A mother’s miracle
Published 8:38 am Monday, May 2, 2011
- Mary Webb and her son Quentin Murray visit Disney World in 2007, the same year the boy was undergoing treatment of leukemia.
simply spend this upcoming Mother’s Day with their two children,
Quentin and Jory, and outside of a hospital room.
peculiar pains in his arms and legs and his mother noticed swelling
around his eyes.
and Webb, a native of New Orleans, said she thought the symptoms
were related to the move.
when his eye swelled up I thought it was because he was sleeping in
his sleeping bag and it was something in the carpet he was allergic
to or something like that.”
ever fathom.
the youngster to go through the distress of chemotherapy and
radiation treatment.
relief that we finally knew what it was,” she said. “And then the
very next was dread, like I had already buried him in my head, I
could already see myself standing over his coffin.”
learned within those months that the arrival of a new baby would be
a bigger blessing than they could envision.
informed Webb about a method that could save Quentin’s
life.
pregnant,” she said. “She brought up the use of stem cells the day
he was diagnosed and his nurses said the same thing.”
treatment, the family was approached by Children’s Hospital in New
Orleans to be part of a study where stem cells are harvested from a
human placenta to treat diseases like Quentin’s, which require a
stem cell transplant.
requirements of the stem cell study caused only one small
differences in the delivery process, Webb said.
thing that was different was that there was someone standing over
the doctor coaching him to get as much as he can. There was no pain
to me and there was no pain to the baby. No harm no risk, it’s just
essentially what we would throw away.”
the hopes of being the match for the boy.
cells collected at Jory’s birth was indeed a perfect match to her
brother.
I went and told my husband and he just burst into tears.”
has since been in remission.
city’s newspaper The Daily Review, said his family “is incredibly
blessed” to have a happy ending to a very difficult period.
at Hattie A. Watts Elementary School in St. Mary Parish and, like
many kids his age, is a fan of superheroes Batman and Spiderman and
singing along to tunes by pop-star Justin Bieber on his
headphones.
who is protective of her brother, but also “gives him a run for his
money,” their mother said.
Summer of Super Heroes and the Making of Iron Boy,” which was
published last year.
emotionally grounded.
think that it even occurred to him that he could die. He was such a
trooper, and I really took a lot of my cues from him,” she said.
“We weren’t going to lie to him. I told him ‘Quentin, if you lose
your hair I’m going to shave my head too.’ And he said ‘Oh, no
Mommy, you’d look like a boy.”
harshest form of drugs he could be on, he wasn’t his upbeat chipper
self. He’d be the only one in the playroom with his IV pole. So I
just figured that if he could do it and he was the one going
through it, then I really didn’t have the right to feel sorry for
myself.”
the Crescent City. But instead of inside a hospital, it will be in
the embrace of her big extended family who rallied their the
support during the family’s struggle.
site. http://www.ironmommy.webs.com/
