Once Upon a Wish (37 page)

They tried for two months at Arkansas Children’s and another two at MD Anderson in Houston, where doctors determined that those tiny cells had multiplied and cancer had taken over 100 percent of Dakota’s body.

After realizing that chemo wasn’t working, they exhausted every
experimental and compassionate drug and determined a second transplant would most likely be fatal.

“I’m afraid Dakota doesn’t have long to live,” said Dr. Michael Rytting, one of Dakota’s doctors from MD Anderson, whom Henry and Sharon had grown to respect and trust over the course of the past year. He was one of those special doctors who treated patients the way Sharon imagined he would treat his own child. He was Dakota’s favorite doctor, he had years of experience, he specialized in cancer treatment, and he had an MD behind his name.

Henry and Sharon, however, had never made decisions based on statistics or speculations, and they weren’t about to start. They trusted the man standing before them, but trust only went so far. They needed to know if it was time to start seeking other options, finding other solutions. They were not going to give up.

“How long?” Sharon asked. “A month, a couple of months, years?”

“I’m thinking less than a year,” Dr. Rytting said sadly. “Single digit months.”

Dakota’s blood had become a river of cancer, but his organs were still healthy, and Henry and Sharon were not going to wait around for their son to die. They stayed up late each night, got up early every morning, to research any other possibility, any other solution, to save their son.

A friend at church told them about a missionary from Little Rock who was receiving treatment in Jerusalem, Israel, from Dr. Shimon Slavin, who, according to all of their research, was world-renowned for his work, untraditional and sometimes experimental, with cancer.

“Blood cancer doesn’t scare me,” Dr. Slavin said to Sharon when she called to explain Dakota’s situation. “If his organs are good, get him here healthy, and I can help him.”

His unwavering confidence rushed through the phone lines and into Sharon and Henry’s ears, into their hearts. They needed to get to Jerusalem.

“He’s your best option,” Dr. Rytting confirmed. “If Dakota was my son, I would do it. I’m not saying it’ll work, but it’s your best option.”

They had one week to return to Arkansas from Houston, get passports, and collect the money to pay Israel’s Hadassah Medical Hospital upfront—$175,000. Henry and Sharon planned to mortgage their home, but instead, word of mouth in the small town of Cabot spread like wildfire through every home, store, restaurant, and church.

In one Sunday, their home church offerings raised $40,000, while other community churches raised a combined total of $40,000. After golf tournaments, school fundraisers, and personal donations, Henry and Sharon needs were met—ample enough to cover all expenses in one week.

In Cabot, coming together as a community was a way of life. Aside from leaving for a few years to go to college, Henry grew up there and had never left. Cabot was home, and its people were his family. Local media had covered Dakota’s story from the beginning, keeping everyone in town up-to-date on his condition, encouraging endless support, welcoming love and prayers. But Henry, overwhelmed by their generosity, never imagined they would come together in such a powerful way for their son.

They had returned from Houston to Cabot on a Thursday, and within one week, they scrambled to pack and obtain all necessary medical releases and passports before boarding a plane from Little Rock to Jerusalem, where they would live for nearly four months. Dr. Slavin’s plan was to perform a transplant on Dakota, but not with Riley’s cells this time. Wiping away Dakota’s blood to replace it with his brother’s was no longer a solution—he was going to use Sharon’s cells, a partial donor.

He would replace half of Dakota’s blood with hers and let the battle begin with a graft-versus-host situation, where the healthy cells would fight against the remaining cancer cells, hopefully
victoriously. It would be a fifty-fifty war, with well-planned strategies by Dr. Slavin and complicated manipulation tactics that would potentially wipe out the cancer cells.

During the first several days in Jerusalem, Dakota and his family felt like they had stepped back in time and into the pages of the Bible. In between blood draws and preliminary tests, Dakota remained well enough to see many of the places he had studied in Sunday school since he was a little boy, turning scripture he had read and pictures he had seen into something real.

Together, Dakota and his family walked along the edges of the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, and visited the Valley of Megiddo, Nazareth, and the Jordan River. The day before entering the hospital, they went to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed his last prayer before crucifixion. They went into the Church of All Nations, a monastery that enshrines a piece of bedrock where Jesus had prayed. They walked along the quiet, marble floors, admiring the beautiful, floor-to-ceiling murals and mosaics, until they reached the center of the church, the Rock of Agony.

Taking turns, Dakota, Riley, Henry, and Sharon leaned down and placed their hands on the rock, closing their eyes, saying the same prayer.

Dakota’s transplant, his last chance, was the next day, and as they walked quietly from the church and into Jerusalem’s warm, promising air, Dakota sat without a word on the steps outside the church.

Henry and Sharon looked at each other and tugged at Riley’s arm, motioning him away. They gave Dakota the space he needed, the quiet he craved in that very moment where, though she will never know for sure, Sharon assumed her son was talking with the Lord, praying for His healing, moved by the burden Christ must have felt when kneeling at that very rock the day before His crucifixion.

Elbows resting on his knees, head in his hands, Dakota looked out over the old City of Jerusalem and wiped his tears.

“I want to be with Jesus,” Dakota said.

He was ready.

They had been back from Israel for more than nine months, where a transplant with Sharon’s cells had failed and another using Riley’s cells for rescue wasn’t enough. Riley had given his brother life for the second time, just enough to bring him home to enjoy a couple of months, once again, in remission, his future unknown.

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A few months after writing those words to his brother, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) sped along cancer’s mission of taking Dakota’s life, which it did on March 2, 2006, when he was fifteen years old, four years after his diagnosis.

During the last few months of his life, as Dakota suffered through GVHD with respiratory syncytial viruses and lung and skin infections, he came to peace with thoughts of Heaven as his new home and God and angels, his new family.

Sharon had prayed on the hillsides of Jerusalem in the early mornings that God would take her life instead. But when they got home and Dakota’s condition worsened, pain and misery defining his life, hope was no longer something to hold onto, so she made one final plea before accepting the destiny her son had already accepted.

“Please just give Dakota the thirty-three years you gave to your own son, Jesus,” she asked, but she knew that God had His own plan, His own reason for taking Dakota.

From the day he took his last breath in Sharon’s arms, she struggled to see that reason—struggled to recognize God’s plan, to know His intentions, to understand His purpose for Dakota in the lives of others. But she never doubted.

Less than a year later, she became involved with the Keep The Faith (KTF) Foundation in memory of Dakota and two other children who lost their lives to cancer, as a way to keep the spirits of those children alive and to carry out what she believed was their purpose—to help other families with what hers had already been through.

With annual fundraisers and contributions, the Foundation raised more than $100,000 in its first six years to help families
of children with cancer. In addition to helping families through prayer and encouragement, they also help relieve financial burdens by paying medical bills and other expenses accrued through cancer diagnosis and treatment.

A true believer that no tears exist in Heaven, Sharon knows Dakota is watching from above, unable to see the wretched pain of loss she and her family live with every day. He cannot hear the sadness in their voices, feel the pain in their hearts. He can only smile, and she gives him plenty of reasons to do so through KTF and its largest fundraiser, Pennies from Heaven (PFH).

She and KTF volunteers place buckets in schools, businesses, churches, and civic organizations all over town annually on March 5—the day they buried Dakota—and their first goal in 2008 was to collect one million pennies in one hundred days. They collected 1.1 million pennies—$11,000. They have collected a few thousand more every year, and in 2011, when they launched PFH statewide, the program raised $21,000.

Sharon asks no questions, has no doubts, when pennies cross her path on the sidewalk or appear strategically placed on Dakota’s tombstone—they are small, shiny reminders that he is always with her.

And over the years, with each fallen penny, Sharon, Henry, and Riley have slowly learned to see the world again through their tears, feel again through their constant ache, enjoy moments through their grief and pain, their forever loss.

They have realized that Dakota is always with them, sending reminders with pennies on the street or memories with the Gator he left behind—a gift for them, a gift that will forever give.

On the afternoon of Dakota’s death, Riley rode the Gator deep into the forest, through its endless trees, into the serenity his brother had always found in the woods. He found peace in the
Gator’s hum that day, guidance in its freedom, hope that riding the Gator would always bring a sense of comfort, of closeness, to Dakota and his love for his Gator.