A cold March wind danced around the dead of night in Dallas as the doctor walked into the small hospital room of Diana Blessing. She was still groggy from surgery. Her husband, David, held her hand as they braced themselves for the latest news.

That afternoon of March 10, 1991, complications had forced Diana, only 24-weeks pregnant, to undergo an emergency Cesarean to deliver couple's new daughter, Dana Lu Blessing.

At 12 inches long and weighing only one pound nine ounces, they already knew she was perilously premature. Still, the doctor's soft words dropped like bombs.


"I don't think she's going to make it," he said, as kindly as he could.

"There's only a 10-percent chance she will live through the night, and even then, if by some slim chance she does make it, her future could be a very cruel one."

Numb with disbelief, David and Diana listened as the doctor described the devastating problems Dana would likely face if she survived.

She would never walk, she would never talk, she would probably be blind, and she would certainly be prone to other catastrophic conditions from cerebral palsy to complete mental retardation, and on and on.

"No! No!" was all Diana could say.

She and David, with their 5-year-old son Dustin, had long dreamed of the day they would have a daughter to become a family of four. Now, within a matter of hours, that dream was slipping away.

But as those first days passed, a new agony set in for David and Diana.

Because Dana's underdeveloped nervous system was essentially 'raw', the lightest kiss or caress only intensified her discomfort, so they couldn't even cradle their tiny baby girl against their chests to offer the strength of their love. All they could do, as Dana struggled alone beneath the ultraviolet light in the tangle of tubes and wires, was to pray that God would stay close to their precious little girl.

There was never a moment when Dana suddenly grew stronger. But as the weeks went by, she did slowly gain an ounce of weight here and an ounce of strength there.

At last, when Dana turned two months old, her parents were able to hold her in their arms for the very first time. And two months later, though doctors continued to gently but grimly warn that her chances of surviving, much less living any kind of normal life, were next to zero, Dana went home from the hospital, just as her mother had predicted.

Five years later, when Dana was a petite but feisty young girl with glittering gray eyes and an unquenchable zest for life. She showed no signs whatsoever of any mental or physical impairment. Simply, she was everything a little girl can be and more. But that happy ending is far from the end of her story.

One blistering afternoon in the summer of 1996 near her home in Irving, Texas, Dana was sitting in her mother's lap in the bleachers of a local ball park where her brother, Dustin's baseball team was practicing.

As always, Dana was chattering nonstop with her mother and several other adults sitting nearby when she suddenly fell silent


Hugging her arms across her chest, little Dana asked, "Do you smell that?"


Smelling the air and detecting the approach of a thunderstorm, Diana replied, "Yes, it smells like rain."

Dana closed her eyes and again asked, "Do you smell that?"

Once again, her mother replied, "Yes, I think we're about to get wet. It smells like rain."

Still caught in the moment, Dana shook her head, patted her thin shoulders with her small hands and loudly announced,


"No, it smells like Him.

It smells like God when you lay your head on His chest."

Tears blurred Diana's eyes as Dana happily hopped down to play with the other children.

Before the rains came, her daughter's words confirmed what Diana and all the members of the extended Blessing family had known, at least in their hearts, all along.

During those long days and nights of her first two months of her life, when her nerves were too sensitive for them to touch her, God was holding Dana on His chest and it is His loving scent that she remembers so well.

Last night I was sleeping, dreaming and. I'm sitting with two guys at the end of this long hallway on gymnasium like bleachers. Of the guy gets up and starts to mop the floor. I notice in the corner of my eye this huge insect that looks like a cricket with butterfly wings. It's probably about the size of my hand. The hallway is completely empty, and I'm starting to get really uncomfortable about it sitting their looking at me. The guy with the mop asked me if I could come him a hand. I think about it for a minute, but then realize how uncomfortable that I feel, and I start to run down the hallway with a towel. I'm swatting it all over the place, as the bug is in hot pursuit. I get to the end, and there is no where for me to go, or the bug for that matter. I've never jumped out of bed before. But today Sergey Bubka would have been proud, my eyes were fixed directly on the top hinge of my bedroom door. It slowly loses it's wings, and fades out from flesh to metal as I gain consciousness.

Pediculosis, is the technical term for infestation of lice. Lice are parasitic insects that live on the bodies of humans. Often times this condition is known by its more common street names: Head/Pubic/Body lice.

Some quick information:

1. Children aged 3-10 and their families get Head lice more often
2. Females are more likely to get head lice than males
3. In the United States African-Americans have head lice less often
4. Human lice do not occur on pets or other animals
5. Lice do not have wings and cannot jump.
6. Lice cannot burrow into the skin.


A lice are spread by direct contact with a person who is infested. Body lice are spread through first person contact with the body, clothing or any other items of a person that are already infested with lice. Pubic Lice are most often spread by intimate contact with an infested person. Head lice take place on the head hair of a person, body lice on the clothing, and pubic lice mainly on the hair in the groinal region of a person.

Each lice egg may hatch one nymph that will grow and develop to the adult size live. Lice when fully grown are about the size of an average sesame seed. Lice will feed on blood off their carrier once or more a day by piercing the skin where they are located with their tiny sharp mouth parts. Most commonly symptoms of lice infestation include itching. If excessive this itching or scratching of the infested areas can cause sores. These sore area's can become infected.

Lice that exist on the body and hair can and are usually treated with medicated shampoos or cream rinses. Special combs, Nit Combs, can be used to remove lice and nits from the hair. Washing clothes in a high heat environment can eliminate body lice quite quickly. When trying to eliminate lice, efforts should be focused on the source, hair/body/clothes, and not the surrounding environment.

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