A Special Woman.....

I love a lady named Barb. We met her in December of 2007. She was Micah's case manager. She was a nurse, but she didn't do nurse duties. She was the one who stood in the gap between us and the Doctor.

We saw her every time we went to PMDU for an outpatient day treatment or before we were sent upstairs for impatient.

She is the one who taught me about counts and treatments. She is the one who answered all my questions and listened to my concerns. She told us when we could go home, what to expect and when to come back. She celebrated our victories and felt our sadness when things weren't going well. She loved us. She is the one who taught me to get the answers I needed, (and I needed a lot!), to process them and then put them away for when we needed that info.

The Lord was my rock and strength, but it didn't take long for her represent security for me at the hospital. She got to know who I was and how I worked. I may have been a bit of pain sometimes with all my questions, but she was always gracious. If she wasn't busy, we would sit and chat about our families and just normal stuff.  She became my friend, a dear friend. The bond that I had with her was forged in fire. It is not something that will ever leave. I have learned that people who were close to us during Micah's cancer, have such a special place in our hearts. Those relationships may lapse a bit, but there will always be something special there.

She had this habit of going away every October. (o: I think she would actually be gone for the whole month. She did need that break. Her job was hard and we never blamed her, but we missed her so much. We had another case manager who stepped in and she was wonderful, but it wasn't the same. I remember one year, on the day we knew she would back from holidays, Micah waited for her in the hall. PMDU was a big long hall in the olden days. She could have come out from any of the doors, depending on who she was talking with. When Micah saw her, he ran to her and threw his arms around her. Micah loved her too. Although, as he got older, the relationship changed. The outward mushy gushy wasn't there. When he relapsed he struggled with being open. She was the one who asked all the questions of how he was feeling and what was going on with him. He shut down a little bit, but she understood. Despite it all, the relationship remained strong. 

You have to understand that she was there for almost every single important hospital event in our lives. We met the day the Doctor told us that Micah had stage 4 Rhabdomyosarcoma. She sat there beside him looking at us with compassionate eyes as he ran through what treatment would look like and as he asked if we would like to participate in a study in order to give him more treatment, giving him a better chance of life.

She was in the room on that Monday morning in 2009, when Doc Zelzer said to me, "Honey, I am so sorry, it doesn't look good......" That relapse day, I will never forget the look on Barb's face. She is the first person that I told outside our family and close friends that I was expecting Grace. It was a week after relapse. She said, "Oh boy." She didn't mean that in a bad way, she just knew it would make things harder for me in so many different ways. I look back and realize that she knew way more than Ken and I were ready to understand.

She is the one who took my phone calls when I was worried. She was the one who read my emails when I couldn't see past tomorrow treatment wise. She was the one who calmed my frantic heart when we came in on a Monday morning to find out scan results weren't waiting for us. She was the one who came to cheer Micah up with a little dance when he was down because he was in for five days. She was the one who got him a Build-a-Bear bear in a wheel chair, the day he finished radiation. That bear and wheel chair still sit on Micah's bookshelf. Micah still uses the pen she gave him five years ago.

I could go on and on. She was a special woman, whom God gave us to calm my heart and make our days at the hospital a little easier. I thank the Lord for that woman.

A little over a year ago, Barb left the hospital. We didn't know why. I asked so many people. I think they may have gotten sick of hearing of it, but we loved her and wanted to know if she was OK. About 10 weeks ago (maybe more), I wrote an email to her and sent it to our new case manager. I know they are good friends and asked her to pass it on. I had to tell her that I loved her and what she meant to us. She told me that she had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. My heart fell. That is a bad one. She did not want all the kids at the hospital to know. It would have been too hard on them. When I talked with her, she had just finished treatment the month before and was recovering. We were going to keep in touch and I never heard from her again.

The Monday after Mother's Day, I got an email that was sent out by Childcan telling everyone that Barb passed away.The cancer must have come back hard. My heart hurts for her husband, 2 kids and 2 grandchildren. She was a special, most beautiful lady and will be missed by so many people.

It made us ache and we were so sad. Even though we are only at the hospital 6 times a year now, there is a hole.

I just had to tell you about our Barb, who made such an impact on our lives.


**I wanted to write captions on the pictures, but it didn't work with formatting! (O:

The first picture is when Micah was done his first treatment. He was cancer free and we were weaning him  off of his steroids. He is way thinner than his heaviest, so I would say it was about May 2009.

The second picture was about 7 months into treatment. I would say it's the end of June 2008. Micah is almost at his thinnest. By August he was thinner and struggled to walk at times.  He is impatient here because he got shingles. He was doing chemo and radiation and had shingles all at the same time. It was a hard time for his body, his heart and our whole family. We were starting to crack a little at this time. Treatment was so heavy and the amount of time we were apart was starting to take a toll.

I want to go back and ask him why he is smiling. It's not a fake one. I can see the smile in his eyes. He was in pain here. You can see the shingles by his armpit and he has a radiation burn on his stomach. They hit his liver hard with radiation. I am thankful he didn't burn where they did his lungs. You can't do lungs as intensely as a liver. They are more fragile. Maybe he was so excited about his new bear. Maybe this smile was just a special gift from the Lord. He ministered to Micah in ways we may never know. Josiah fits those pajama pants now and I pulled them out for him to wear and I had to put them away. I didn't want to see them around. It hurt a little.

The third picture, is about five days after his big lung surgery in March of 2010. I am guessing here. But I see he has no IV and he has pants on! (: He had his drainage tube, cathedar and epideral until  for at least day 4. I still see his oxygen mask on the left side of the bed by his pillow, so it can't be day 7! He used oxygen for quite awhile when he had pain. It calmed him down. I should have written this stuff down. You think you will never forget the day of this and that. But I am starting to forget the little things. It's a blessing really! (:

 It makes me smile when I look at that bandage on his left side. We thought that was where the incision was. But it was actually just the drainage tube spot. Since he couldn't move, we hadn't seen the back of him. It was a big surprise when we sat him up and saw his side and back! They opened him right up! (O: What a blessing doctors are and how amazing God made our bodies.