Iowa Wave touches families on same path
IOWA CITY – On video, it’s a simple yet stunning display of collective kindness. If you’ve seen the Iowa Wave, you’ve probably wiped back tears.
But from the 12th floor of a children’s hospital, watching with dozens of patients and family members — watching with one courageous little guy and his persevering parents as a sea of upturned faces smiled and thousands of arms waved at them — it’s almost overwhelming. Maybe because we’ve been there.
Not at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital or the Pressbox Café on its 12th Floor. Not in Will Kohn’s room in the third-floor Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.
But Will and my son Christopher have traveled very similar paths.
Will is 6. Seven weeks ago, he received a heart transplant. Now he’s waiting and hoping his kidney function returns. He has been in the hospital for 10 months.
Christopher received a new heart at 6 weeks old, at Arkansas Children’s Hospital — and it has been beating strong and true ever since. But when his kidneys failed, Christopher spent many more months in the hospital in Little Rock and then, after a medical transport to the Pacific Northwest, at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, where at 22 months old, he received a kidney transplant.
Christopher turns 8 at the end of this month. We’re grateful for a healthy, growing boy. But those days were long and hard. For Christopher. For all of us.
That’s what Will and his mom and dad are going through now, day after day after day. They’ve found joy in the small things, and encouragement in steps forward, and they’ve remained strong despite setbacks. They’ve been supported by hundreds, maybe thousands, of family members and friends and folk they’ve never even met. Even so, their lives are lived in isolation and a numbing routine.
“I know days, but I don’t know dates,” says Meghan Kohn, Will’s mother, who has stayed all but two nights with Will since he was admitted in early January.
Which is partly why the wave is so meaningful to them. It’s a momentary way to reconnect with the outside world. And it’s why, even though the story has been told well, I wanted to see it for myself. Part of the motivation was selfish, but I also felt I could tell the story of the wave through a patient’s eyes — or at least a parent’s — with empathy. That the Kohns are on such a similar journey seemed like confirmation.
What does a wave mean? Sometimes, everything. In a climate of deep division and even hostility, its simple message has touched almost all of us.
It’s an acknowledgment from those Iowa fans — and now, from the visiting teams and so many others: We’re pulling for you. Keep going. Fight! Sometimes, it’s a message those kids and their moms need to hear. Or to see.
I’ve heard the Iowa Wave described as the best new tradition in college sports, but that’s not quite right. For anyone who has spent time in a children’s hospital — kids, their moms and dads and siblings, — it’s quite simply the best tradition in college sports.