Lakeland's Amanda Baker, stricken by sudden illness as teenager, dies at age 25

Amanda Baker’s family is confident that she is making music again in heaven.

On the verge of beginning her sophomore year at Lake Gibson High School in 2014, Amanda was struck by a mysterious condition that soon left her immobile and unable to communicate. Her parents, Jeff and Karen Baker of Lakeland, cared for Amanda at home for the final eight years of her life.

Amanda died Dec. 8 at age 25. Her family held a funeral Dec. 16 at Gentry-Morrison Funeral Homes’ Southside Chapel.

Known to friends as Mandy, Baker displayed an enthusiasm for music as a toddler, her parents wrote in her obituary. She learned to play violin while attending Wendell Watson Elementary and later took up oboe, flute and alto saxophone at Lake Gibson Middle, performing in the school’s jazz band, while also learning to play guitar.

Amanda joined the marching band at Lake Gibson High, and she was eager for the start of her sophomore year when tragedy struck. Then 15, she began experiencing back pain, burning in her arms and numbness and tingling in her legs.

A trip to the emergency room at Lakeland Regional Medical Center led to her admission at St. Joseph's Hospital. Amanda began having fainting episodes and went into cardiac arrest, caused by a blood clot, her parents said. It took a large medical team 15 to 20 minutes to revive Amanda, and the episode left her with severe brain damage, her father told a reporter in 2016.

Jeff Baker said that doctors suspect Amanda was struck by acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a rare neurologic condition that damages an area of the spinal cord. That damage led Amanda to develop transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord that causes pain and loss of muscle control.

Baker said he would like to see the medical community devote more attention to understanding and trying to prevent AFM.

Doctors told Jeff and Karen Baker that their daughter would never recover. From that point in August 2014, Amanda never regained bodily control or the ability to communicate. She remained paralyzed from the chest down and required a ventilator to breathe.

Amanda was eventually transferred to a nursing home in Largo, the closest facility capable of accepting her. For the next nine months, Jeff Baker lodged at Ronald McDonald House in St. Petersburg and spent much of his time with Amanda at the nursing home, reading aloud to her from the “Hunger Games” series and “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Karen and the couple’s younger daughter, Elizabeth, visited on weekends.

Jeff Baker promised his daughter he would not let her remain in such a facility. Against the advice of doctors, the Bakers brought Amanda home in November 2015, having transformed their master bedroom to resemble a medical room, complete with an electrical hospital bed, a ventilator machine and a feeding pump.

Jeff and Karen Baker cashed in their retirement accounts and used up their savings to cover the costs of renovations, including the replacement of the tub in their master bathroom with a roll-in shower, they told a reporter at the time. With help from nurses, the Bakers learned to operate the feeding pump, monitor medical devices and suction mucus from Amanda’s throat.

The family decorated Amanda’s room with musical symbols and affixed vinyl records to the walls. A small, stuffed bear wearing a maroon Lake Gibson High shirt hung near her bed.

“We are blessed to have her home,” Karen Baker said in 2016. “We're together. Being together is everything.”

Though doctors told the Bakers that Amanda had no chance of regaining higher brain function, her parents, devout Christians, still hoped for miraculous improvement.

“Several of the doctors told us this is it and there never will be any more than you can see,” Jeff Baker said in 2016. “I told them that's really between her and God.”

Jeff Baker said he had a routine when Amanda was a toddler of rocking her and singing "Silent Night" before she went to bed. He said he was determined to hold her again as she neared the end of her life, and with help from a nurse, he climbed into her hospital bed and embraced Amanda as Karen held her from the other side. Jeff sang “Silent Night” into his daughter’s ear as she took her final breath.

Amanda, who aspired to become a biochemist, joined the Lake Gibson Biotech Academy and an organization for future healthcare workers. As a youngster, she participated in Girl Scouts, drew pictures and learned photography from her father.

Amanda spent vacations exploring the mountains of West Virginia, and she enjoyed fishing trips and boating excursions, her family wrote in her obituary. She and Elizabeth oversaw a menagerie that included not just a dog and cats but also chinchillas, rabbits, chickens, hamsters, tropical fish and a hermit crab.

Her parents said Amanda welcomed Jesus into her life as a girl and was baptized at age 7.

Elizabeth, previously active in sports, shifted her attention to music in what her father considered a tribute to her older sister. She sometimes sat at Amanda’s bedside and played guitar for her. Elizabeth graduated as valedictorian from Lake Gibson High in 2021.

In preparing for Amanda’s funeral, Jeff Baker searched for an audio or video recording of his daughter playing music. He recalled that Amanda taught herself to play one of her favorite songs, “Hear You Me” by the band Jimmy Eat World, which features the line, “May angels lead you in.”

Baker said he regretted never having performed the song with Amanda at any family gatherings. The day before the funeral, he found an audio file of Amanda singing the song, and he recorded his own accompaniment to be played along with his daughter’s vocals.

"I knew I wouldn’t make it through the service singing that, so I recorded singing along with her the day before the funeral," Baker wrote in a message. "My singing certainly wasn’t great, but it was a blessing to find that clip and be able to sing along with her one last time."

Each of Amanda's former band directors from Lake Gibson Middle and Lake Gibson High attended the funeral, and her high school band teacher gave the family Amanda's former uniform as a tribute.

"Those that touch our hearts stay in our lives forever," Pastor David Renfroe of Crestview Baptist Church said at the funeral.

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on X @garywhite13.

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland's Amanda Baker, stricken by illness as teen, dies at age 25