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Devastated Twice
Watching it on TV, you couldn't get your mind around the devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But imagine that you lived in the area and your child was being treated for life-threatening cancer.Would his medical records be destroyed by the flood? Would the hospitals be able to function? Would there be enough doctors and nurses to go around? Families who had lost everything else were desperate not to lose a child too. As rescue operations lagged and hope dwindled, one medical center went into action: St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.
Briana Cuevas, a beautiful, green-eyed straight-A student, was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma on July 21, four days before her 11th birthday and five weeks before the hurricane hit. Her mother, Alissa, says that before these life-altering events, she and her husband, Greg, and their kids Kylah, 1, Landon, 3, and Briana were a typical busy family in Long Beach, Mississippi. Landon would be racing through the house in his Spider-Man pajamas, pretending to be Captain Hook, with Kylah in hot pursuit, clutching her Barbie dolls. Briana might be in her room on a tie-dyed blanket, listening to her favorite CDs by the country band Rascal Flatts, and IM'ing her friends. "With both of us working, we'd get home, have dinner, do baths, get everybody to bed -- that's maybe two hours with the kids every night," says Alissa. "You feel guilty because you're not spending enough time with them."
During the summer, Briana wasn't feeling well, but her symptoms were vague. At first her mom guessed it might just be moodiness from the onset of puberty. Doctors thought her swollen lymph nodes might signal mono. That led to more tests and a PET scan, which revealed large tumors in her chest and spleen. When the former Miss Pre-Teen Mississippi was finally diagnosed with cancer at Children's Hospital, New Orleans, it was shocking and devastating. But when Hurricane Katrina followed Briana's third dose of chemotherapy, the family's whole world fell apart.
The Cuevas family wasn't alone. There were probably 200 or so kids with active cancer in the Gulf Coast area, estimates Joe Mirro, MD, chief medical officer of St. Jude. Without access to their medications or treatments, they could be at serious risk. "When your kid has cancer, you've already been through one hurricane," he says. Now many families were going to have to prepare for another one. He knew he had to do something to help them -- and fast.
At Children's Hospital, 16-year-old Kyle Bergeron was continuing his valiant struggle against acute myelogenous leukemia, or AML. Since he was first diagnosed in March, he'd been home in Luling, Louisiana, a total of only five weeks. A musical theater buff, he had last performed in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Bald and reed-thin from the industrial-strength chemo, he had also just undergone a stem-cell transplant from his twin brother, Logan. He was in the isolation unit while he waited for his immune system to slowly rebuild itself. Vulnerable to infection, he could not afford to expose his weakened body to any germs.
His mother, Vicki, remembers, "I was in complete denial that Katrina was really coming. Up until the last minute, I kept saying, 'It's going to turn away.' " She and her sister and sons hunkered down on the fourth floor of the hospital. "God had gotten us through so much already," Vicki says, "that I just couldn't see him letting us down now."
Before the hurricane, Ronnie King, 22, was playing Mr. Mom in Harvey, Louisiana, to his 13-month-old boy, Mason. D'Anna Holmes, 21, Mason's mom, was in France doing an internship as a requirement for her major in international business and French at Xavier University. Ronnie was holding down the fort. But something was wrong with their bright-eyed little boy. Born premature at 26 weeks, Mason had been hospitalized for the first four months of his life. But now, his usually high energy level had decreased, he wasn't gaining weight and his abdomen was distended.
In August, soon after D'Anna had returned home from her internship, Mason started throwing up and went all day without eating. The couple took him to the ER at Children's Hospital, where an x-ray showed that his liver was grossly enlarged. On Saturday, August 27, Mason was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma, or liver cancer. "Emotionally, we were shocked," Ronnie says. "But we had to hold it together. A hurricane was on the way."
After Briana's third chemo treatment at Children's Hospital, it was clear that Katrina was not going to change course. "We knew the power would go out, and that Bri couldn't be exposed to any bacteria," says her mom, Alissa. "We had to leave. I packed four days' worth of clothes. My husband, Greg, thought that was too much." They drove to Atlanta. When the hurricane hit, it destroyed their Long Beach neighborhood. But they did not know the fate of their home. "We didn't have a clue what was going on. All we knew was that Briana's next treatment was supposed to be on Thursday. What were we going to do?"
At 12 feet above sea level and with heavy metal storm shutters in place, Children's Hospital was ready to weather the storm. But the families inside weren't so confident. Kyle was in isolation, and no one could see him without wearing a mask and gloves. "The hardest part was having to see my friends through a window," he says, "or on the phone."
When Kyle was first diagnosed with leukemia, his mom said to him, "I will be with you every step of the way. Your pain will be my pain, and I'll try to take as much of it away from you as I can." As the hurricane approached, she never left his side. She couldn't reach her husband, Charlie, because neither cell phones nor land lines were working. "I knew he was probably OK," says Vicki. "But I just needed to hear his voice. I was near the breaking point."
They were moved to the inside of the hospital, away from the biggest windows. It was very dark because of the storm shutters, so it was hard to tell day from night. The electricity was out, but Vicki's sister, Sherry Duvall, had a radio, and one nurse had a lantern. "The wind was horrific. At one point, something hit the windows with a really loud bang, and I was so afraid this was it." Luckily, the window didn't break, but the storm seemed to go on forever. "The wait was the worst thing," she recalls. "But then, suddenly, we were all right." Kyle says that he had felt the bed shaking, but still, "they were the nervous wrecks. I was the calm one."
They had food, and plenty of bottled water. They were able to shower by lantern light -- till the water supply stopped running. But it soon became clear that they would have to get Kyle to a safer place.
In another part of the hospital, Ronnie, D'Anna and baby Mason had also waited out the storm. Mason clutched his little beanbag monkey, Alfred, who had been by his side since birth. "I was expecting it to be a lot more scary," says D'Anna, who had survived hurricanes before at her mother's house in Gulfport. "I didn't understand how bad things were." After the levees had broken, someone plugged in a TV in the lobby where a generator was working, and Ronnie finally saw just how devastated the area was.
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