Meet Nurses, Aimee & Sarah

We had gotten ourselves to the downtown campus of Children's Mercy Hospital in a frenzy. We were sent there by a radiologist at CMH South who had just told us about the grapefruit sized tumor she found in Jonah's stomach. Now on the cancer floor, we were greeted by Sarah (to the right) who had a duffle bag of supplies. Things like shampoo, toothbrushes, a toy for Jonah, and towels.  Not typical hospital-grade items, normal stuff from Target. And, then she went to get us phone chargers. It all concerned me a bit; clearly, she knew we were staying a while.

The days went on, we had more tests that revealed stage four Neuroblastoma, surgery to place his port, and we prepared for Jonah's first round of chemo. Sarah or Aimee (to the left) would stop by every day to play with Jonah, and I realized they were an important part of his treatment. The fun part. They brought Jonah things to play with, color or paint, things to eat. But it seemed to me everything they were doing had a reason like it was based on research, or at the very least professional intuition on how to help a cancer-kid get through cancer.

Our oncologist once said, "the kids need to keep growing and developing because we aim to cure in pediatric cancer." Child Life is part of that vision. Over the next two years of our treatment, Sarah and Aimee would be called in to help Jonah get through a shot, or to get Jonah out of the room to play hide and seek in the hallway, or even to lift Aaron and I's spirits when we were the most down we'd ever been after Jonah became deathly ill and was in the PICU for months.

In the beginning of Jonah's cancer, everything was shockingly out of the ordinary. Sarah and Aimee and Child Life are the beacon of normal in a strange world where kids get cancer. Jonah's growing up with them. He calls them both Sarah to be silly. They bring that out in him; we all know a silly Jonah is a healthy Jonah."- Annie Noll, Jonah's mom