How Do You Say Thank You?

Last week we saw Rishi, Jonah's beloved neuro-oncologist for the last time at Jonah's MRI follow up visit.  The very unexpected has happened, and he is leaving Illinois to spread his cheer and optimism as well as his honestly and deep medical knowledge with the pediatric oncology patients of Rhode Island.

How do you say thank you to the one person you never intended to meet, who has helped to save the life of your child?

How do you thank the person who's first utterances where, "This is not your fault, you didn't do anything to cause this and it is not genetic so your other children are not at risk"?

How do you thank the person who took the time to lay out the facts, who talked you through the treatment options, the risks and statistics?  The very same person who reminded you that statistics were just numbers and that our experience would be our 100%.  The person who didn't talk down to you despite having a much deeper understanding of the fight ahead and the fallout.  The person who didn't flinch, and even encouraged and facilitated seeking a second opinion - how do you thank them?

How do you thank the person that stood in the hospital hallway and assured me that the few weeks delay in chasing down the symptoms because of a missions trip to Africa and a family vacation didn't change things - that finding the tumor a few weeks earlier wouldn't have changed our course?

How do you thank the person that stood by our side when having a face-off with a resident about dropping an NG tube down our son's nose - fixing the problem and ensuring that there was no tube?

How do you thank the person that showed up in the hospital room time and time again, just to check in to make sure that everyone was ok and to troubleshoot?

After having a potentially fatal handling of a situation at another hospital, how do you thank the person who schooled the other hospital on how things would operate moving forward?

How do you thank the person that cared enough to learn the name of the most important lovie - Cowie, the stuffed cow and ever present comforter?

When there was concern of relapse, how do you thank the person who took the time to walk us through what relapse would look like, what our options would be and what the end would be like?

How do you thank the person who put aside their medical conservatism time and time again to allow us to travel the world, making memories and healing together, while being far out of our medical team's jurisdiction?

We have so much to thank Rishi for.  There's all the big, technical medical stuff, but there's also the small, soft human stuff and everything in-between.  And the thing is, he was only ever being himself, caring for a patient and the family the only way he knows how - with his whole self.  He's not looking for accolades or spotlights, he's just looking to do his job and make a difference.

Because of some outside connections, when Jonah first got sick, someone told us that we wanted Dr. Goldman and that we shouldn't accept anyone else on the team.   In the end, we got Rishi, who's about our age, and at first we were a little skeptical.  He wasn't the head of the department, he wasn't extremely seasoned - come on, he was our age, how could he possible be old enough to do this?  Turns out, he was exactly what we needed though.  He was the guy to guide us, push up and hold our hand through the hardest of hards.  He became the guy we loved but wished we'd never met.  And then he just became the guy we loved.  We don't get to pick the circumstances of how people come into our lives, but do get to pick our response, and for Rishi, we are eternally grateful.