A child shall lead
Girl, 7, goes online to ‘spread my hope’ to kids with medical issues
Sarah Rose Braithwaite looks straight into her computer’s camera, waiting for a new friend. Her voice is tiny, but her expressions broadcast everything she is feeling.
Sarah Rose has spent most of her 13 years fighting back from terrible things. First, it was a brain tumour when she was five, with persistent complications she continues to battle. Then, a few months ago, she fell off a horse and fractured her right hip. She walked around for six weeks with that broken bone before doctors took X-rays.
She still feels flashes of pain. It crashes in like thunder. She closes her eyes, tosses her head back, and her sweet smile twists into a pained grimace. Just in time, seven-yearold Molly Marks, sitting on her full-size bed with a canopy decorated with flowers, pops up on the screen and smiles.
“I made something for you,” Molly says, revealing the artwork she created with her new friend’s first name spelled out in a rainbow of colours. Sarah Rose squeals. “Thank you,” she says shyly. Molly just finished Grade 2 and she is spending her summer as the youngest volunteer with Integrative Touch for
Kids, a non-profit group based in Tucson that aims to support families with children who have significant health and medical needs.
In a world without a global pandemic, the group’s volunteers would visit children and their caregivers at hospitals and other facilities and host the largest pediatric integrative-medicine retreats in the U.S. There would be hands-on healing therapy, the gentle touch of massages or just a visit to make a child’s day. But then the novel coronavirus made the visits impossible, leaving many feeling secluded.
The organization switched to deploying its volunteers to Zoom as “TeleFriends.”
Molly once needed outpatient care and from her own experience decided she had to step up for children who had more-severe medical issues.
“I want to help kids in need in ITK, and I want to make them feel better,” Molly says, pausing to find the right words, “and spread my hope.”
With a little help from program director Katie Frazee, the two girls get down to the important business of talking about their favourite colours.
At first glance, it may seem they have little to bond over — but they soon realize how much they have in common.
They both like the colour red. Sarah Rose has a toy poodle named Mushu. Molly’s half-Schnauzer, half- poodle goes by LoDo.
The girls talk for about an hour. When Sarah Rose’s aches shoot back up, she reaches for Care Bear and uses his furry ears to wipe her tears. Molly, her arms spreading wide, offers an air hug.
The call is wrapping up, but the girls have one more thing to share: mindful breathing. After some deep breaths, Frazee asks how they are feeling.
Sitting tall in her chair, Sarah Rose doesn’t hesitate.
“Wonderful and happy.”