Pay it forward
Everyday Presents Small Opportunities to Become a Hero for Someone Else
When you first meet someone, you don’t know whether this person will be a fleeting acquaintance, a casual friend or someone to journey and grow with. Pam and Pat are individuals who I feel I will stay connected with and for whom I have enormous respect. Pregnancy and the first few months home with your baby is such an amazing time in your life but it also can be one of the scariest. Most parents are thrown instantly to overwhelm and challenged by the responsibility of a newborn. They seem so tiny and fragile and it is terrifying to think you are now totally responsible for another human being. Professional Baby Nurses understand your struggles and can answer your questions and help put your mind at ease.
With today’s technologies you can google many answers to your questions, but having hands-on support who can help you with lactation support, soothing techniques and demonstrate how to give those slippery little buggers their first bath is well worth their weight in gold. Sometimes you just need someone to talk to someone who won’t judge you and tell you-you are doing the best you can and that is enough. That’s what I got from Pat & Pam.
It is hard to put into words what these women did for me and my family. Pam and Pat signed on for a night nursing job that entailed one healthy newborn but unconditionally rose to the occasion to care forme and my whole family. Pam and Pat joyfully joined our family on May 12 to give us the helping hands with baby #3, Conor. I always looked forward to their arrival every night! They are the kindest, caring, trustworthy, knowledgeable and dependable women I know.
As some weeks went by, Pam and Pat kept informing me of some “out of the norm” things they noticed with Conor, which I had been noticing too. On June 26th I took him into a GI specialist who discovered a tumor in his kidney, which ended up to be aStage III Wilms’ Tumor. Conor was treated with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. The ONLY way our family got through this was because Pam and Pat were there to do anything and everything. They were there to talk, a shoulder to cry on. They cared for my other two young children when we had to be in the city very early for radiation. But, most importantly, they loved and comforted my little baby through all the side effects of radiation and chemotherapy.
This has been the most emotional and exhausting year of my life, but I made it through because of Pam and Pat’s unconditional love and support. Pam and Pat’s help with all the daily home medical care that Conor needed to put him on a fast track to remission. Now I am proud and thankful to say my 6-year-old little boy is a cancer survivor, and we could not have done it without Pam and Pat.
Today, we have started a foundation called Friends of Conor to raise money and awareness for pediatric cancer. After putting our child through cancer treatments, we knowthere is a need for research. Funding research will bring higher survival rates with treatments that have less long-term side effects.
