I have spent much time in a place that I pass each day on my way into work but never really knew until recently what all existed behind the brick walls of the building that I only see from the outside.

My precious little friend, Regan Eva, has spent much of the four months of her life in a hospital bed at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta on the Emory campus. I work on the campus so it has become somewhat of a routine for me to pop over to see her and her Mom and my close friend, Kristin, frequently when I get off work. Regan just received her third chemo therapy treatment for her retinoblastoma that has resided in her little brain and eyes since birth. I have lost count of her blood transfusions. I have been overwhelmed with emotion each time I walk the halls of this children’s hospital and see so many sick little children and their family members coping with whatever disease they are having to face and deal with on a daily basis. A disease that has over taken their normal lives and formed a routine of daily function much different than they ever dreamed when they held their precious child in their arms at birth daydreaming of a future of fun times and precious memories.

It has humbled me beyond belief and stricken me with a depth of grief that I didn’t know a women who has no children of her own could ever experience.

(Hang on, give me a minute to pull it back together to continue writing)

This new awareness had already made enough of an impact on me that I thought I was beginning to deal with it okay until a couple of weeks ago I was walking through the halls of the hospital on my way to Regan’s room when the overhead intercom system sounded off a “code blue”. My first thought, being in the medical profession for so many years, was oh no someone has gone into cardiac arrest again. I got off the elevators to see doctors and the code team running down the hall when it dawned on me…..I am in a children’s hospital! A CHILD has arrested!!!!!!!!!  A CHILD!!!

(hold on again,my eyes are welling up with tears)

When I got to Regan’s room her nurse was in there and I asked her if that code blue meant the same here as in the hospital and she looked up at me with a sadness in her eyes and said yes. I asked her if that happened often and she responded with a heaviness in her voice, more than we want it to.

I felt a tightness in my chest and a buckling in my knees for a moment and could not speak. The nurse looked over at me as she was adjusting that precious little baby in her crib and gave me a look of understanding my feelings.

It was an event that has made an everlasting imprint on my heart.