THE PROMISE

After Michael learned he

had leukemia, he asked
his mother to do just
one thing
BY CYNTHIA DERMODY
 K Kathy Staub felt her heartbeat quicken and the
familiar sweat coat her forehead. The 42-year-old
deli clerk from Philadelphia dreaded the moment
each day when she had to give her youngest son,
Michael, an injection of an immune-boosting drug
called Neupogen. She had to get the long needle
into his arm at a 90-degree angle and hit the layer
of fat between the skin and muscle. This required a
quick and focused stab.
It was June 2001, and just the thought of causing
any more pain to 20-year-old Michael, a college
sophomore diagnosed a few months earlier with a
rare form of leukemia, made her anxious. He’d tol-
erated two rounds of chemo, the central line
catheters and bone marrow biopsies. But injections
were the one thing he really hated. “C’mon, I don’t
like this. Do it fast, do it fast,” Michael pleaded, stand-
ing in the family’s living room. Kathy squeezed his
biceps to try to tighten his skin and lessen the prick-
ing and burning sensation. Then she positioned the
thumb of her other hand on the plunger of the sy-
ringe. Just do it, she told herself. Focus. Focus.
Quickly she jabbed the shot into Michael’s arm
and, through his squirming, withdrew the plunger
slightly to make sure there was no blood. Bull’s-eye.
She depressed the plunger fully and pulled out the
shot. Then Michael adjusted the IV line attached to
his chest and plopped back down on the teal blue
sectional to watch TV.
Kathy could have hired a nurse for Michael while
he was home between treatments at the Hospital of
the University of Pennsylvania. But she wanted to be
the one to clean out his catheter and give
Kathy Staub (front) him his daily shots, IV fluids and pills.
on her son’s hospital Never mind that she was squeamish at the
floor, with friends sight of a mere drop of blood.
who became Kathy was close to her two other chil-
colleagues. dren, Melissa, 23, living at home, and
Matthew Jr., 22, away at college, but she
PHOTOGRAPHED BY FRANK VERONSKY 81
and Michael had a special bond. Kathy
practically lived at the hospital when
he was there for treatments. She—
and the whole family, including her
husband, Matthew, a grocery store
meat manager—had grown extremely
close to all of Michael’s nurses on
Rhoads 7, the floor where leukemia
and lymphoma patients are treated.
And not just because of the great care
they gave Michael. The nurses be-
came a support system, especially
for Kathy. She ate with them, shared
her fears and cried on their shoul-
ders. They would tell her, “Michael
I
is strong. He’ll beat this,” and offer
back rubs when she had trouble
catching a nap in the reclining chair
in his room.
Kathy’s appreciation of them grew
when she began to understand what
their jobs entailed. One of the first
times Kathy gave Michael his daily
shot of blood thinner, she missed and
hit her own hand. It bled for hours be-
cause the anticlotting drug had seeped
into her system. She kept track of all
of Michael’s shots and his 50 daily pills
in a notebook she’d placed in the din-
ing room, next to his old dorm fridge.
It now contained IV bags of magne-
sium and potassium, to replenish his
electrolytes, and amphotericin, an an-
tibiotic for the fungal pneumonia he’d
caught because of his weakened im-
mune system.
“I always thought nurses just gave
you the pills and walked out of the
room,” Kathy says. “Now I had a whole
new understanding of how they man-
age their time and energy. And they
82
had three or four patients. It took me all
day just to manage one. But I didn’t re-
ally feel like a nurse. I was just Mom.”
Michael took a turn for the worse
in August 2001 and was admitted back
on Rhoads 7 for a third round of
chemo. Kathy quit her job so she could
remain at the hospital, slipping home
for only an hour a day to shower when
Matthew came by the hospital after
work. “I never really slept, because
Michael would vomit all during the
night and the diarrhea was constant,”
Kathy says. “I would just throw away
bagfuls of clothes.”
It’s not unusual for parents to stay with
sick children round the clock. But the
floor nurses noticed something spe-
cial about Kathy. She was always smil-
ing and positive, even on days when
Michael was very ill or received bad
news about blood counts. “It was never
about Kathy or the sacrifices she was
making,” says Debra Dearstyne, one
of Michael’s nurses. “She never let
Michael see how hard this was on her.”
One day, Michael told one of the
nurses, Felice Kloss-Hefferan, that he
was so impressed by what she and the
other nurses did, he planned to enroll
in the nursing program when he was
healthy enough to go back to college.
Michael always believed he would
conquer the disease. He’d done so
with other hurdles in his life. Born a
preemie on January 1, 1981, he over-
came a learning disability and was
mainstreamed into a regular class-
room by the third grade. Despite good
grades, he did poorly on his SATs. He
READER’S DIGEST I JANUARY ’08
 The doctor pulled them
out of Michael’s earshot and said,
“THE CHEMO DIDN’T WORK.”
gave up a trip to take a window while Dr. Luger
summer prep program and Matthew walked
at Widener University, into an exam room. Dr.
south of Philadelphia, Luger explained it could
C O U R T E S Y K AT H Y S TA U B

then entered as a fresh- be weeks or months as

man that fall. At five-nine, Michael just nodded,
he was always told he was speaking only to ask, “Is
too short to play sports, my mom okay? I hear
yet he managed to be- her crying.”
come a linebacker on
Widener’s Division III Michael had a rare Kathy continued to care
football team. form of leukemia, for Michael at home over
a hybrid of ALL and the next several months.
When the third round of AML, which doubled But he failed to bounce
chemo was finished, in his resistance to back after the difficult
September 2001, Michael chemo. chemo, remaining pale
returned home to await and listless. He was de-
the results. A few weeks later, Kathy termined to attend his sister’s wed-
and Matthew were devastated when ding on Saturday, March 23, 2002,
Selina Luger, MD, Michael’s oncolo- which he did. But the following Mon-
gist, pulled them aside in the hall of day, Michael confessed that he’d been
the clinic, out of Michael’s earshot, and suffering from a high fever for days
told them, “The chemo didn’t work.” and had taken Tylenol to cover it up so
“What do you mean?” Kathy asked. he wouldn’t ruin the wedding. Back
“So we just go to the next round?” in the hospital, tests showed Michael
“There’s no next round,” Dr. Luger was in heart failure.
said, gently taking the arm of a now On April 14, Michael woke from a
hysterical Kathy to steady her. “Mi- nap on the couch and said, “Mom, you
chael’s incurable. He’s dying.” took care of me through all this. I think
Matthew was shell-shocked at the you’d make a great nurse. I know I’m
news. Like his son, he always believed not going to be one, but promise me
they would beat this. This can’t be the you’ll go back to school and become a
end of it, he tried to convince him- nurse.” Later he added, “I want you to
self. Kathy wept against a hallway work where I was treated.”
JANUARY ’08 I rd.com 83
 “I did this for you, but I could never
do it for anyone else,” Kathy replied.
“There are a lot of other me’s out
there,” Michael answered. “I want you
to pinkie swear.”
“Sure, Mike, sure. I’m going to be a
nurse. Pinkie swear,” Kathy said to
humor him, entwining her little fin-
ger with Michael’s.
The next day, Michael’s blood pres-
sure plummeted to 60/40. Kathy and
Matthew summoned family and close
friends and told Matthew Jr. he needed
to come home from college right away.
As the monsignor from the family’s
church pressed the crucifix to
Michael’s head and began last rites,
Kathy noticed her son’s breathing was
becoming more labored. In his hand,
he tightly clutched a silver angel medal-
lion with the word love written on it, a
gift from a friend. Matthew held his
son while his mom rested her head on
his. “Mikey, I’ll be okay. Just let it go.
T
No more pain, just let it go.” And
Michael closed his eyes for the last
time.
Weeks after Michael’s funeral, Kathy
was still struggling to make it through
each day. One night, she had a
dream—though she believes it was
more like a message. She saw Michael
dressed and looking as healthy and
handsome as ever. “Mike, are you
okay?” she asked, getting a whiff of his
trademark Perry Ellis cologne.
“Mom, I’m fine,” he said. “But you
have to stop crying now. You have to
remember your promise.”
The dream spurred her to action.
84
On May 28, a month and a half after
Michael’s death, Kathy took placement
tests at a local community college.
“What am I, nuts?” she asked herself.
“I haven’t opened a textbook in 25
years.” But she scored well.
Nursing school was grueling, espe-
cially for someone who’d never used
a computer. It took her twice as long
as the younger students to complete
assignments, and there were several
times she thought she’d quit. But
Matthew and her family continued to
encourage her. “Her head was always
in a book,” recalls daughter Melissa.
“She would study on vacations. I know
Michael was on her mind the whole
time, and that was her driving force.”
Doubling up on courses and even tak-
ing summer classes while working
part-time at the deli, she earned her
nursing degree, graduating cum laude
in May 2006 from Thomas Jefferson
University, and soon became a regis-
tered nurse.
The fall before she was due to gradu-
ate, Kathy attended a nursing career
fair. She walked directly up to Beverly
Emonds, a recruiter at the UPenn table.
“Hi, I’m Kathleen Staub, and I want
to work at your hospital,” she said.
“But it has to be on Rhoads 7, bone
marrow transplant.” In early Novem-
ber, Emonds called Kathy to tell her
there would be an opening. But it was
far from a done deal. Kathy had to
convince the floor’s nurse manager
that Michael’s history wouldn’t inter-
fere with her performance on the job.
Finally, Emonds called to offer her
READER’S DIGEST I JANUARY ’08
the position.
A few days after starting, Kathy stood
in one of the patient rooms holding a
syringe full of Neupogen—the same
drug she used to give Michael. The
young leukemia sufferer, her very first
patient, was about Michael’s age, and
he hated shots just as much. As Kathy
began the procedure and felt the fa-
miliar moistness on her brow, she
couldn’t help thinking of her son. But
suddenly a guiding confidence came
over her. She jabbed the shot quickly
and precisely, like a pro. That wasn’t
so bad, she thought.
Each day as Kathy walks into the
UPenn hospital elevator and pushes
the button to the seventh floor, she
takes Michael’s angel medallion from
her pocket, holds it in her palm and
says, “Michael, get me through the
day.” The 12-hour shifts are reward-
ing but intense. Though memories
lurk everywhere, she loves working
alongside many of the same nurses
who cared for her son.
Kathy doesn’t often share Michael’s
story with the families of patients, be-
cause she doesn’t want to dash their
hopes. But sometimes word gets out
and they ask her about him. One of
Kathy’s first patients, a young woman
with leukemia, had developed a
complication from a bone marrow
transplant. She was dying. Kathy
flashed back as she saw the girl’s
mother crying at the foot of her daugh-
ter’s bed. The woman turned to Kathy:
“How do you get through it?”
Kathy walked her into the hall, and
the woman collapsed in tears. “You
never forget, but you will get through
it.” She fingered the angel medallion
in the pocket of her uniform. “You’ll

M OVE OVE R , B R I T N E Y
It’s not just misbehaving celebs who find their
way into the tabloids. We asked readers of RD’s
humor newsletter to come up with newspaper
headlines using corporate mascots. Here’s what
they sent back:
Aflac Duck Gets Facial Enhancement,
Insurance Refuses to Pay for Big Bill
Shannon Huckab ee

Dr. Suspects Energizer Bunny Is Bipolar

Fran k Orsini

Geico Gecko Mates With Chameleon—Offspring Yet to Appear

Beth Zimmerman

Want to subscribe to RD Laughs? Go to rd.com.

JANUARY ’08 I rd.com 85