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As told by Kelly Palm
 Mine is a fantastic story. About fantastic kindness given where it would never have been expected or earned. My outcome is still unknown but whatever the outcome, I have known kindness of so many.
My husband and I moved from Milwaukee to La Crosse in 2003. I knew I was sick when we moved. For several years, I had clinicians disagreeing whether or not I had multiple sclerosis, lupus or the rare Sjögren’s syndrome.
I did not want to move. My husband needed to be here so we came. I liked Milwaukee. I liked the restaurants and the shopping. As a nurse in a bigger city, I was more in demand. Here, there were fewer healthcare facilities. Because of my health I couldn’t work nights anymore, which further limited my job options.
I took a job at Gundersen Lutheran in the Outpatient Surgery Center (OSC). I was crabby. I thought I knew too much for this position. Despite that, the people were kind and patient with me. Less than two years later, I got sicker. Still they supported me until I finally had to admit I couldn’t physically handle the demands of the job.
In the months that followed, I went to a couple of interviews using my walker. That was a tough winter for my mind and heart. The OSC staff never forgot me. There were calls and visits and grocery deliveries that kept us fed that winter.
Finally, in February of 2006, the Gundersen Lutheran Nurse Advisors took me in. That month I got my wheelchair. By now my husband and I were desperate and I started seeking experimental treatments. At Northwestern University Hospital in Chicago, they recommended chemotherapy. As a precaution, they asked if I could be pregnant. “No,” I said. “My husband and I tried for years.”
But I was pregnant. “That’s impossible,” I told doctors, who just smiled at me. Not until I saw that little heart beating on ultrasound did I believe it myself. So, chemotherapy was postponed and we all held our breaths. Would the baby be okay given my health problems?
 Although I’d been gone more than a year, the OSC staff remembered me. They came and painted the nursery and brought us food.
When Marcus came screaming into our world, he was healthy, and perfect and all ours. The OSC nurses came to see us and wept with joy. The nurse advisors supported me, too. I was barely in the door when I announced I would need maternity leave, but they still showered me with gifts and cards. Although I was a virtual stranger to them, I know I was in their prayers.
I have since started chemotherapy. Luckily we found a doctor here to do my chemotherapy treatments. I can’t even imagine what challenges we would have faced going to Chicago in January in a wheelchair with a new baby.
I am blessed to have some extraordinary caregivers like Laura, Marie and Jane who went above and beyond. They are the miracle workers. Dr. Guy Fiocco is the physician who agreed to do the chemo here, and he continues to try to help me find relief. Thank goodness for those who are willing to fight right along with me.
We don’t know if chemotherapy will help, but I do know friends can be found where I did not expect them. Love can be felt even when I didn’t earn it.
My husband and I are blessed. We have a perfect little boy – miracle is not a big enough word for him. We were blessed to find a community of people in La Crosse that showed us what it is like to be held up when you are down. We are blessed to have people we hardly know who will pray for us in this fight. I’m starting to think prayers from La Crosse are louder. |