Annabelle Manzler
IT TAKES A VILLAGE by Joelle Ragland It’s New Years Day of 2008. All the promise of a clean slate and bright beginnings have been washed away with one phone call. Funny how life can change so quickly. One moment you are hosting a New Year’s Eve party and laughing with friends; the next you are driving to the hospital to offer help to devastated parents.
line was “William 1.” The next e-mail was “William 2.” To date, there have been 129 emails. Each email recounted the day’s events, what the doctors said, what new medications had been prescribed and most importantly, how William was faring. Some days the news from the doctors was encouraging so the emails were funny and upbeat. Others were crushing. “We are surviving, barely,” Ann wrote in one email. “We have each cried about 10 times today. It was a tough day.” After one particularly grueling day Ann wrote, “Hug your babies.” Tears filled my eyes and not knowing the right thing to say, I simply wrote back, “It takes a village and we are your village.” I had no idea how true my words would be.
Ann and Dennis Flaherty, along with their two boys, Charles (6) and William (3), had flown to Boston for the holidays to be with family. As they were waiting to board their returning flight to Cincinnati, Ann noticed William looking a bit yellow. “Must be the airport’s fluorescent lights,” she thought. But, by the time their plane touched down in Cincinnati, it was clear something was seriously wrong. William’s eyes were yellow. The Flahertys called their pediatrician who told them to go straight to the ER.
William’s condition baffled doctors. An unknown assailant was attacking his liver. In fact, the liver enzymes being released into his blood stream were off the charts. Making the situation dire, William’s platelet levels were nearly non-existent. In the weeks that followed, little William would be subjected to a battery of painful and scary procedures that included open liver biopsy, spinal tap, PICC line placement, MRI of the brain, full body scan, Central line insertion and 24+ blood transfusions. At one point, Ann and Dennis were told that there was less than a 50% chance of William seeing his 4th birthday. A full 18 days after checking into Children’s Hospital,
They checked into the hospital on New Year’s Eve. And that’s when the Flaherty family would be changed forever. Feeling blindsided, confused, and confined to a tiny room at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, the Flahertys took to sending almost nightly e-mails to a distribution list of friends. This practice helped them to digest the day’s events and was, in a way, therapy. The first e-mail’s subject
Father Seher held a mass in William’s honor 26