The Artz family shortly after their move to the family farm at Gann Valley. Back: Wyatt and Andrea; in the wagon: Catherine, Adeline, Roselyn.
By Wendy Royston
A young family recently celebrated the first anniversary of what doctors say is best described as a birth-day miracle.
“I don’t use that term loosely. I’ve been in medicine a long time, and we see things that we don’t have an explanation for that seem so far outside the ordinary,” said Dr. Bill Waltz, a cardiologist at Sanford Children’s Hospital in Sioux Falls.
Wyatt and Andrea Artz welcomed their third baby girl in under three years, Catherine Elaine, at an Ortonville, Minnesota, hospital on March 4, 2025, in the middle of a blizzard. It was an uneventful pregnancy and delivery, and the couple spent eight minutes cherishing their newest daughter before a nurse asked if they’d like the baby weighed and measured, “and the atmosphere totally changed.”
Across the room, Catherine had turned blue, indicating that her little body was struggling to use the oxygen she was breathing for the first time. The delivery team quickly sprung to action, holding an oxygen mask to her face, struggling to draw labs from her tiny veins and calling for an airplane to transport her to a larger hospital that was equipped to handle a neonatal crisis. But the skies were too risky for flight, and the plane was diverted, causing a 12-hour wait for transport. But, immediately, calls went out across South Dakota and beyond, and prayers began to fly through the cold, snowy sky for the newborn.
The following morning, on Ash Wednesday, an airplane successfully landed, and Catherine was taken to Sanford Children’s Hospital in Sioux Falls. The young parents followed quickly behind, and as they walked through the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) doors, they entered into what would become their most trying Lenten experience to date—one that would help them unite with the Blessed Mother in the agony of seeing her child suffer helplessly.
Living on prayer
Catherine had been placed on a ventilator, and more than 30 medications coursed through her veins. She was suffering from pulmonary hypertension with right ventricular hypoplasia due to premature patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) closure, meaning that a hole in her aorta that is supposed to close roughly two days after birth, once babies’ lungs have adapted to breathing outside the womb, had closed while she was in utero. Her body was unable to properly process oxygen, so her heart was working overtime, causing the muscle to thicken and increasing her blood pressure on the right side of her heart, preventing adequate blood flow to her lungs.
“Once she didn’t have mom’s support to stay alive, she started to go downhill,” Catherine’s cardiologist, Dr. Waltz, explained. “She was deathly ill as a newborn, and it was quite likely that she would not survive.”
While the condition is rare enough that most people have never heard of it, Dr. Waltz said in more than 40 years practicing pediatric cardiology, he had encountered a few cases, as children travel hundreds of miles to receive specialty care.
As prayer warriors across the country united their voices for the Artzes’ youngest daughter, invoking the intercession of Blessed Clare Bosatta, the team at Sanford attempted numerous interventions for the rare condition. In most cases, Dr. Waltz said, those interventions successfully reverse situations like Catherine’s, but they were not working on her, and drastic measures were needed to keep her alive.
On March 6, Catherine was placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, a sophisticated heart and lung bypass device that would remove Catherine’s blood from her body, cleanse it of toxins and fortify it with oxygen before returning it to her body.
“I saw the possibility that, if she would turn around quickly enough, we could get her off ECMO before complications and have her do well, but it really depended on how she would do,” Dr. Waltz said.
Catherine was “stubborn,” however, and spent 13 days on the machine with the team closely monitoring her progress and eagerly awaiting indications that she was ready to resume her own bodily functions.
“That was a long ECMO run. … We tried to manage things as tightly as we could,” Dr. Waltz said, adding that “the longer you’re on ECMO, the more likely you are to have complications like blood clots and brain bleeds.”
Catherine was removed from ECMO on March 19. She was still on a regular ventilator and a host of other machines and medications, but her condition seemed to be optimistic. Two days later, however, while dad Wyatt was attempting to stay away while nursing a case of strep throat, she began to run a fever due to a urinary tract infection (UTI), and doctors suggested that, if he wanted to see his daughter alive, Wyatt ought to return to the hospital despite his illness.
The worried couple stood vigil by their daughter’s isolette, praying a Rosary and willing life back into their baby. Shortly after they finished their Rosary, Catherine’s oxygen level increased, and doctors directed them to get some rest in a quieter room nearby, promising they’d wake them if anything changed.
As she drifted off to sleep, the young mother whispered a selfless prayer, pleading that God would end her baby’s suffering, and admitting that the situation was out of her hands, pleading, “If it is your will, take her. Please, please take her.” Instantly, she felt God’s presence. “I felt the Holy Spirit come and just felt peace wash over me” and heard God’s voice say, “She’ll get better—you just have to have faith.”
Andrea said it was a timely reminder that she needed.
“I hate to say it, but I was pretty angry with God at first,” she said. “That’s something that I really struggled with in the beginning, with her being on ECMO.”
By morning, Catherine was showing some signs of improvements and slowly began to come off medications. About a week later, the miracle began to unfold before their eyes.
Following divine prompting
With both Wyatt’s and Andrea’s families very active in their Catholic faith, Catherine was well covered in prayers from the beginning. Andrea’s family, the Fonders of Milbank, where the couple lived when their daughter was born, implored the intercession of Blessed Clare Bosatta, cofoundress of the St. Mary of Providence Sisters, which has a presence in Milbank, when their granddaughter’s crisis began. And her Grandma Tammy Artz of Aberdeen lifted Catherine up with friends during virtual prayer sessions while she was sick.
When she battled the UTI, the group invited Wyatt to join them. Together, they prayed the Litany of the Child Jesus and asked for the intercession of one of the members’ deceased sons before one member of the group took the lead in praying for Wyatt with the authority of a father. After the prayer session, both Wyatt and Andrea felt a tug to be in the presence of the Eucharist along with Catherine.
March 26, a week after she was removed from ECMO and a few days after the prayer session, a priest friend came to visit and brought the Eucharist to the family, without any prompting from Wyatt and Andrea. When he had arrived, Catherine had been very ill, but stable. And, each day going forward afterward, she made considerable strides, never again taking a step backward.
“The Eucharist … seemed to make all the difference in her condition,” Andrea said, adding that she and her husband are hopeful that they can pursue having Catherine’s case officially examined as a potential miracle.
Dr. Waltz, who is a Christian, but not a Catholic, said he is unsure of whether there was any saintly intervention, but he is certain that prayer is to thank for her outcome.
“I was not the only one praying for her,” he said. “There were multiple people around her at all times, and where two or more are gathered in his name, he is there.”
God healed her
While he and his colleagues did everything they knew to save Catherine’s life, Dr. Waltz said they cannot take the credit for her miraculous recovery.
“I don’t use the term ‘miracle’ loosely,” he said. “I’ve been in medicine a long time, and we see things that we don’t have an explanation for, that seem so far outside the ordinary. But for a child to make it on ECMO 13 days who was so sick, but pulled through with no demonstrable complications, I’m quite frank on that word. I’ve seen the other side way too often, when everyone’s doing the right thing, but for her to come through, by all appearances, unscathed, it’s a blessing.
“When you put somebody on ECMO, you figure there’s about a 50 percent chance that they could still die or have horrible side effects/complications from it.”
At a minimum, he said, he had anticipated she would suffer a brain injury and developmental delays, but brain scans have shown no cause for concern.
“There’s always the potential for developmental issues, even if we don’t see anything physical,” he said. “We have looked extensively for complications, and she has none, but there’s always the possibility of developmental complications down the road. She’s perfectly appropriate for her age now, but she definitely needs to be watched closely.”
Catherine met her sisters when she was nearly three months old, and she returned home to grow and play with them on June 18, after 107 days in the NICU. Though she struggled with feedings and withdrawal from the numerous medications she was on in the hospital, she’s now feeding tube-free and no longer experiences after-effects from the medications. The family has recently moved from Milbank to Gann Valley, where they’re enjoying a slower pace of life and are overjoyed by the uneventful addition of their fourth daughter three days after Catherine’s first birthday. Andrea said another pregnancy so soon tested her faith, and she was reminded again to unite with Mary.
“Being able to take her home the next day was such a blessing and a breath of fresh air,” Andrea said, adding that she and Wyatt are “so thankful and blessed for these beautiful children God blessed us with.”
And Dr. Waltz said Catherine’s story serves as a reminder that, no matter how bleak a situation may appear, God is at work.
“God is alive and well in our lives, especially if we let him be,” Dr. Waltz said. “When parents or people who care pray, God listens. The creator of the universe loves us, and when we pray to him, he listens.”
Andrea said her belief in the power of prayer has intensified since her daughter’s miraculous recovery.
“When she was in her hardest time and all these people around the world were praying, I started to question whether the prayers were doing anything. Now we know that it just takes time, and God’s timing is everything,” she said, adding that perhaps the agonizingly slow progression of Catherine’s story provided the opportunity for an unbelieving caregiver to see her at her worst so that they would witness her miracle and experience a spiritual conversion.
Wendy Royston is a freelance writer and parishioner at Sacred Heart Parish in Parkston. She is married and has five daughters. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism/mass communication and sociology from South Dakota State University. She owns Creative Content Solutions.
