When I first started working at Arnold Palmer Hospital, always the youngest on the team has to take call over Christmas.
So on Christmas Eve, I got called because there was a young girl, four years old, who came into the emergency room the night before with vomiting and headaches, trouble walking.
And when we did some analyze of her brain, she was found to have a brain tumor. And I remember going into the family s room on the twenty-fourth of December to have to tell them that their daughter had a brain tumor, and that was a malignat cancer brain tumor.
And I"ll never forget that the dad said to me, he said, "Will I ever get to walk my daughter in her wedding?" I said that at that point, I said, "I don t know. But we re gonna try damn hard to make that happen."
She had three surgeries to remove the tumor cause it kept growing back. She underwent chemotherapy for over a year and half. She has been on therapy now for six months and she s actually doing great. She doesn t have any evidence of tumor so whatever.
She is back to school, happy, playful. And I remember I told the father. I said, "The only thing I ever want is to be able to go to her wedding one day."
He called me a couple of weeks ago that he was planning to have me walk her. When that dad gives me a call and tells me to walk Chloe down the aisle for her wedding, I ll probably retire after that. I don t think that could be a great of high full of a sense of fulfillment after that. It s the truth. What else after that?-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dictated and typed by Shelly dated October 27th, 2014