By Anita Neal Harrison
Photos By L.G. Patterson


Dear Moms,
It’s a tough job you have: maid, manager, healer, chauffeur, cook, teacher and so much more — you really are a wonder.

What’s that? You don’t feel wondrous?

Perhaps you think you ought to be perfect. A lot of moms do, but we’ve talked to three incredible moms who have learned that good mothering is not so much about perfection as it is about persistence. It’s not so much about being a super mom with strength to overcome any challenge as it is about being a regular mom who’s not too proud to cry, “Help!”

So as our Mother’s Day gift to you, we’re sharing the stories of Julie Klein, Dana Sharland and Jennifer Walker.

We hope they inspire you as much as they inspired us.


Julie’s Story
Julie Klein is like most moms. When one of her kids has a problem, she wants to fix it. So when doctors diagnosed her daughter Emily with cystic fibrosis at the age of 9 months, Julie’s first response was, “Tell me how we are going to fix it.”

No one could.

“There is no fixing it,” Julie explains. “There’s no cure.”

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder that causes the body to produce unusually thick mucus that leads to chronic lung infections and malabsorption of food. To get the illness, Emily had to receive a defective gene from both her mom and her dad, John. Surprisingly, one in 30 Americans is a silent carrier; neither Julie nor John had realized their place in that group.

Cystic fibrosis was not the first devastating diagnosis Emily received. At 20 weeks old, she had surgery for the unrelated condition of coarctation of her aorta, a narrowing of her main artery that puts serious strain on her heart. Now 5, she still takes daily heart medication.

Emily was in the hospital for 6½ weeks after doctors discovered her cystic fibrosis. She had to return many times in the next three years, often for two weeks at a time, to receive intravenous antibiotics. Julie and John eventually learned how to give Emily the antibiotics themselves so they could take her home after four or five days. That freed both parents to be at home with their other two children, Molly, now 9, and Johnny, now 8.

On normal days, Emily receives two breathing treatments (more if she’s sick), and depending on the medicine being given, a treatment may last 20 minutes — or an hour and 20 minutes.

“It’s not like I can hook her up and leave her,” Julie adds. “I have to hold the nebulizer cup to her face.”

Emily also does chest therapy two times a day (again, more if she’s sick), and she’s on a feeding tube that Julie has to shut off in the middle of the night. Then there are the many medications Emily must take, including Creon enzymes that she takes with applesauce before every meal and snack.

“People say, ‘How do you do it?’ ” Julie says. “It was very overwhelming at the start, but when you’re thrown into it, you figure it out. Most of our times are not challenging. It’s just part of her care. Like I do kids’ homework, I do her meds. It becomes your new normal.”

Still, she says, there are times when it stinks. Julie is not immune to burnout and frustration, and sometimes all she wants is escape. At those times, she has learned to lean on friends, family members, and even strangers, like the day after Emily returned home from her 6½-week hospital stay.

“I was at the sink, crying, thinking ‘What has God done to me?’ ” Julie recalls, “when these two women I did not even know showed up with dinner. John had coached a youth team, and these two women had kids on the team. I remember thinking: ‘Oh, my gosh. There are so many people out there who care. We can do this.’ ”

With faith and determination, they have. Julie returned to teaching in Columbia Public Schools in January 2007, and at that time, she and John began sharing Emily’s care more, with John taking over the morning routine. Emily has not had a serious health setback in two years, and last fall, she entered preschool. The kids at her school have accepted her and her illness and even remind her to take her special applesauce before snack time, every time!

For Julie, the desire to fix her child’s problem has not diminished. She remains hopeful that a cure will be found, and for three years, she has served as chair of Columbia Great Strides, a fundraiser for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

“I don’t want to sit around and mope about what has happened,” she explains. “This is my way to say: ‘Darn it. You know what? I’m going to do something about this to help.’ ”

The research has already made a huge difference. In 1993, the average life expectancy for kids with cystic fibrosis was 12 years old. Now, only 15 years later, it is almost 37.

“This is what I hold onto and think about every day,” Julie says. “If it’s gotten that much better in 15 years, how much better will it be 15 years from now?”


Dana’s Story
It was 1:30 p.m. on March 2, 2000, when Dana Sharland’s phone rang. She was getting ready for a meeting at Woodcrest Chapel where both she and her husband, Jeff, worked. The call was from the nurse at Fairview Elementary. Something had happened to Katie, the Sharlands’ 9-year-old daughter. The girl’s arms had suddenly gone stiff. As Dana listened to the nurse, Katie began to lose feeling to her legs.

“I felt the world go into slow motion,” Dana recalls. “I felt sick.”

By the time Dana and Jeff reached the school, Katie could not move at all. The Sharlands rushed her to her pediatrician who told them Katie was having a panic attack. It sort of made sense. The attack had started as Katie changed for a play, and she was a timid girl. Trusting the doctor, the Sharlands took Katie home.

That night, Katie slept restlessly, and by the next morning, Dana and Jeff realized her condition had worsened. They took her to the hospital, and the doctors discovered Katie could barely breathe. Test after frightening test followed.

“It was awful,” Dana says. “Katie was scared of doctors anyway.”

 For two terrible weeks, the cause of Katie’s problems remained a mystery. Her doctors suspected either a spinal stroke or transverse myelitis. Finally, they settled on the latter.

Transverse myelitis is a neurological syndrome caused by inflammation of the spinal cord. It affects around 1 to 5 people per million. The cause of the inflammation can be anything from a bacterial infection to a vascular disorder, and the result can range from leg weakness that lasts for a month to lifelong quadriplegia.

Because Katie became paralyzed within 20 minutes of onset, doctors knew from the start that she would not completely recover.

The Sharlands had a lot of adjusting to do. Dana and Jeff had to help Katie cope as well as her then-12-year-old sister, Amy, and 11-year-old brother, Nick. Dana had to quit her job and become something of a medical and health care expert. Simple things, like giving Katie a bath, became complex mental and physical challenges.

“I couldn’t even get her into the bathroom!” Dana says, but not bitterly. In fact, she follows the proclamation with a laugh.

It’s remarkable, really, how much Dana laughs as she talks about her struggles. She knows it’s remarkable, too.

“I think I would be bitter and angry and blaming the world without my relationship with God,” she says. “He gave me the strength I needed.”

She recalls moments from the hospital when she would begin to contemplate the future, and fears and doubts would seize her.

“And it was like God told me, ‘Just take this one moment — this one moment — at a time.’ ”

Still, she says, there were times when despair would almost overwhelm her, but then hope would reappear, perhaps in the form of a card, a phone call or a sudden turn for the better.

“It was little things like that — or big things, really — that let me see God’s hand guiding us through the process,” she says.

Katie began an intense therapy regimen, and within just three months, she went from being unable even to lift her head to feeding herself and writing without help.

“She started regaining motion so quickly that the therapists didn’t know where to focus the sessions,” Dana says.

Now 17, Katie is finishing up her junior year at Hickman High School. For the most part, she uses a power or manual wheelchair to get around, but she can exercise for short periods with a walker. She loves Spanish, she loves to read, and she loves kids.

“I look for her to do some great things,” Dana says. “I don’t think her disability is going to limit what she does.”

Dana also looks for God to continue to do tremendous things through her family’s struggles. Meanwhile, she does what she can to encourage other moms facing hard times.

“I’m sure there are a lot of moms out there who feel they can’t make it another day, and I want to give them hope to take it one moment at a time and to ask for help,” she says. “I don’t want people to feel they are alone because you do not have to be. There are people out there who want to help.”


Jennifer’s Story
What kind of mom tells her 17-year-old son, a junior in high school, to get help or get out?

A mom who loves her child so much she literally aches for him.

Jennifer Walker is that kind of mom. About six years ago, she and her husband, Robert, faced the truth that their oldest son, Blake,* had a drug problem. He was exhibiting the telltale signs of intense rebellion, sneaking out at night and breaking household rules, and Jennifer, who has degrees in both psychology, and alcohol and drug studies, knew she could not blame this on normal teenage behavior. She and Robert confronted their son, but he denied using drugs. They tried to discipline him back on track, but the more privileges they denied him, the angrier and more rebellious he became. The tension in the house reached toxic levels. When Jennifer found marijuana in her son’s room, she told him he would have to quit using or leave.

“We really did intend to follow through,” Jennifer says.

The tough love wasn’t just for Blake’s sake; Jennifer and Robert also had a 3-year-old to protect. But the warning did not work. Soon after Blake’s 17th birthday, Jennifer and Robert discovered he had begun using methamphetamine. They did not have to force him to leave. He was eager to go.

Though his departure brought some relief — no more daily fights, no more calling the cops to bring her son home when he ran away — in another way, his absence intensified Jennifer’s suffering.

“I had heartache,” she says. “I had this pain in my chest, this heaviness, like there was a rock there. I told one of my friends, and she said, ‘Jennifer, that’s why they call it heartache.’ I had never understood that the term ‘heartache’ had a physical meaning. There were many nights when my husband would wrap his arms around me, and I would cry myself to sleep.”

At the beginning, when Blake had first started acting up, Jennifer had been hesitant to seek outside help, but as his behavior had worsened, she had stopped caring what others might think. She talked to teachers, doctors, the school principal, counselors — anyone she thought might have an answer. Finally, she found The Crossroads Program.

Crossroads (www.thecrossroadsprogram.com) is a drug and alcohol abuse treatment program for adolescents and young adults. It also offers support groups for parents, and Jennifer and Robert began going to the parent group meetings about the time Blake left home.

“They offered the help I couldn’t find anywhere else,” Jennifer says. “They helped me with the fear, grief and anger. They taught me behaviors and actions I could do to prompt my son in the direction of sobriety, but they also taught me I had to accept there were no guarantees.”

That lesson would prove vital for Jennifer because though she and Robert finally convinced their son to enter treatment, he chose not to follow through with the program.

“I’m still not sorry that we sent him to treatment,” Jennifer says. “I think it saved his life.”

Despite the less than perfect ending, Jennifer remains grateful to Crossroads. She credits the program with giving her back her own life and helping her make amends with her son, now 21.

“Our relationship is not as good as I might want,” she says, “but every time we see each other, we tell each other, ‘Love ya,’ we hug, we talk on the phone once a week, and we get together for occasional holidays. I’m proud of what he has done for himself. He has earned his GED, and he has a full-time job. I know he works really hard to make ends meet, and I hope for him to have an easier life sometime in the future.”

She hopes, but she no longer waits anxiously for change.

“The program has taught me about loving one another and acceptance and how to have hope for my son without having expectations,” she explains. “I can have a picture of the life I want for my son, and I can pray for that and look forward to that, but then I give it over to God. It’s not mine to accomplish.”

Who knows? The end might still be really good for Blake. A mom can hope.

Jennifer Walker is in the final stages of writing a book for hurting parents, titled How to Be OK When Your Kid’s Not. She speaks on topics such as overcoming fear, dealing with anger, and parenting lessons she’s learned. Contact her at flurrywalk@mchsi.com.

*Name changed.