Home Away From Home in 2000: The RMH

Keeping in mind that I was pregnant...I hated the Ronald McDonald House from May to August of 2000. The first time I walked into our room (Anderson was still in the hospital) I got in the shower, fell against the wall and cried for over an hour. Our room consisted of a bathroom, two double beds, a closet, and if you were lucky, a TV.
At that time everyone staying in Seattle's RMH had a cancer patient being treated at Children's Hospital. So besides sharing a family room, kitchen and eating area everyone expected you to share your child's diagnosis and treatment information...I didn't want to. I still remember when one woman came up to me and asked what Anderson had been diagnosed with. When I told her Leukemia she asked which kind. After telling her it was A.L.L she replied, "Oh wheeew, the good kind." I was so angry I couldn't speak. The GOOD kind. I wanted to punch her in the face. Please tell me on this great green earth what is possibly GOOD about my son having Leukemia! Later I did come to realize that she was right, Anderson did have the good kind of Leukemia. But no mother wants to hear those words only days after her world has been ripped out from under her. OK...so the RMH. We were sleeping in a hotel size room. We pushed the beds together to make one big King size bed. If you look at the above photo you will see a cupboard circled in red. That, my friends, was our kitchen space...one small cupboard to store food for a family of four. Our fridge space was one metal basket about the size of the fruit drawer in your refrigerator. Our freezer basket was even smaller. If you did cook a meal in the kitchen you were then forced to eat in the common area...never a private family meal...ever.

Our first idea for a solution was to buy a small fridge and put it into the room...but then there were the RMH rules. Absolutely NO food in the rooms...ever. While I was pregnant we ate out twice a day, seven days a week. I still remember when one of our rooms was on the first floor we would smuggle in pizzas through the window.

Some other house rules were:

~No bare feet outside of the bedrooms
~If you are coughing or sick you must wear a face mask
~If you get to go home for a day or two you must report back into the RMH by 10:00PM on the final day. (We always got into trouble for breaking this one.
~No "stay over" guests. (We always broke this rule too)
~Do your assigned chore every day and sign it off on the paper
~Don't leave your laundry in the dryer for more than 15 minutes after it is completed
It was very hard to be an adult and suddenly have to report to other adults.

But then I had Sydney and I returned to the RMH with less hormones and a lot better attitude. The lady who I wanted to punch in the face became a dear friend and another lady, Mickey, had this to say shortly after we returned, "Wow Amy, we didn't really like you over the summer, but you have totally changed!" She was right. We started hanging out around the House more often and we became attached to those we lived with.

The RMH became an amazing, loving home away from home for us. We spent every moment of every day together as a family. We wrestled and played games on our big bed.


We all read a ton! (See our Christmas Stockings hanging on the wall) John swore our family would never have video games, but when your child's counts are low you are stuck inside and can't go anywhere. (Basically that means that Anderson's blood Counts were extremely low due to his chemotherapy and his immunity was non existent.) Our family played A LOT of video games. John and I would stay up all hours of the night playing Mario kart and Mario Tennis on the Nintendo 64.Since Anderson was missing Preschool we had him and Cayden do "book work" every day.

Each week there would be a Therapy Dog that would come in to play with the kids. One day I came into the family room and there was a huge Rottweiler. I leaned over to my boys and said, "Hey guys! That looks just like Carl!"
Carl is the name of a dog in several books by Alexandra Day. In each book the dog babysits a little girl and they have all kinds of adventures together. My boys loved those books. The lady who was with the dog looked up at me and said very matter-of-factly, "This is Carl." She was Alexandra Day! Of course I immediately ran up to our room to get all of our Carl books and she signed them all. We saw Carl a lot while we were at the RMH. He was one of the kindest dogs I had ever met.

Anderson with Carl.

While we were there they asked my boys to participate in a photo shoot with Ronald. They were getting shots that they could use to promote Ronald McDonald House Charities. Keep in mind that this all took place from May 2000 until April 2001. On Thursday March 11, 2004 John was in Tacoma for the State Basketball tournament. Someone had left their Seattle Times on the bench in front of him so John snatched it up. When John opened it to the sports section this is what he saw... A HUGE 1/2 page add for the RMH with Cayden as their poster boy! The rest of that year I had several people come back from Mariners games and tell me that they saw Cayden's picture plastered on the big screen at the game.

That year was the worst and best year of my life. It was amazing how complete strangers became united through the sicknesses of their children. We had many heartaches that year. A teenage boy from Alaska was being sent home. There was nothing more that could be done for him so he was going home to die. He didn't want to go home. All his friends were at the RMH. Everyone in Seattle knew what he was going through, they were just like him. I still remember the day John took the RMH van and that young man to his last Seattle Mariners game. He died a month later in Alaska.

Many other children that we came to know and love lost their fight that year. As a mother I have often wondered why my child made it through. I see things differently now. I never pass up the opportunity to drop some change in those clear RMH Charity boxes. Each night spent at the RMH was $12. You were sent a bill at the end of your stay that simply stated that if you had the funds great...if not, no worries. I don't fret about some of the little things in life like I used to. I try to let my kids live. If they aren't hurting anything or anyone...it's probably OK.

They have since remodeled the RMH and it is no longer only for Cancer Patients. This makes me a little sad to think my home away from home has changed. I truly came to love my stay there and I will forever be in debt to the staff who worked there and the families who lived there.

Anderson's Diagnosis

In May of 2000 Anderson was 4 1/2 years old and I was 5 months pregnant with Sydney. Anderson became very emotional and started to complain that his legs hurt and he didn't want to run and play. Being my first, I assumed this was normal for a strong willed, little boy at that age. I'll admit I was pretty hard on him, telling him to "stop complaining and go outside and play." The symptoms got worse and I noticed redish, purple dots all over his stomach. At first I thought he had taken a magic marker to his tummy but that wasn't the case. A trip to the doctor sent us home with allergy medication. That was helpful. I still remember having to pin Anderson to the floor to get him to swallow that medicine. A day later and Anderson had a fever. I still didn't think much but my mom was really worried. On Monday May 22 I took him in again to the doctor. His fever wouldn't go down and his breath smelled like something had died! Both me and the nurse figured he had a sinus infection so when the doctor ordered blood tests I thought they were a waste of time. And boy was that first blood draw fun...if only I had know how many more were to come.

Later that day I was mowing the lawn and Anderson wanted to ride with me. Being pregnant it had been a long time since I had let him hop on during mowing but something caused me to tell him that he could. Together we mowed the lawn.

After John got home from work he and the boys went for a walk to the canal (where the new high school is being built.) A favorite father-son activity, I got to stay behind and catch up on the laundry. I remember looking out the window of my laundry room and watching the boys head down the street. I watched as John bent over and picked up Anderson and put him on his shoulders. My first thought was that Anderson must have complained about his legs again. Normally I would have returned to my dirty clothes but something made me stand there and enjoy the moment until they were out of sight.

I now know that Heavenly Father was giving me several moments of peace that I would be able to look back on and appreciate.

That evening we received a call from our doctor saying that Anderson's test had come back (they weren't due for another day) and that Anderson was anemic. He needed to come into the hospital for some more tests.

I still felt that nothing was too wrong. Grandpa Cazier and Daddy gave him a blessing, we dropped Cayden off at Grandma Mathews' house and we headed to the hospital.

As soon as we got into a room our doctor came in and told us they suspected Leukemia. I listened to him spout off numbers and statistics but it wasn't until he told us that the top Cancer Doctor in the Tri-Cities was going to come in that it hit me. I leaned up against the wall as I realized that we were talking about cancer. Not the breast cancer that torments both sides of my family, not me having cancer, but my baby boy. My oldest son who was not even in school yet. How could that even be possible.

We were set to drive Anderson to Children's hospital in a day or two, but after the Cancer specialist took a look at his blood results we were scheduled to head out in an ambulance first thing in the morning. They took another blood sample and as soon as those results were in we were scheduled for an immediate emergency air lift to Seattle. Later we found that had we stayed in the Tri-Cities Anderson would not have made it through the night.

The next several hours were a nightmarish blur of tears, phone calls, nurses and family. At first they told us that John could come with me and Anderson on the plane but then they said that there wouldn't be room for him. Anderson clung to Grandma Mathews in the hospital room as she rocked him and sang to him. Family members waited outside in the hall...Alicia and Bill took their minds off everything by reading an I Spy book as they sat on the floor outside the nurses station.

Anderson didn't want to leave Daddy and Grandma until he realized that he got to ride in the back of an ambulance to the airport. Once we were on the plane and in the air my heart sank. I just knew my sweet little boy was going to die. I prayed over and over again that our plane would hit a mountain and that I could die with him. I even thought that maybe that is why John couldn't come with us, then Cayden would still have a dad after I was gone. These thoughts left and were replaced by a hymn that I repeated over and over again in my mind. To this day I can not remember what that hymn was, but if I did I am sure it would now be my favorite.When we landed at Boeing Field in Seattle Anderson was talking up a storm. The Air flight Nurses thought he was the cutest thing. He was so excited that right next to our plane was a parked helicopter. Another trip in an ambulance and we were safe at Children's hospital.

Anderson was placed in a high risk category because of the amount of "blasts" or Leukemia cells in his blood stream. From the time they took his blood at the doctors office to the time they took it at Kadlec, the cancer cells had almost doubled. By the time we reached Children's it had nearly doubled again. Thank goodness for Chemotherapy. We were told that the redish/purple dots were petichei. Anderson was basically bleeding internally. His bad breath...he was dying inside.

Anderson has been poked and prodded more than any child should. In the beginning, at 4 1/2, he would get mad, cry and (to my horror) call the nurses stupid. My wonderful, amazing mom simply held Anderson and said, "Honey, the nurses aren't stupid. They are actually very smart. But what they have to do to you sure feels stupid doesn't it." After he received his port, he became a pro at getting blood draws and being "accessed" was just a part of life.


He was on so many different medications that he was happy and silly one minute and angry and in tears the next. The huge amounts of Prednisone caused him to puff up and to eat like there was no tomorrow. He had weekly treatments were they would sedate him and then give him a spinal tap of chemo so that it could attack the Leukemia that was in the brain. We were in Seattle, staying at the Ronald McDonald House, for a year. Two times we were able to come home for a two month period, and lucky for me one of those stays was when Sydney was born. We had a lot of family time that year. We learned to love the RMH and the people who stayed there. We had some fun times and I will be sharing those throughout this week.

The first week we were at the RMH my dad brought Anderson a Chicken Soup for The Little Soul CD. When my mom and I played the second song we couldn't believe what we heard. It is sung by a little girl and a boy, and as the words came out through the CD player this is what we heard"

Tell ya what I'm thinking, honestly and true,

How come I came to life as me and not to life as you?

Oh I know the feeling of when I'm by myself,

I wonder why I'm who I am and not somebody else.

Way down underneath it all where no one gets to see.

I'll bet it feels no different being you or being me.

Why was I born when I was born?

Who was I born to be?

Why was I given, the body I'm livin' in?

(girl) Why am I Gabriel?

(boy) Why am I Anderson?

Why am I me? Why am I me? Why am I me?

Why am I here? Why am I now?

Why am I who you see?

Why was I handed the person I've landed in?
(girl) Why am I Gabriel?
(boy) Why am I Anderson?
Why am I me? Why am I me? Why am I me?

If I was born, somebody else,

betcha I still would be me.

So many beings I know I could be me in.

Why must I be in this being you see me in?

(girl) Why am I Gabriel?
(boy) Why am I Anderson?
Why am I me? Why am I me? Why am I me?
Why am I me? Why am I me? Why am I me?

You Talked me Into It

Before...
After...

Why I Love This Age!

The Joy of Flying.

(John and Branson on the Buddy Walk)

~

You're friends with everyone...even if you just met them.

(Audrey and Branson after Sydney's Baptism)

~

No one questions your sudden melt downs.

~

Diets are unheard of...in fact you are constantly encouraged to try new and exciting foods.

~

There is no such thing as "playing with your food" it is simply how you eat.

~

When you're tired...you sleep. Heck, tack 3 naps a day if ya want!

~

The world is yours for the taking. No worries about Stock Markets, gas prices or who to vote for... Which Hot Wheels to chew on is your biggest decision of the day.

~

You love yourself...

~

In fact, you get pretty excited every time you see yourself in a mirror.

~

And not only do you think you are pretty neat stuff...everyone else wants to be around you and give you loves and tell you how cute you are! No one cares if you droll or have buggers in your nose.

~

You have your whole life ahead of you.

~

And of course...clothes are always optional.

~

"Look Mom I ate it all gone. See, the middle of my tray is completely clean."

"Oops...maybe a few got away from me."

Buddy Walk

On Saturday our family participated in the Buddy Walk for Down Syndrome. Each of the kids raided their penny banks to donate to the cause.
A teacher at McLoughlin was in charge of it this year and he had a great turnout of MAC teachers and staff.
Before Branson was born his ultrasound showed that the bones in his legs were not growing at the right pace and there was way too much amniotic fluid. We were told that our unborn baby may have Down Syndrome. Later when more tests showed the same results over time we were told that there was a 1 in 30 chance that our baby had Down Syndrome. After a good cry on the drive home, I thought, "bring it on." I have no other kids home during the day. I have all the time in the world to take care of one of Heavenly Father's special children. I felt an immediate calm that lasted through the rest of my pregnancy. Branson was not born with Down Syndrome, but I am grateful for the knowledge that a loving Heavenly Father gave me that if we had been sent one of his choice spirits our home would have been blessed.
It was a well organized event with free pizza, pop and snacks, music and activities for the kids. I did have to laugh though. On every turn of the mile loop there was a batch of local cheerleaders cheering us on, pom poms and all, "Your almost there! Way to go! All right!" As I watched everyone walk by, completely ignoring the cheerleaders while they smiled and bounced away I thought, "Wow...that used to be me." When I cheered for Pasco high and then later at BYU we were often asked to support things like this, but I think I will save all that for another post.

Troop 180-Steppin' it Up

So just when I feel like I am finally getting the Cub Scout thing down, my boys turn into Scouts and it is a whoooole new set of rules! But our ward is really getting going where Scouting is concerned and I am so grateful to a wonderful group of leaders who are helping our boys on their journey to earning their Eagle.

So as clueless as I was...Anderson received his Tenderfoot, Second and First Class, all immediately following his 13th birthday. For those of you who are as uninformed as I was...Let me just say that Cayden will have all of these completed before his 12th birthday. Did I just admit to how far behind my oldest child is in Scouting...oh the shame!
But like I mentioned earlier...we have been blessed with some amazing leaders! Scott Ashton is one cool guy (You have got to check out his hobbies here) He is right up Anderson's alley. He is so passionate about his scouts and his calling that the boys can't help but be successful. I owe him a huge Clueless Mom "thank you."

~Anderson and Scott~

Our amazing Bishop Moon saw there was a need to get the 11 year old Scouts going. For the last several months he has had the boys over to his home so they could begin their scouting experience. (Like he doesn't have enough things to take up his time!) Each of the 11 year old scouts received their Scout award, all thanks to this incredible man. I love it when he says, "When it comes to Scouting I have shaved my head and drank the Kool-aid." Now I am not entirely sure but I think what he means is that he will do whatever it takes to show these young men how important this program is. Well Bishop...you are.

~Cayden and Bishop Moon~My sweet husband. I always tease him that when it came to Scouting he got as far as Beaver. (For those of you who have all girls in the family...there is no such thing as Beaver, but that's my point.) He is over the 14-15 year old Scouts in our ward and he is trying his best, but he is still so clueless on how things work. But he loves the boys and he is encouraging them to continue until they get their Eagle. He'll get it...some day.

~John handing out merit badges to Tanner~

Sydney is now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints!

I don't think I have ever seen anyone more excited to enter into the waters of baptism.

~Sydney and her dad before her baptism~ Thank you to everyone who came and supported Sydney on her special day.

~Sydney and her primary teacher Sis. McDonald~

Grandpa Mathews gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. Uncle Ryan spoke on baptism. Grandma Mathews played the piano and Aunt Alicia led the music.

~Sydney with Grandma and Grandpa Mathews~

Grandpa Cazier said the opening prayer and Anderson said the closing prayer.

~Sydney with Grandma and Grandpa Cazier~

OK...so why does everyone cooperate and smile perfect with such an uncool background. Put us outside in a beautiful landscape and I've got my Christmas card photo!