pulitzer prize 2007 - mother and son's story told in photos

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The photos are a story over time. Originally I was sent a link to the first photo ( The Pulitzer Prizes ) and thought "That boy looks like he’s having fun even though he’s sick! Then I realized that by clicking next I could see his story over time. I don’t want to reveal the ending but it’s worth reading in my opinion. And those of us with healthy children should remember how lucky we are, even though they drive us crazy sometimes.

Link to page showing thumbnails of all photos:

Congratulations to Renée C. Byer of the Sacramento Bee for her great photos.

2

Thank you for that link.

3

I don’t usually send links to people I know–I hate getting all the forwards, etc.–but this one, I passed along.

It makes me want to run home and hug my kid.

Sometimes life just doesn’t seem fair…

4

There I go, crying at the office.

5

Add me to the list of people sobbing at their keyboard.

6

Wow. Extremely moving and very hard to get through.

7

Absolutely heart-wrenching.

Whew… teary.

8

Those are very powerful photographs.

9

Yep, crying.

10

Wow, that was hard. I’ve lost a child–and I’ve got three healthy ones. Thank God.

11

I have no children. And I am tearing up at this.

12

I wonder if her other children were resentful that the mother gave up her small business and spent all her time on this one son of hers. She had to make some very difficult decisions. Also allowing a photographer to document the cancer treatment and take some shots of some personal moments at home. Even though I read the story and realize how powerful it is, I feel uncomfortable when I see someone’s emotion displayed to the world like that. I wouldn’t want the world watching, and I doubt I could find the patience that would be needed if a member of my close family had to go through something like that. Maybe after a while you forget the journalist is there.

13

Wow.

14

I thought that assisted suicide was illegal!

edit: nevermind, I misread it. They mean that they’ve giving him morpheine or something like that.

15

VC03, I was wondering about that too. I decided to register at the Sacramento Bee to read the articles, but there is no mention of any legal issues - just that at the hospital he is given Versed, a powerful sedative, and the nurse reassures the mother by telling her “This will allow him to die peacefully.” In California terminal sedation is legal but not assisted suicide. Terminal sedation puts the patient into a coma but will not cause the patient to die, except that the patient will no longer be eating. In the case of the boy in this story, he died seven hours after the injection of Versed.

By the way, at the Sacramento Bee website, you can read the articles if you register, or you can see slideshows with more photos (in colour) without registering:
http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/projects/mothers_journey

I can’t explain to myself why, but I find the black and white photographs to be more effective in telling this story.

16

I wonder this too. My mom dedicated a lot of her time to me when I was diagnosed with ITP sixteen years ago. The last years of her life* coincided with my trip from initial diagnosis to remission. My sisters and I aren’t very close at all. We see each other once a year, tops. They realized (better than I did at the time) how sick I was, but they did have some resentment that my mom wasn’t there so much for most of their early adulthood. It does strain sibling relationships quite a bit.

*My mom’s still alive physically, but not mentally.

17

Thank you.