BANGOR – Brenda Gay Barker of Whiting believes in miracles. She saw one happen this week when her son, Joshua Barker, known as the Spin Skater of Pinpoint Pond, was given another chance at life.

Barker soon will be equipped with a mechanical device to help his heart work more efficiently.

Barker suffers from cardiomyopathy, an enlargement of the heart, and the Bangor Daily News has been following his journey to obtain a heart transplant.

But Barker twice was denied a place on the transplant list from two Boston hospitals as his condition worsened and he became weaker and more ill.

Last week he was airlifted from Down East Community Hospital in Machias to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor suffering from heart failure.

He was placed in the cardiac care unit and when his mom learned he would not be getting a new heart, she called it “a death sentence.”

Gay Barker, however, refused to give up.

She called the doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and pressed them to review her son’s condition again.

“I just begged,” she said.

She enlisted the help of state Sen. Kevin Raye to cut through red tape to allow for medical services.

And she prayed and accepted the prayers of many around the state who were rooting for a miracle.

“It was the prayers,” she said Friday. “All the prayers.”

The Barker family has received the best news possible, she said. “Joshua will be going to Boston as soon as he is stable, and he will get a ventricular-assist device, a mechanical heart.

“Prayers make miracles happen,” she said.

When she received the news, Gay Barker said, “I was numb. I felt that he had received a death sentence but I never, never gave up. I felt Joshua had everything to gain and nothing to lose.”

Barker is fighting “tremendous kidney problems,” she said, but once he is stable, he will be taken to Boston for insertion of the mechanical heart. She said the device is likely a permanent solution, but she does not know all of the details, including how long her son could survive with the mechanism.

“He feels wonderful about this,” Gay Barker said. “He is absolutely delighted.”

Gay Barker said everyone at EMMC has been wonderful and has provided her son with exceptional care, and that recently the staff began “putting two and two together.”

She said that one day, a nurse came into her son’s room and said, “You know, there’s a guy in the newspaper that sounds a lot like you and he’s called the Spin Skater.”

Her son smiled and said, “I am the Spin Skater.”

Joshua Barker was introduced to Bangor Daily News readers in January as the Spin Skater of Pinpoint Pond, the young man from Trescott who prompted a children’s story about perseverance and courage.

As a teenager, Barker wanted to be an Olympic skater. His spinning and skating on a small pond in front of his family’s home caught the eye and the imagination of Linda Godfrey of Eastport, who wrote a moving children’s story about a skater and his determination to become the very best despite difficult circumstances.

Barker was forced to give up his dream as he became increasingly ill. He was forced to leave college and most recently was a resident at an assisted-living facility in Bangor.