The ‘heartthrob’ of Mary Bridge Children’s & the team that became family
From August to November 2023, baby Hank was the “heartthrob” of donor-supported MultiCare Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital.
“Everybody just loved him,” says his adoptive father Jonah. “There wasn’t a nurse that didn’t somehow find something to do in our room to see him.”
Hank’s adoptive grandmother Amy holds these same memories.
“You just knew when you met him that if he’d have a chance to grow up, he was going to be an incredible, kind, soft, amazing human being — a wonderful man,” she reflects. “He just touched so many hearts and so many lives there.”
Hank would spend over half of his five and a half months of life — cut too short by a rare and aggressive cancer of the bone marrow, acute erythroid leukemia — at Mary Bridge Children’s.
The pediatric hospital was his home. It’s where he steadily soldiered through intensive chemotherapy and targeted therapy, where he received the physical and emotional comfort of a therapeutic massage, and where he heard his first musical instrument.
A long way from Yakima
Hank’s medical journey began two and a half hours away in Yakima, where Jonah and adoptive mother Anna noticed he was running a fever. Their pediatrician recommended taking him to MultiCare Yakima Memorial Hospital Emergency Department.
There, a spinal tap was performed in addition to a blood transfusion. Worried about heart failure, Hank’s Yakima Memorial team had the 2-month-old airlifted to Mary Bridge Children’s.
“That was at like 1am on Aug. 4 — Aug. 3 is our wedding anniversary,” Jonah remembers. “We weren’t able to ride in the helicopter with him, so Anna, my mother and I all piled into a car and made an emergency trip over.”
The drive was all too familiar over the next couple months, with Jonah and Anna working two days a week in Yakima before spending the remaining five days with their son. Amy was at Mary Bridge Children’s whenever Jonah and Anna couldn’t be.
All three came to know Hank’s care team well.
“We really fell in love with the staff there, and they were phenomenal to work with,” Jonah shares. “They really took care of Hank and gave us the peace of mind when we needed a break. It takes a lot, especially I think with new parents, to trust other people with your kids. But they are literally the best care specialists that he could be with.”
The power of nurturing touch
Hank with grandma Amy
For Amy, meeting and developing a bond with Hank’s licensed massage therapist Lisa Gainey, CMLDT, 200-hour RYT (registered yoga teacher), was a bright spot.
“Lisa is incredible; she truly has a gift with these children, these babies,” Amy says. “When I first met her, she asked, ‘Can I give Hank a massage? You think that’d be OK?’
“She would sit there, and she had the softest, sweetest voice, and she would ask Hank, ‘Do you mind if I give you a massage and then touch your foot?’” she continues. “She was really giving her time to talk to him, to read his body language, to make sure that it was accessible to him. And I was so impressed with that.”
Gainey’s work with medically complex and nonverbal patients like Hank — made possible by Mary Bridge Children’s Foundation donors and a grant through Massage Therapy Foundation — helps them associate good feelings and nurturing touch with their hospital experience. This process also gives them a voice in their care, or in Hank’s case, a smile, a turn of his head and other nonverbal cues, that encouraged her to continue therapy.
“Massage therapy can calm the nervous system, while creating comfort by decreasing anxiety, stress and pain,” Gainey explains. “Hank’s family and nursing team would always let me know how much Hank loved the massage sessions, and I observed this, as well.
“Whether he fell asleep peacefully during our massage sessions by addressing his physical and emotional discomfort, or with each passing week, my relationship was deepened with Hank and his family by being able to offer the power of providing a gentle massage,” she continues. “Even watching a loved one receive a massage can be relaxing and comforting, especially when a patient is on our palliative care services.”
Soothing through music
Gainey calmed and comforted Hank through touch; volunteer Martin Goldsmith, MD, entertained and serenaded him to sleep with guitar lullabies.
“Hank was so at ease; he was so happy, I think, when Martin was playing,” Amy shares.
Dr. Goldsmith is a retired MultiCare pediatrician who gives back twice a month at Mary Bridge Children’s. During each visit, Child Life Services provides him with a list of patients who would be interested in hearing him play and sing.
“Music inspires or it’s just soothing, and it helps,” Dr. Goldsmith says. “I think it gives, for many, a sense of hope.
“Music is also a universal language,” he continues. “I love playing for babies as much as any age, and often you can see that the music is providing comfort to them.”
Giving thanks
Hank passed on a mid-November evening. His oncologist, David Harper, MD, made sure to personally say goodbye to his little charge and offer condolences to the family.
“It’s a very hard and precious thing to have those conversations with parents and families,” Dr. Harper says. “It’s sometimes to mentor them through it and show their love and emotion and loss are important.”
Jonah and Anna were so moved by Dr. Harper’s care that they named their second adoptive son Harper after him.
Now every Christmas, Jonah, Anna and Harper drive back to Mary Bridge Children’s to see him and their Mary Bridge Children’s family, letting them know the impact they had on their lives.
Community supporters are an extension of that family, and Jonah is deeply grateful.
“I’m just so extremely grateful for everything they’ve done through their programs for us,” he shares. “We’re so very blessed to have had them be a part of Hank’s journey.”
Amy also appreciates even the smallest acts of donor kindness.
“The little acts matter,” she says. “They matter a lot to the family and the children who are there to know that somebody is speaking of them. Somebody else cares.”
