Way Home Pam Moore’s Painstaking Recovery By Aug. 13, 2003, Pam Moore was completely conscious and off life support. She listened in awe as her family marveled about how she survived a horrific car accident, decomposing organs, an induced coma and surgery. After already enduring so much, she still had a long way to go before her life would ever be normal again. The aftermath of the July 25 accident left her physically unable to care for herself.  ”Because I was young, it was very heart breaking and hard to accept not being able to do anything for myself. I couldn't even comb my hair or scratch my face,” said Pam. “I had to lay one way until my nurse decided to come and turn me, and on some days I was hurting so bad I didn't want to be touched,” she said.
Pam was released from UMMC on Aug. 27. She couldn’t walk, talk or sleep, and had to rely on a feeding tube to help her process her food. She said a staph infection forced her to take medicines from a drip twice a day. She calls the lengthy recovery “extremely painful and enlightening.” “I believe God took me through that so I could become a stronger witness for him, not just by words,” said Pam. “To see me now, it's as if I never had an accident, but when I look at my scars I see symbols that God is still in the healing business.” Pam said the most inspirational thing of all, though, is that her family never lost faith. She is using her experience and their courage to strengthen the faith of others. “Trust God even when you are unable feel his presence,” she said. “Just know he won’t put any more on us than we can bear.”
This interview obtained by chinika.com may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Chinika, LLC.
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