Mission trips to Samoa were times of emotional, intellectual and spiritual fulfillment for Darryl Lackey.

“We fell in love with the people,” he said of his first trip to the archipelago nation in 2006. “We got on the plane to come home and said, ‘We need to plan the next trip.’ It wasn’t even 90 days. We went back.”

He never dreamed, however, that subsequent trips would also lead to a yearlong health mystery ... and an introduction to the mystery of miracles.

Lackey, with his wife Shannon, on the advice of a friend who had helped with a bible school the year before took off on their maiden voyage for Samoa in March 2006.

“We do a lot of mission work, but had never been to that part of the world,” he said.

The Independent State of Samoa, known until 1997 as Western Samoa, with a population of 179,000, was governed by New Zealand until independence in 1961.

The country has the world’s second-largest Polynesian group and a largely conservative and devout Christian society.

On the second monthlong trip, they explored more of the island and learned about the culture.

“We really got to see the culture and into the rainforest, the jungle, and stayed in huts. It’s amazing,” he said. “We learned to eat things I never thought I would eat.”

The Lackeys helped establish churches in several villages, worked with young people and helped start businesses.

“You name it, we did it,” he said.

A third trip followed in 2008, this time lasting more than four months, and took the Lackeys to Australia and New Zealand as well as Samoa to work with Worshipcentre Worldwide, a network of Polynesian and Samoan churches.

“We helped them raise funds and put a tower on one of the mountains there and is used for Christian broadcasting,” he said.

But Lackey said he wasn’t as careful this time around, eating eel, pigeon, octopus, native fruits and vegetables and other various seafood and fish.

“You’re one of them. You just do whatever, and I ate a lot of things.”

Lackey suspects this is when “it” started. He was sick for about a week while on the trip.

“There, you can’t just go get Pepto Bismol. So, I would take the charcoal tablets,” he said. “I think that is when it might have started.”

Back in the states, Lackey began to experience strange symptoms.

“I wasn’t even back a couple of weeks and I had two or three boils,” he said. “That led to strange side-effects. Strange things were happening.”

In a matter of weeks, Lackey said, he started to experience muscle spasms and breathing problems.

“I would go to the doctor just to get a checkup and they would say ‘Well, it’s just a bug or something.’ So, we did that for three or four different times,” he said.



The emergency

room visits begin

The symptoms became progressively worse, but around Christmas 2008, the 45-year old’s health took a dramatic turn when he awoke one evening with heart-attack symptoms.

“Up to that point, I had been perfectly healthy. I hardly had been to a doctor and never had been to the hospital. I lived a good, healthy lifestyle,” he said. “Everything they say about a heart attack — the elephant on the chest and the arm — it was all happening at once.”

His wife rushed him to Huguley Hospital in Burleson, where doctors treated the heart attack symptoms, but could not find the cause.

“It was pretty shocking. They treated me all night, giving me things to open blood vessels up and the whole gambit,” he said. “They kept me the whole next day and test after test and they said ‘We don’t know what happened.’ ”

Doctors told Lackey that there was no heart damage and sent him home.

But Lackey knew something was wrong.

With his breathing problems worsening over the next few weeks he would need to use oxygen at night just to breathe normally.

“My blood pressure began to inch up,” he said. “Every week, just a bit more. I’m back and forth to a doctor. They’re saying ‘We just can’t figure this out.’”

Doctors put him on blood pressure and blood thinner medications but nothing worked. Nothing is showing up on blood tests.

A month later, more heart-attack symptoms sent Lackey to the emergency room at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Cleburne, where again, doctors treated heart-attack symptoms, but didn’t know what was causing the problem.

“I remember one of the nurses saying, ‘If it beats much faster, it’s going to explode.’ My heart was literally going berserk,” he said. “My blood pressure was sky high.”

After conducting stress tests over a couple days, doctors told Lackey that the heart was not damaged and looked good but could not explain the cause of the high blood pressure.

“It started a really dark time. I really began to think ‘the medical community is not doing real well here,’ ” he said. “The whole time, I’m telling them that I’ve been overseas, been in the jungle, eating things, doing things.”

Lackey is self-employed, owner of Darryl Lackey Roofing and Remodeling, and his medical insurance required a high deductible, resulting in medical bills of more than $30,000.



‘Nightmare that won’t stop’

With an emergency room visit to Baylor Medical Center, while driving home from a doctor’s appointment in Fort Worth, the testing process started anew.

Doctors ran a 3D imaging of his heart along with other tests, and came up with no explanation of Lackey’s condition, other than determining that it was not a heart problem.

“This is nightmare that won’t stop,” he said. “It was a really dark day for me because I had spent a lot of money for this doctor, that doctor, that doctor. And here I am at Baylor.”

His condition deteriorating to the point that he could not go to work or leave home regularly, Lackey considered the possibility that he was going to die.

“I have my faith in God. I have people praying for me at my church, and I have my family,” he said. “That was my world right there.”

He even had one doctor tell him that his symptoms were all in his head.

With the help of a Burleson doctor, Lackey was accepted to the world-renowned Mayo Clinic.

But that hope was dashed when the clinic wanted $10,000 in advance.

“No one is going to find this and I’m going to end up being a guinea pig for science,” he said.

Frustrated, he went to a local health food store, hoping that if modern science couldn’t help, a natural remedy could.

“Mr. Adams, who owns the store, says to me ‘I want you to go see a friend of mine. He donates his time to the HOPE clinic.’ ”

Lackey said he was skeptical but made an appointment to see Dr. Elvin Adams at the clinic.



A visit of hope

The HOPE clinic is administered by the Cleburne Seventh Day Adventist Church and funded by donations from the community, area businesses and medical facilities. Its mission is to serve low-income patients with inadequate or no insurance at all.

Its staff of nurses and doctors are all volunteers, and all visits cost $5.

Looking for answers and losing hope by the hour, Lackey, on a typically hot summer day in 2009, showed for his appointment for his very atypical condition.

“I remember sitting there and feeling horrible. I started getting clammy, my heart starting going. I started getting dizzy, and I thought I was going to fall on the floor,” he said. “I’m in this free clinic and I am going to fall on this floor and people are going to flip out. Gosh, I need to get out of here.”

Before he could do so, a nurse seeing him in distress, immediately took him into a treatment room and took his blood pressure. She noticed that it was extremely high. Bringing another nurse in, she asked Lackey if they could pray for him.

“It was amazing. They prayed for me,” he said. “It was the most peaceful serene setting. I can’t even explain it to you.”

Adams came in and Lackey gave him a file with all of the charts, test results and everything else he had undergone in the last year. Adams put it aside.

After Lackey explained the details of his yearlong medical mystery tour, Adams said that doctors would never find the problem through blood tests.

Adams told Lackey that he thought that Lackey had a microscopic parasite in the nerves around the heart due to eating a certain kind of purple-colored fish.

Adams, who has been medical director at the Crowley House of Hope since 2008, specializes in internal medicine and said that they focus on complex situations.

“When he came to us, he was desperate. He was known to Dr. [Tony] Torres and other members of the church,” he said. “He needed someone with a broader education. I’ve had a bit more exposure to tropical diseases. It was fortuitous.”

Adams admitted, however, that he had some patients that stymied him in the past, but not that day.

“It’s always our prayer that we serve people that need help. That was our prayer that day,” he said. “The clinic there is very dear to my heart. It provides a critical service to Cleburne.”

Adams told Lackey that although there was no cure, the parasite would eventually work itself out of the body. He prescribed a cream and a medication designed to calm his neurological system and relax the muscles.

It would cost around $40.

“By this time, I tried not to laugh out loud,” Lackey said. “I didn’t want to be disrespectful, but I’m thinking ‘Nah, no way. This is crazy. Forty dollars. I’m at a five dollar HOPE clinic.’ And I said, ‘You know, Doc, as crazy as this sounds, I believe you. I think you’re on to something.’ When you go through something like that for so long, you get to the point that you’re just tired of fighting,” he said. “I was worn out. Physically, mentally, I was worn out. I felt hope.”

Lackey said he was feeling better in 24 hours with his heart rate dropping and within two days, his muscle spasms began to decrease.

“I had gone months with it running wide open,” he said. “So, I could tell. I could feel it.”

A second visit a week later to the HOPE clinic brought another revelation to Lackey.

“What really touched me this time is, I was feeling better, but as I was sitting there, I’m surrounded by about 30 people that are lined up waiting. You could tell they were poor desperate people,” he said. “By this time, I’m not concentrating on myself, I’m listening to all the conversations going on around me, and I think what really touched me is that I kept hearing people saying ‘I don’t know what in the world I would do if it wasn’t for HOPE clinic.’

“People saying ‘I don’t have the $5, but they are going to see me anyway’ or, ‘My uncle loaned me $5.’ ”

Lackey said that in that hour in the waiting room, he also overheard a conversation with a lady who said she had severe diabetes and another man saying he had severe heart problems.

“And I’m thinking ‘this clinic helped save my life’ and I tried the best. I exhausted the medical community,” he said. “I came here kind of desperate and I’m listening to all these people thinking ‘they’re desperate.’ All of these people. I don’t know where they would go. I don’t know what they would do.”

Lackey’s blood pressure, although not back to normal, was down around 30 points.

A third visit to the clinic showed that his blood pressure was back to normal.

“This is God’s clinic. It’s one miracle after another,” said Diane Westcott, executive director of the HOPE clinic. “It never ceases to amaze me. God has used this clinic to change people’s lives. It’s been a great thing for the community.”

Westcott said they have had to turn away twice as many patients as they can see, and they need the community’s help in maintaining the clinic.

“We are needing more providers and benefactors,” she said. “As we see more patients, our costs grow.”



Back to living

Lackey was able to go back to work in October, running his roofing and remodeling company, but because his body functions were at a high speed level for an extended period of time, he does have to watch his stress level.

“This last year, I’ve worked everyday running my company and I haven’t been to the doctor at all,” Lackey said. “There are still days, that if I overdo it, I feel a little weakness or a little funny, and I have to stop and just go get in the truck and drink water.”

And now he is healthy and chasing his 7-year old daughter Lauren and his twin 16-month old daughters Laila and Lacey around the house.

They are even planning their next trip to Somoa.

“We are planning to go back and be part of their worldwide conference and have had an invitation to Australia and help with some youth things and planning churches,” he said. “It’s a happy ending to the story.”