BUILDING - Yale-New Haven Hospital

7
SALLY HOWELL
Chelsea the fighter
Our lively daughter Chelsea wasn’t even really that sick the day I
took her to the doctor for a urinary tract infection. I never expected
the pediatrician to send her for an imaging procedure. Imagine my
shock on the Friday afternoon when our 18-month-old was diagnosed
with a Wilms’ tumor, the most common malignant tumor of
the kidney in children.
On Saturday morning, they took her kidney out. A week later,
she began a rigorous course of chemotherapy.
The minute you hear the word cancer you just don’t know
what it means. Your heart begins to race. All sorts of things start
running through your mind and they never leave. Years later, I can
still feel exactly the same feelings I felt that first day.
Soon I was sitting in waiting rooms filled with children playing,
and my daughter just sat in my lap. There were little girls wearing
ribbons and bows, and Chelsea was losing her hair. At home I
would wash her hair and it would come out in my hand.
She hated the chemo. We had to hold her down every time.
She screamed, cried, kicked through it until she tired herself out.
Chelsea was a fighter – strong, rambunctious, full of energy –
and her doctors acted quickly and were on top of their game. As
she got better, the oncologist asked me to speak to other families
of children with Wilms’ tumors, and I found it helped to talk to others
in the same situation. Through my personal experiences I know
the cancer hospital will be a place where there is a common thread
among people. It will provide families strength and support among
themselves simply by sharing the pain of how awful it is to have a
child with cancer, and ease some of the stress of a terrible journey.
Sally Howell is the manager of business services in the diagnostic imaging
department at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She testified in support of Yale-
New Haven Hospital’s new cancer hospital on behalf of her daughter,
Chelsea Howell.