Once Upon a Wish (34 page)

Most treatments kept him in the hospital for a week at a time before he was able to go home, where Sharon, his “codoctor,” administered natural remedies she had researched to keep him fighting—Shiitake mushrooms to build his immune system, oxygenated water to supply his blood, green barley for its natural healing ability, and milk from a local goat farm for his bones.

After learning that sugar can potentially feed leukemia cells, she kept Dakota on a low-sugar diet, had him take as many herbs and vitamins as possible, and eat fresh, raw vegetables to build up his weakened immune system. These remedies seemed to keep away the fever and infection that many leukemia patients developed, but Dakota still had good days and bad—days when he couldn’t get out of bed, days he couldn’t keep anything down, quiet days of sickness and sleep.

One morning during a hospital stay, Dakota slept soundly, peacefully, as the sun rose and poured in through his window, crawling slowly across his face and onto his pillow, revealing the
undeniable sign that they were actually going through this, cancer’s most irrefutable presence—a beautiful lock of strawberry hair lay, detached, inches from his head.

This can’t be!
Sharon wailed in her mind, silent tears and whispered sobs escaping her uncontrollably.
This isn’t right!

It didn’t take long before every strand, falling out by the handful, was gone.

When Dakota saw the sympathy, the sadness, in Henry’s eyes, he teased, “Daddy, you always said hair was way overrated.”

Dakota looked at his father’s balding head, sensed from his smile that he was warming Henry’s broken heart.

“Now I look like you!”

He was easing Henry’s pain, softening the severity of his situation, as he had tried to do from the beginning when he said with determination, “I can beat this.”

During hospital stays, Dakota had good days and bad. On good days, when chemo would release its firm grip, even momentarily, Dakota would roam the halls and even leave with doctors’ permission to go to the movies, race go-carts with Henry and Riley, and make visits to Toys “R” Us, before returning for more treatment.

“I’ll be in here!” he whispered to his parents loudly one afternoon on a good day, crawling into the medical closet of his hospital room.

He had filled two syringes with apple juice and closed the door behind him, waiting patiently to hear the voice of one of his nurses.

“All right, Dakota …” she said before he threw open the door, aimed and squirted the juice, his laugh filling the room, the halls, the lives of other families nearby who needed the sound of a child’s laughter.

Dakota had pulled his first prank at six years old while visiting
Sharon’s mom, “Mama Lamb,” on her farm at the end of a dirt road in Delight, Arkansas. Mama Lamb’s tiny washroom was in the corner of the barn, the clothesline outside. It was a breezy day and clothes flapped in the wind as Dakota helped hang them with wooden pins.

When Mama Lamb entered the barn, darkened without the help of the sun peeking through its door, Dakota used all his weight to swing it shut, locking her tightly into that dim, smelly barn.

“Dakota, if I ever get a hold of you, I’m gonna wear you out!” Mama Lamb shouted, and Dakota chuckled, just the way he did when he squirted apple juice at his nurses or put Riley in his place in his hospital bed, shocking the nurses when they’d pull back the sheets.

On days when Dakota wasn’t feeling well, when it took all of his energy to get out of bed, he would pile games, books, puzzles, and video games from friends, family, and church members into the hospital’s red wagon—the wagon used to discharge kids once they got well—and drag his IV pole with its hanging bag of fluid to distribute the gifts to the other sick children on the third floor.

Dakota visited a two-year-old little girl with leukemia down the hall one day and told his parents about how happy he had made her. He imitated her smile, mimicked her laugh, reliving the girl’s joy when he handed her a “Dora the Explorer” balloon. “Oooh, Dora! I love Dora!”

He created smiles with jokes, laughter from words, and hope with his presence in the hallways coming and going from his hospital room.

   6   

Dakota remained in remission but struggled against the tight grip of chemotherapy, its cruel demands, relentless misery, until May,
when he received his final treatment and a “last chemo party” in the oncology department’s outside courtyard where he was showered with love and gifts from friends and family.

The courtyard’s water fountain, its colorful flowers and small wooden bridge, had been a place of escape, of make-believe, for Sharon and Dakota throughout his treatment. They had left the doors of the cold, sterile-smelling hospital every day to enter this place of peace, where they shared their thoughts, sat in silence, read books, and made plans for when Dakota came home for good.

Sky-high glass windows with peeking patients surrounded them, reminding them of where they were—in the middle of this nightmare. But in those moments, in their minds, they had left the hospital and entered the outside world.

The day of the party was a day when the door opened, even just the slightest bit, to that outside world—that world filled with family and friends and a future without cancer. Dakota had undergone his last treatment that morning, and in his twelve-year-old mind, “last” meant forever. But for Sharon and Henry, “last” signified only a moment in time—the “last” treatment in a month, a year, a lifetime? They didn’t know.

All they knew was they had this moment, this very special moment that brought Dakota, weak and sick from chemo, out of his hospital room and into the sunshine, where six of his best friends gathered around and performed a humorous jingle they wrote about Dakota and his love for sports and life.

Bless his heart
, Sharon thought.
He just doesn’t feel good.

She could see the misery in his face, the weakness in his eyes, but, as always, the joy he had in his heart, the hope and happiness he felt in his soul, lived in his smile, which reached from ear to ear as he received gifts and hugs from his friends, his family, his doctors, and his nurses.

A hole of uncertainty ached in Sharon’s heart as she watched her son’s happy but pained face, and while the reality of possible relapse would inevitably live in the back of her mind, she decided to view this moment as a milestone, the first step in possibly beating cancer forever.

The peace that surrounded them that day—their family and friends, the bridge and the trickle of the fountain, the place that had provided hours of respite for Dakota and his mom—would soon become a memory for them to hang on to. A memory of the place they left, the door they stepped through, to re-enter life.

When the party was over, that’s where Dakota went, to the outside world, the real world—the world he had wanted to rejoin for the past five months. He had the entire summer before his seventh-grade year to let his body heal from the damages of chemotherapy. After a few weeks, Sharon, who hadn’t left Dakota’s side since December, knew she needed to let go.

She, Henry, and Riley drove Dakota to church camp at Camp Wyldewood, about thirty miles away, where she and her siblings had spent their summers growing up. Dakota walked beside them, bald head held high, a proud cancer survivor. The camp nurse was aware of his condition and would administer his doctor-prescribed medicine, as well as Sharon’s natural remedies, during the week he was gone. She felt confident that he would be in good hands but said a little prayer anyway that God would take good care of Dakota while he was out of her care.

Giddy with excitement and anticipation of long-awaited freedom, Dakota eagerly followed his parents to the cabin where he would be staying and listened as they shared Dakota’s story with his bunkmates. Certain that church camp was the safest place for their son to enjoy himself without getting teased for having a bald head, Henry and Sharon wanted to make sure that the other kids
understood and treated him kindly—treated him the way they would treat any of the other children at camp.

Sharon set up Dakota’s bed with his pillows and blankets from home. After he placed his favorite stuffed animal, a black Labrador named Trouble, on top, Sharon smiled and hugged her son, embracing him with all the love inside of her. She saved her tears for the car ride home, focusing, in that moment, only on Dakota’s happiness and his freedom, the greatest gifts she could ever receive.

When they returned a week later to pick up Dakota, he ran from his cabin, tearing down the dirt trail, a big smile leading the way, and skidded to a dusty halt in front of his parents.

“I have hair!” he yelled before wrapping his arms around them. The fuzz tickled Sharon’s chin as she embraced him with all her might.

He has his life back
, she thought, tears dripping into her smile.

When they returned home, Dakota spent every day that summer playing football and basketball in their front yard with Riley and the other neighborhood kids. He dribbled and passed as though he had never been sick and chased runaway balls down the street and into the woods. He returned to school that August and tried out for basketball, making the seventh-grade team.

Dakota played with all his might, with every ounce of vigor as any other player on the court. The first point he made that season was a free throw. Standing at the foul line, looking down at the ball intently, he dribbled in place, looked up at the hoop with determined eyes, and …

Swoosh.

The crowd erupted, Dakota shot a smile at his parents, and Sharon dropped her head into her hands, sobbing right there in the stands, right there in the middle of the wild crowd.

She didn’t care. Her son was back.

Dakota was excelling in all of his pre-advanced placement classes, learning as much as he could to pursue his dream of becoming an engineer, a missionary, or the President of the United States. He thrived in math and had a passion for history, which started as a child when he spent hours creating homemade Civil War and John Wayne movies with neighborhood kids. Dressed in boots, holsters, and bandanas, Dakota would use his parents’ camcorder to film scenes with his friends, rolling handwritten credits at the end on rolls of paper towels. Dakota was the star of every film—always the toughest soldier, always John Wayne, always the last one standing.