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little boy smiled although he was within an octopus of tubes and electrodes that measured his every breath and all his vital signs. He looked up and said, “My IV is out,” sending a student scurrying down the hall to the nurse’s station. A little girl at the corner of the room lay quiet in her bed. Her tiny bald head peered through the hospital rails at the visiting students. “I have cancer,” she whispered.
In addition to their illnesses, the children in this hospital had one more thing in common: the need for medical supplies and services that their insurance companies would not cover. That afternoon, a routine tour of the hospital for thirteen college students became a project as we realized these kids needed more than our visits.
We called ourselves the “Dream Team.” We spent the next year planning a thirtytwo-hour dance marathon that would raise the money. In the face of the courage and energy shown by these kids, no one could see thirty-two hours of nonstop dancing as too much of a task. We had no problem collecting over three hundred student volunteers to plan the event. Our goal was five thousand dollars, and we were sure we would meet it.
Each sorority, fraternity, residence hall and student organization “adopted” the family of a sick child. The families were embraced on almost monthly visits to football games, and dinners in the cafeteria. The students followed their child’s health and made frequent trips to the hospital. The children were given love and the hope that they might be able to go to college themselves one day. Students stood at intersections in wind chill, collecting spare change. Faculty and staff donated a dollar every Friday for the kids and other donations poured in.
A week before the dance began, an urgent plea came from one of the families. Their twin boys had leukemia, and one needed a bone-marrow transplant. A donor had to be found, but the process for finding a match was painful and costly. Students by the hundreds stood in line to have their blood sampled. No donors were found.
The dance began at 10:00 A.M. on a cold Saturday morning. Over a hundred dancers filed in the recreation center, now transformed into a playground of music and food. Little kids were everywhere in the room, some in wheelchairs, some wheeling IVs around, some with only a tiny layer of fuzzy hair on their heads.
At the thirty-first hour, the families assembled on stage to tell their stories. Some had children who were too sick to attend, some had lost children only days before. A four-year-old clutched the microphone and stood on tip-toe to say, “Thank you for raising money to save my life.”
Then the parents of the twin boys took the stage. The room fell silent. Exhausted dancers stood up straight. Into the hushed room the parents said, “Tonight we are here alone because our son is getting ready to go into surgery tomorrow morning. Earlier today a bone-marrow donor was found.” Then they could no longer speak. With tears streaming down their cheeks, they said: “Thank you.”
Then a group of students assembled on stage holding pieces of poster, each with a number painted on it. Slowly they held them up to reveal the total amount that the Dream Team had raised: \$45,476.17. The crowd went wild, dancers started running around the floor and families were crying. Everyone knew it had been thirty-two hours of miracles.
- Diana Breclaw