Mother’s Day special to woman with new life

The Port Arthur News

PORT NECHES May 10, 2008 11:37 pm

— By Amy Moore
The News staff writer
PORT NECHES — The scene is one like at most grandparents’ homes; children reaching into cabinets grabbing a bite to eat, brothers and sisters sitting at the table laughing over family memories, doors opening and closing as more family members come and go from the house.
What makes the family of this particular scene special is having their mother with them to see the events taking place.
Just a few months ago, the Nero family of Port Neches, was unsure how this year’s Mother’s Day would be celebrated because they did not know if their mother, Carla, would be around to celebrate it with them.
For many years Carla has been sick. Diagnosed with diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome and fybromyalgia, Carla never let her medical conditions stop her from living the life God planned for her.
After a struggle only a handful of people will ever understand, Carla is trying to restart her life. Supported by her incredibly loving family, her journey should be a wonderful one.
Carla (Lambert) Nero is the biological mother of Christy Conrad, 29, and Jennifer Vincent, 27, who remember their mother being at every special event in their lives and that’s because she never missed a dance class, pageant, basketball game, cheerleading performance or prom.
But her love for children grew to even outside her daughters. Carla and her husband, Ronnie, became foster parents and throughout the years had 10 children living in their home, under their loving care.
“At the beginning, we felt like it was a calling for us to be foster parents,” Ronnie said. “Whenever it’s a calling, it’s a lot easier. You’re not doing your work, you’re doing His work.”
Two of those foster children, Trent, now 16, and Breanne, now 15, found a special place in Carla and Ronnie’s hearts and were adopted by the Nero family.
Around that same time, Carla and Ronnie decided that instead of changing diapers, they wanted to have a home for older children. It was then that they chose to house a foreign exchange student, Thomas, who the family still keeps in contact with.
Always on the go, the independent and self-sufficient Carla was busy running from her job at a bank to complete the many tasks needed to run a house of seven.
Two older daughters, a foreign exchange student from Sweden and two recently adopted children made for a full house.
“It was a zoo,” Ronnie joked. “But around that time is when Carla started to get sick.”
The mother who never skipped a beat was diagnosed with rheumatory arthritis and often struggled to keep her diabetes under control. Within two years of her diagnosis, she was using oxygen to breathe regularly and had dropped in weight to as little as 85 pounds. After numerous visits to specialists in Houston, Carla was diagnosed with bronchiolitis obliterans — severely scarred lungs — caused by her rheumatory arthritis.
The only cure would be new lungs. Carla was put on a list of patients in need of a double lung transplant.
“It took a year just to get on the list,” Ronnie said. “Then she was on the waiting list for only three days. We expected it to be months and months.”
In January Carla had surgery to replace her scarred and damaged lungs with the healthy lungs of a 22-year old young man who died from a gunshot.
“I was in the waiting room and the surgeon came out. I asked him how it went and he said, ‘Oh, it was boring’,” Ronnie said. “That’s the best we could hope for, a boring surgery. I knew she was going to be OK.”
After nearly two weeks and countless prayers from church members, family, and friends, Carla and her new lungs were released from the hospital.
With a new life ahead of them, the Nero family thought the worst was behind them. But only 15 minutes after being home from the hospital, Carla suffered a significant setback in recovery — a stroke.
“I thought it was anxiety,” Ronnie said of how Carla acted when they got home. “She was just staring off and wouldn’t focus. I checked her blood sugar then called for help.”
Carla was life flighted back to Houston and her family’s relief from the good news of her transplant was quickly replaced with worry again. Recovery from her stroke meant 10 weeks at Methodist Hospital in Houston
“I would come home once a week to collect the bills, wash clothes, collect my thoughts and my sanity,” Ronnie said.
Now home for good (with trips to Houston several times a month), Carla is working on regaining her former strength. Still slightly paralyzed on her left side and having trouble seeing clearly, Carla said it was her faith and her grandchildren that kept her going.
“My grandkids kept me alive,” she said of her grandson Ty and granddaughter Cailyn. “It’s day to day. It’s hard, I would be lying if I said it wasn’t. It takes energy and time.”
This Mother’s Day, Carla’s children know that to tell her how much they appreciate all she does, flowers just won’t be enough — especially since she cannot have flowers because of the lung transplant.
But the fact that one daughter, Jennifer, now works for Child Protective Services and the other, Christy is a school teacher, shows Carla that her good works while they were young made an impact on their lives — teaching them to love and care for others as you would your own family.
The family gets by on humor — joking with their mother that they all look wonderful since she is still working on regaining her complete eyesight — and faith.
Both Carla and Ronnie, as well as their children, sing the praises of Southside Baptist Church for the time and effort they put into the family during their trials. Meals, prayers and visiting were just a few of the ways the church reached out to the Nero family.
“While I’m at work people come sit with Carla. We’ve been given money from collections and meals to both my house and Jennifer’s house, where our two youngest children are living while Carla recovers. They have just been super,” Ronnie said. “We are absolutely leaning on faith through all of this.”
Carla still has a ways to go before her recovery is complete. There are still some scary doctor appointments. Recently Carla’s doctor had to increase her anti-rejection medication because her test results were showing that her body was slightly rejecting her lungs. This, her family said, is normal and will be something Carla deals with for the rest of her life.
“She is getting better. She can see a lot better and is able to walk if she holds on. She can lift her left arm and squeeze,” Ronnie said. “But she still has way to go with therapy. The doctors do expect a full recovery.”
Carla said she pushes herself because she knows that’s the only way she’ll get better.
And while she recovers, her house, already full of love, will be filled with something sweeter than the smell of fresh flowers — the sounds of children laughing, families reminiscing and the door opening and closing to welcome more well wishers.

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