Spotlight on Hope!
Our Recent trip to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital

Thursday Morning October 24th, 6:45 am we reach the gate guard to the parking lot of the Famous, St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Famous to many, but to me, a place of agonizing cruelty in the race for life with in it’s walls.

We walk through the doors and immediately the sterility in the air hits my nostrils. Memories flood my heart. Yes things have changed a lot since 1993 when we first walked in the doors of this Cancer Hospital for children. The colors are different, many new buildings have been added. The very cheerful designs on each wall, each hall, have all been changed and delightfully made even better. The walls really do “tell” what happens in this institution’s struggle for life. I love to look at the walls in every department. Can you put suffering in a picture? Can you put Hope in words? They try to do so on all the walls. It is like the old saying, “If I were a “fly on the wall” all the things I could tell…………………..

There have been many new areas added that were not available years ago. Also among new changes are surgery wards, and additional hospital rooms. The Café got a TOTAL new look and expansion that totally surprised me! St. Jude’s has really, really grown over the years since our first arrival with our just turned two year old son, dying of cancer!

BUT………some things never change. I sat in the check in lobby listening to a young child vomit over and over again, laying down on the chairs waiting her turn. Her mother trying to console her cries of pain. But to no avail……………I wanted to reach out and share hope with her. “Hey look here is our son, he is almost 17, he is living!!” my heart cried out to say to this woman and very sick child.

Can you give me your ID number at check in. Do you have any clue how many times we have given that number?? Etched on my very heart. Every time we went to the hospital, every clinic, every need. He had a name, but they only new him as 13,XXX, his “hospital number”. I noticed the folks who checked in behind us were way into the high 20,XXX’s digits. They have seen A LOT of patients since our son got his “number”!
Seeing the masks on the sweet little pale faces as children battle the slightest exposure to germs that even a sneeze could kill them! What bondage they live in as they try to kill those deadly cancer cells! They have to bring the children as close to death as possible to cure them. But sometimes it is a bit too close and it cost them their lives. Just as in AML the treatment consisting of a bone marrow transplant. So much can go wrong!

Inevitability, the smell of the pump soap in the bathrooms sends me over the edge. My mind and heart go spinning back to the past. The past where all the little boys we got to know during our 9 week stay (and then 7 week stay 9 months later) and the week trips in between---all died. The young couple who could not even hold their infant baby because the cancer had so eaten him up that it caused excruciating pain to be touch. I remember seeing them hold each other and cry. I remember the beautiful little 3 year old girl, an ugly patch covering the effects of the deadly cancer that stole her eye. Seeing friends in the hall when they got their news, there is nothing else we can do, your child only has 3-6 months left, we are sorry. Tears, sadness, eyes pleading for hope are what you see on the benches, wheelchairs, & crutches of the children all over the hospital on any given day. Those that can walk without a mask, a limp, or carry a throw up buck or dragging an IV medicine bag are the “lucky ones” at least for that day.

The intercom announces a name, “ XXXX “ to the medicine room. I call the “poison room” of rescue. The poison “medicine” is what they call the powerful chemotherapy they give to hundreds of kids a day. That room will forever be in my recollection. For in there is a “hope” for survival. Yet it is the very drugs that make them so sick, loose their hair, cause kidney, liver, and heart damage (even heart failure), cause the body to go so close to death, cause kids to loose their ability to walk, huge ulcerations from the lips all the way through the entire digestive track and so on. Many times they just give up the desire to live due to the extreme side effects of the “poison drugs” that are to “cure” them. Many times as a parent seeing my own son suffering beyond what I would have ever imagined, wondered if we were doing the right thing???
But when you are in the midst of this life stealing, death threatening time, you don’t often see too many kids who make it. I remember thinking those very thoughts. Where are the teenagers & adults who have been through this torturous time and lived?? Where is the hope? Are these kids doing this torture just to die in the end? The Quality of life becomes so wretched that you wonder if it is worth it. Looking around at the tables in our dinning hall thinking which kids wont be here next year, which ones wont make it until next week when either the cancer or the chemo effects steals their last breath.

We watched our normal happy just turned two year old son literally go through so much pain, change, grief, regression, much much suffering & debilitation until we were distraught with the question: How can this “poison” cure our son?? And if he does survive what will he be like when it is over?
I will not attempt at this writing to share our whole story. Just a few glimpses that I had as I sat in the rooms and walked the hall this last trip for my son to have his “re-check”. The memories will ever be with me.

But today, there are different faces. Lots of children, still much much suffering. There is still that sadness & pain in their eyes. But today I can offer hope!! I cry even at this typing. Yes there is hope. For you see my son SURVIVED! He is alive! He is doing very well. There are side effects he will keep forever. But he is doing GREAT! His lab work & other tests all show a strong, healthy, well adjusted, young man of almost 17!

I wanted to have him stand at the door and offer hope to those who are in our shoes from so many years ago! Some really do live through this most horrifying ordeal. Keep on going! I wanted to cheer them on, knowing they are so miserable and easily desire all this suffering to be over. I wanted to parade him, not in a proud way, but in a loving way, to hug others whose worlds have just been turned upside down. I know we are not the giver or taker of life. Only God is in control of that. But He does use means as in medicine and doctors to save lives. We fully trust and believe that God chose to heal our son. But He also used the means of chemo and doctors to administrate this healing. But you don’t give up just because you don’t know when God will demand your last breath.

So I say in closing………….next year (which is his last), he will be graduated out. We are going to shout it from the top of the buildings!! “THERE IS HOPE! Be of good courage my friends, keep on smiling through the pain, keep on hoping………………you just never know………
You may be doing this for someone else many years from now!

Laura

Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only this, but we also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; 4 and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; 5 and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. 6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.