Kathy Wales starts work next month after losing one son to a rare disease and another to suicide.
Kathy Wales at her home in Bristow, Va. She became a nurse after caring for her young sons. Framed on the wall are handprints made by her two sons, both of whom were diagnosed with a rare disease. By Justin Wm. Moyer Justin Wm. Moyer Reporter covering breaking news Email Bio Follow May 22 at 7:00 AM Each year in the United States, more than 160,000 people become nurses. One of them will report for work next month at a Virginia hospital.
One night in 2009, her youngest son, 9-year-old Alex, woke up disoriented, tripping over a metal toy truck and cutting his chin. A few stitches, Kathy thought, and that would be the end of it. “No parent ever should sit still for that,” Mike Wales said. “We started looking for second opinions.” Alex endured daily chemotherapy for three weeks. He was nauseous, unable to walk and stricken with hives.
The gear to keep Alex alive came with a cost. Kathy struggled for three years to secure Medicaid and battled insurers over payments. She searched for teenage-size diapers — Alex wouldn’t fit in children or adult diapers — and bought a custom wheelchair part-by-part, only to learn her insurance company wouldn’t reimburse her for the wheels.
Still, the end was approaching. Alex’s speech worsened to the point where his mother sometimes couldn’t understand him and, by summer 2016, he was “starting to give up,” Kamara said.Mike Wales holds a flight suit made for his son, Alex. “We knew going in that there was no grand outcome at the end of this road,” Mike Wales said. “We were fighting to keep him around — to let him have a quality of life that was as good as we could give him.
“It’s obviously different in school with a plastic mannequin than with your child,” she said. “It’s hard when there’s a clinical instructor watching. When it’s your child sitting there looking at you, it’s a whole other story.”
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