Our Favorite Fellow Patient and His Mom

While we were at Primary Children’s undergoing treatment for Mary Kate’s strange illness, we were fortunate enough to get to spend some quality time with family. My cousin Sonja and her son Steven (who I’ve written about here) were also at the hospital for round 15 of chemo treatment for cancer, which Steven was diagnosed with back in February. Although it would have been much better to have a fun family reunion under happier circumstances, it was still very nice to have them there with us. Sonja and Steven have been coming to the hospital regularly for many months now and are old pros at navigating that huge, complicated place. They knew all the nice places to go sit and get some fresh air, about all the fun things you can do and see while at the hospital, and what foods on the hospital menu are decent and which ones are to be completely avoided. (The pizza is truly terrible. Only a hospital can be counted on to mess up pizza!)

 

I enjoyed the time I got to spend visiting with Sonja. She’s one of my favorite people and she has been an inspiration to me as I’ve talked with her and read what she has had to say about this cancer ordeal with Steven on her blog. Dealing with a child having cancer is such an incredibly difficult thing, I can’t even imagine. Having Mary Kate sick and in the hospital for just those three days, gave me a tiny taste of what it might be like to be Sonja…or my cousin Aaron and his wife Lorraine who have three children with Cystic Fibrosis…or my brother and sister-in-law who were in Primary Children’s last year when my niece Jenny was treated for ITP (another strange auto-immune disease). Sonja and I counted and just in the last few years there have been at least seven of my Grandma and Grandpa Johnson’s great grandchildren who have been in Primary Children’s hospital for one reason or another. We wondered what grandma Winnie must be thinking with all of that going on. We are also sure that she and Grandpa are helping all of us from above however they can.

Happily Steven has only three more chemo treatments to go. YEAH! At the end of it all he will have endured 18 of them, plus a rotation-plasty surgery and all sort of other challenging things, but my goodness he has been tough as can be through it all, as has his parents and siblings. We are praying that things go as well as possible as he finishes up his cancer treatments and strengthens those muscles of his so he can use that new, awesome leg. And then of course, we pray that the nasty cancer will NEVER come back.

Thanks for being our friends in the hospital Sonja and Steven. Don’t be surprised if we show up there again during one of your last treatments. We miss you already, and that hospital pizza!