Leslie James’ granddaughter once looked at her thoughtfully.

“Grandma, I’ve met lots of grandmas and you’re not like any of them.”

To anyone who knew her more than six years ago, she also doesn’t look much like the Leslie they knew. A two-time cancer survivor (lung and ovarian), she once weighed 486 pounds. Over the years she had been gradually working her way down from that weight, but she still wasn’t what anyone would call healthy.

Then came Jan. 6, 2016. Working as a pediatric home care nurse, Leslie was coming out of a patient’s home when she slipped on ice-covered concrete. She fell hard on both knees and both wrists.

When you’re falling, everything is in slow motion,” she says. “All I could do was say, ‘Dear God, please don’t let me break a hip.’ I wish I had broken a hip, because it would have been healed in six months.

Her knees were scraped and red. As she tried to get up, she realized both knee joints were pointing outward to the left and right rather than forward. Somehow she pulled herself into her car and drove home, then to a doctor.

It took time, and several doctors, to realize the extent of her injuries. Finally she saw an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in hip and knee replacement.

“He took one look at the X-rays and said, ‘I don’t know how you’re walking.’

“I said, ‘Nobody told me I couldn’t. And I sang the Christmas song that everybody knows — ‘Put one foot in front of the other and soon you’ll be walking across the floor.’

“He said, ‘Well, whatever you’re doing, don’t stop, because if you do, you will be bed- or wheelchair-bound within a year.’”

Leslie needed both knees replaced — but not until she could lose enough weight that the artificial knees could support her body. She was down from her heaviest season, but still classified as morbidly obese. She also had developed lymphedema in both legs. It’s a buildup of fluid, causing huge swelling. At one point, her legs were both more than 50 inches around. And, all of that excess fluid led to a deadly aortic aneurysm, just 1½ inches from her heart.

A church that cares

This was about the same time Leslie started attending First Free Rockford, at the invitation of her friend, Jennifer Binder. Leslie had been a Christian most of her life. In fact, as a young woman she wanted to become a nun. She even entered a convent, but things didn’t work out. (Pranks like putting soap flakes in the mother superior’s coffee may or may not have contributed.)

Over her adult life, Leslie attended quite a few churches, but found something different at First Free — a community of believers to support her. She attended the Women’s Bible Study on Thursday mornings, and they were doing a study called Detours. It helped bring perspective to her accident and her long wait for surgery.

“One of the things it helped me to understand was that it’s not so much that God is saying ‘no.’ God is saying ‘Wait. Pray. Think. Because I have to get everything ready, and you may not be ready.’

“I said, thank goodness I didn’t have to wait 40 years. But it was hopeful to me, because I was so depressed at that point, thinking I’d never be fixed.”

Even people Leslie didn’t know at church recognized her by her walking sticks — two hiking poles that not only helped her get around, but by their vertical grips helped take pressure off her still-damaged wrists and thumbs.

Because of the sticks, she used the valet parking service. One icy Sunday morning, she pulled up in front of the church and climbed out of her car. The ice stuck to the car door’s weather stripping and pulled it loose, to a point where it dangled across the door opening.

After church, when the valet volunteers brought her car back to her, the weather stripping had been repaired, glued back in place.

“You don’t see that everywhere,” Leslie says. “Was it something simple? Yes. Would I have known how to fix it? I don’t think so. That’s awesome. People just do what needs to be done to help others.

“I’ve been to lots of different churches. And this is the first place I’ve been where they put their hands to work with what they say.” 

‘Nothing stops you’

Through those years of waiting for surgery, Leslie received cortisone injections in her knees every three months, but the pain continued, physically and emotionally. She lost her husband of 46 years, John, in 2019. Believe it or not, that’s a story for another day.

As COVID limited church gatherings in 2020, Leslie kept losing weight — to a point where, almost five years after her fall, her surgeon told her: “You know, your weight distribution has improved.”

“I said, ‘Doc, you need help with communications,’” Leslie says with a laugh. “You don’t tell a woman her weight distribution has improved. You tell her she looks good and she’s losing weight.”

Word choice aside, the surgeon was finally comfortable doing the first knee that December. As he removed her damaged kneecap, “it fell apart like a jigsaw puzzle,” Leslie says.

Afterward, Leslie woke up on the gurney, still in the operating room (“I metabolize anesthesia really fast,” she explains). She caught the surgeon’s eye.

“When can I use the walker?”

“Not until you get to your room.”

They moved her to a recovery room, then to her regular room, where she got out of bed and started walking right away with the walker.

“I said, ‘While I’ve got the good medicine, I’m going to get this body moving.’ He said, ‘You know, you’re just not like anybody else. You’re not stubborn, you’re determined. Once you get a plan you go forward and nothing stops you.’

“And I said, ‘Well, I didn’t want to be broken forever. And I had God on my side.’”

Six months later — May 2021 — they replaced Leslie’s other knee. She woke up in the operating room again, and wiggled her feet to make sure everything worked. She looked at her surgeon, who by now had learned not to be astonished.

“I said, ‘My God is an awesome God and he brought me to you to fix me,’” Leslie says. “And then the anesthesiologist said, ‘How many times do you hear people praising God in the operating room before they leave?’

“Things like that, to me, make my faith visible,” Leslie says. 

Two weeks after the second surgery, the doctor told Leslie she didn’t need the walking sticks anymore.

A transformed woman

Today at age 69, Leslie is down 155 pounds from the time of her fall. There was no magic formula — just better eating habits and a lot of prayer. “The doctor said I went from morbidly obese, skipped obese and now I’m just overweight,” she says with a smile.

She’s also building back muscle, and confidence. “The one thing I still have to work on is my balance, which is really good, but it isn’t where it probably should be,” she says. “The other thing is I have so much atrophied muscle, I’m still gaining that back. It just takes time.”

The aortic aneurysm remains, but it’s considered stable.

At church last year, Leslie walked past a friend she hadn’t seen in a while.

“You know,” the friend said, “I look at you and I think you’re a miracle.”

Leslie wasn’t so sure. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m not anywhere close to perfect, honey.”

But the comment made her think.

“No one expected me to be able to lose 155 pounds. No one expected me to be able to get my knees fixed. And I certainly didn’t expect after they were fixed for me to start walking and being fine. When you add all of that together, that’s a miracle.”