That day my brother Joe had been in the operating room since early morning as the doctors removed a thirty-inch spleen, and shortly after, considering the degree of malignancy, didn’t want to take bets on how long he would live. Sometime after that, when I visited Joe, he told me he had this strange experience. He “saw” the inside of his body, and all through him were little bristles, like those on a brush.
This didn’t make much sense until the lab reports were all back and Joe’s doctor gave him the news. He had a fatal disease called Hairy Cell Leukemia, and the doctor, to explain to him what this meant, showed him what Joe had already “seen” in his strange and unexplainable visualiza-tion—“hairy” cells under the microscope.
Now commenced the battle, and Joe was determined to live despite the odds. It would be impossible to talk about the near-death times we, as a family, lived through with Joe. But there was a strong ray of hope in the doctor he eventually found—a hematologist by the name of Dr. Frank Lizzi, the most respected, at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany.
That was a familiar name to me and one day when I was visiting my brother in the hospital, I told him that when he was a tot, we had lived in a house on Irving Street where our landlord was name Lizzi.
Joe was aware of that. In fact, he said, our one-time landlord was the late grandfather of his Dr. Lizzi. It was like a light went on. Is it possible that his father was a shoemaker and his mother named Catuzza? Yes, said Joe. They were his parents. Not only that, Dr. Lizzi was just three years younger than himself, my brother told me—as a realization hit both of us. Catuzza’s baby, yet unborn, was to be the doctor who one day would save Joe’s life! For Dr. Lizzi did just that, keeping him alive with every new drug and therapy that came along, until we got the miracle we prayed for—interferon, effective in the form of cancer Joe has, Hairy Cell Leukemia.
Last year, I watched Joe and Dr. Lizzi on television as they participated in a telethon for leukemia research. Side by side, they asked for dollars to keep the scientists working to make the discoveries that, as interferon had for Joe, will save lives.
What I saw for a moment was not two fine men in their early fifties. I saw a golden-haired child with his hand on the tummy of a somewhat blushing mother-to-be, and I marveled at the mystery of connections. Never would any of us have been able to imagine that the unborn baby would one day himself return that touch, carrying life with it.
And so, now, on Mother’s Day, and many times between, I think of Catuzza—and say “thank you!”
Antoinette Bosco
Litchfield County Times
Love, Friendship and Miracles
The years teach much which the days never know.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have a very dear friend whom I have known for twenty-five years now. Debbie and I went to high school together, and even after I moved away, we kept in touch and visited each other whenever we could. She and I were close and shared something special that we did not realize until one summer. I was visiting her in Florida with my two children. She lived there with her husband of twenty years and their two cats. They seemed to have it all, but after three miscarriages, I was beginning to think maybe not everything. They were a wonderful and loving couple who wanted a child and deserved a child. That summer she broke down and told me of their recent loss, for the third time, and of the following testing, which showed that she was incapable of carrying a child. I didn’t hesitate to offer myself to be a surrogate and said that I needed to run it by my husband. He was so supportive, and they were elated!
I started treatment at a fertility clinic near my Maryland home, and we began the hormone shots and patches to get us regulated and in sync. The big day came when I flew down to Florida for the implant. It was a very happy day for us all; even though I missed my daughter’s birthday, I felt somehow that this was truly going to be another’s “birthday” also. The days of waiting for the results were agonizing, but I felt sure it had worked. Why would these good people be denied something so precious? The call came from the doctor, and it was devastating to say the least. I didn’t believe them at first; there must be a mistake—sometimes pregnancy tests were wrong! Why couldn’t this work out for them? Maybe they were already as happy as any couple should be. Great home, great jobs, great family and friends, what more could they ask for? Maybe they were asking for too much? I just couldn’t make sense of any of this.
During the months leading up to the procedure, I told only my teammate at school to explain my numerous absences, and afterwards I shared the experience with a very dear friend, Lori, who was like a little sister. A couple of months had passed when Lori came over for a visit. She said she was pregnant and decided to give the baby up for adoption. She was a single parent of one already, struggling financially, and this father was not taking responsibility for her present condition. She told me that she wanted my friends to have this baby, knowing what I did for them, she knew they were special people who would cherish this gift. It took some time for me to catch my breath, discuss this with her and call my friends. None of us could believe the chain of events . . . the circle of friendships. No wonder why I was not able to have their baby; they were meant to help Lori.
They started proceedings in Florida, and I supported Lori up here in Maryland. It was so reassuring to know how certain she was that she had made the right decision. When her due date was a week away, I took her to the airport. Everything went smoothly right up to the birth, and I was the first one called when the baby arrived! A boy was born healthy and already blessed with an extended family of love. I don’t think he’ll ever know the impact he made on so many lives. Baby Derek is going to be a year old this July.
Debbie Graziano
Book of Dreams
Adream is a wish your heart makes.
Walt Disney
A full moon hung in the sky as Lorianne Clark climbed out of bed, too anxious to sleep. Tiptoeing to the kitchen, she opened her journal.
Dear Dream, she penned. You’ll be in our lives soon—if only we’re granted a miracle tomorrow!
Growing up in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Lorianne toted a doll named Ginger around wherever she went. And as a teen, she’d stop mothers pushing carriages to admire their little ones.
“What’s your name?” she cooed to a curly-topped toddler one afternoon.
Her mother smiled. “Her name is Dream,” she said. “Because after years of trying—and dreaming—she came to us.”
I’d do anything to be a mommy, too, Lorianne thought, touched by the woman’s story.
And Lorianne’s dream never changed as she met and fell in love with Rich. So shortly after they said “I do,” they began trying.
But after two years . . . nothing.
“It’ll happen someday, right?” Lorianne asked her gynecologist.
Frowning at the chart which noted her irregular, painful periods, he suggested she undergo an exploratory laparoscopy—which revealed endometriosis, a condition in which tissue grows outside the uterus.
In surgery, doctors removed 80 percent of the tissue. But afterward, there was grim news.
“You have stage-three endometriosis,” the doctor warned. “The tissue may grow back and block your fallopian tubes. Your chances of conceiving aren’t good.”
At first, his warning was so heartbreaking, Lorianne refused to believe it. Everywhere she looked, it seemed, were cruel reminders of what she might never have: babies in diaper commercials, her sister-in-law’s pregnant belly . . .
“I can’t stop trying, no matter what the odds,” she wept to Rich.
But month after month, Lorianne doubled over with cramps. I always assumed I could have a baby, she wept silently. And now, I feel betrayed—by my own body.
But somehow, she knew, she had to find a way to hold on to hope. So she began keeping a journal.
Dear Dream, she scrawled one morning. This book will hopefully be special to you someday . . .
Finally, the doctor suggested in vitro fertil
ization. “But first you’ll need another laparoscopy, because I’m sure the adhesions have returned,” he said.
I’m in the hospital, Lorianne wrote the night of the procedure. But I’ll do whatever I have to, again and again, until I have you, Dream!
But during the procedure, doctors found that Lorianne was now in stage-four endometriosis—and it was choking her fallopian tubes.
“You can go ahead with the in vitro if you want,” her doctor told her. “But at this point, your chances of conceiving are slim to none.”
“Then those are the chances I’ll have to take,” Lorianne replied.
And now, the night before the in vitro, she sat in her kitchen—and her thoughts drifted back to the woman with the curly-headed tot. She waited years for her miracle—but it came, Lorianne remembered. Lifting her pen, she wrote, I’m still afraid to get my hopes up. We have to pray . . .
So that’s what Lorianne did as she and Rich drove to the clinic, where a fertility team harvested seven eggs, then mixed them with Rich’s sperm. Of the six that grew into embryos, three were implanted in Lorianne’s uterus, the other three frozen for a second try.
Please, God, Lorianne prayed each night. Let our dream come true!
A month later, her prayers were answered: “You’ll be parents by Halloween,” the nurse announced.
“Pinch me!” Lorianne sang as Rich called everyone they knew.
And on October 22, 1993, Dream Marie Clark—with a mop of black hair—was laid on her mommy’s chest. “I love you, Dream,” Lorianne choked as Rich embraced “his girls.”
And though she was sleep-deprived and often had tapioca in her hair, Lorianne treasured every moment of her “Dream”: dancing with the baby when she was restless with colic, cheering as she took her first steps. And when Dream began talking, the little girl cradled Ginger—the same doll that Lorianne had played with a generation before—and dreamed her own dream.
“I want a sister!” Dream cried.
Lorianne and Rich exchanged glances. They’d often imagined a sibling for Dream. But we’ve already been given one miracle, Lorianne thought. Do we dare hope for another?
Then, at her next checkup, Lorianne learned the endometriosis was likely spreading. “The only way to possibly stop it is a hysterectomy,” the gynecologist told her.
Time’s running out! Lorianne gulped. She and Rich crossed their fingers as the frozen embryos were thawed and implanted in her uterus. But this time, it didn’t work.
Three of us will have to be enough, Lorianne told herself. And though it broke her heart, she gave away Dream’s stroller and high chair.
Then, on Dream’s first day of preschool, Lorianne had a checkup. “Last period?” the nurse asked, and Lorianne estimated, “End of July?”
“You’re late,” she replied. “Perhaps you’re pregnant.”
“That’s impossible!” Lorianne blurted. But a pregnancy test showed that she was!
“God was listening to us,” Rich beamed. “It’s destiny!”
That night, Lorianne wrote in her journal: Dear Dream and Destiny: Soon I’ll have two angels. I can’t wait!
And neither could Destiny Anne: She came into the world two weeks early—just before Mother’s Day. “What a gift!” Lorianne wept.
Today, Lorianne is often stopped by admiring young women as she pushes Destiny’s stroller, Dream alongside her. “What are your names?” they ask.
“Dream,” the five-year-old says. “And this is Destiny!”
“There’s gotta be a story behind those names,” the passersby inevitably say.
“You bet there is,” Lorianne replies. Then, beaming, she shares the tale of how she was twice blessed, inspiring yet another person to believe in miracles.
Barbara Mackey
Excerpted from Woman’s World
Sickest Baby in the ICU
Erik arrived on a clear, cold October dawn—eight pounds, two ounces, healthy and untroubled. My husband, Jim, and I took him home the next day. He ate and slept and settled in. On Halloween our three-year-old daughter, Katie, thought he smiled at her jack-o’-lantern.
Then on his one-week birthday, Erik would not wake up to nurse. When I changed his diaper, his skin flushed deep red. I called the doctor. Newborns are funny creatures, he told me. Erik is fine.
That night I dreamed a jack-o’-lantern overturned and set the hall rug on fire. Even awake I smelled scorched pumpkin. I reached for Erik in the bassinet beside our bed. I woke Jim, and we took Erik’s temperature: 104°F.
On the drive to Boston Children’s Hospital, Erik lay motionless on my lap. “Breathe, Erik,” I cried, shaking him. I was terrified he would die in my arms.
In the emergency room, a nurse wrapped a tiny blood-pressure cuff around Erik’s arm. The machine would not register. “It’s probably broken,” she said. “Let’s get another.” But the next machine didn’t work, and neither did the one after that.
“Please get help!” Jim urged. A doctor came, bringing a portable heart monitor. He glued electrodes to Erik’s chest and triggered a switch. A number flashed on the digital display: 278—about two times the normal infant heart rate.
A cardiac team rushed in, three women and four men in blood-spattered scrubs. Erik slept as they carried him to a treatment room three doors down, but we heard his screams during a spinal tap and, later, when they tried to shock his racing heart.
Erik was half-awake when they brought him back to us. I started to cry when I had to hand him to one of the doctors: Was I giving him up forever?
They strapped Erik to a stretcher, loaded his monitors and IV pumps on a cart and disappeared into the elevator the way they had come, in a clatter of clogs and rolling wheels.
Soon Jim and I were told our son had acute myocarditis —#8212;a life-threatening inflammation of the heart muscle. In newborns like Erik, a Coxsackie virus often causes the condition. No drugs exist to treat the virus; about a third of the children who contract it die.
Dr. Edward Walsh, our cardiologist, and Dr. David Wessel, director of the intensive care unit, placed Erik on life support and administered drugs to boost his blood pressure, support the heart and slow his metabolism. None of these measures improved his condition.
For the first few days, Erik laid on a gurney, small and naked beneath a tangle of IV lines and electrical leads. The heart monitor above his head showed a hurried scribble of peaks and valleys. I stared, mesmerized, at the digital readout: 281, 262, 212, 289.
The second day blended into the third, the third into the fourth. Erik’s racing heart never dropped below 200. Each day, he weakened. Then, on his sixth day in the ICU, Erik seemed a bit better. His heart rate and blood pressure stabilized. And on the seventh day, he tried to breathe on his own. That afternoon, Dr. Wessel told Jim and me, “I think Erik’s winning. My prediction is in three years, he’ll be playing soccer.”
At eight o’clock, when the night nurse arrived, Erik lay dozing, unbothered by the buzzers and bells of a dozen machines. I watched as she kissed my son on the forehead. “He’s looking good,” she said.
I nodded. I, too, had grown used to Erik’s blue-black feet and swollen lips, to stitches in his scalp and groin, even to the false, hissing breath of the respirator.
Still, I felt uneasy. “I’m going downstairs for a while,” I told the nurse.
A heavy November rain pounded on the roof of the hospital chapel. I sat in a rear pew and tried to pray. In front of me a man wept, forehead pressed into his hands. I recognized him from the sixth-floor lounge. His five-year-old daughter had received a heart transplant. He turned and smiled at me through his tears.
Then the doors of the chapel swung open. A man stood silhouetted. “Things are very bad,” I heard my husband say. “They want to see us.”
We ran to the elevators at the end of the hall. On the ride up, I pressed my hand to my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. Dr. Walsh won’t let us down, I thought as he ushered us toward the parents’ lounge. He has been with us fro
m the start, has gone many nights without sleep for our son.
A “Do Not Disturb” sign was taped to the lounge door. “We can’t go in there,” I said, then realized the sign was meant to exclude everyone but us.
Dr. Walsh closed the door. “Erik went into cardiac arrest thirty minutes ago,” he told us. “We’ve been unable to resuscitate him. I’m so sorry.”
Jim and I sat holding hands, but I remember feeling separated from my body. I did not see Dr. Wessel race through the halls in a tuxedo, summoned by beeper from a dinner. Nor did I see Dr. Walsh return to the resuscitation team that, against all hope, still pumped Erik’s heart. I just sat there—disbelieving.
At Erik’s bedside, Dr. Wessel searched through yards of readout tapes, studying patterns, frantic for an answer. Finally, someone switched the heart monitor off, and in that moment Dr. Wessel called for a syringe. Perhaps, he reasoned, fluid had built up in the sac that surrounds the heart and compressed the beating. He slid the needle deep inside Erik’s chest and pulled. Fluid flowed into the tube. Erik’s heart heaved, then pumped.
Dr. Walsh returned fifteen minutes later to the parents’ lounge. He was crying. “There’s been a major change,” he said. “It’s incredible. Erik is alive.”
I came back to my body. “Can we see him?” Jim asked. “We need to see him.”
Dr. Walsh cleared his throat.
“There’s something you should know,” he said. “We’re not getting any neurological response. There’s a possibility of brain damage.”
When Jim and I saw Erik in the hour after Dr. Wessel had saved his life, his chest was punctured and bloodied, his mouth open in what looked like a scream. But what frightened me most were his eyes—unblinking pupils dilated wide. I looked into those vacant eyes and felt horror. He’s worse than dead, I thought. He’s ruined.