Sarah Maddux, PA-C has been a St. Luke’s Outpatient Neurosurgery Physician Assistant for the past seven years. But first and foremost, she is a mother and a wife. Sarah and her husband, Jesse Maddux, initially wanted to adopt a little girl from China as they already had a family with three young boys. But, according to Sarah, “God had something else in mind” for their family. One day, when scrolling through their adoption agency website, a 13-year-old boy’s story was highlighted. Sarah and Jesse both immediately felt “this is our son, but we don’t know why.” Still, they continued to look at the page and involved their two oldest sons in the search. After looking at over one hundred children, without knowing what their parents had seen in Kam, their sons both unanimously picked Kam as well and said to their parents, “that’s our brother!”
At the age of eight, Kam sustained an injury in his leg that
resulted in sepsis. In China, if you cannot pay for hospital services, you will
not be admitted to the hospital. As such, his biological family made the most
difficult decision, to abandon him in the hallway of a Chinese hospital, hoping
that they would care for him regardless. He is alive because they abandoned him
in that hallway, but the experience made Kam quite uneasy with hospitals, as
you can imagine.
After seeing Kam on the website and going through the
adoption process, the Maddux Family welcomed Kam to Nampa, Idaho one month shy
of his fourteenth birthday. While the transition was tough, he is now a happy
full-fledged member of the Maddux family. But in April of 2021, his life
changed, just six weeks prior to his high school graduation.
Kam was diagnosed with osteoblastic osteosarcoma and spent the next nine months battling his aggressive cancer. Sarah and Jesse are incredibly grateful to an amazing oncology staff, including all the pediatric oncology doctors, nurses and physician assistants and Dr. Matthew Hansen and Dr. Jeffrey Menzner – it truly takes a village. Per Sarah, “(St. Luke’s) nurses, certified nursing assistants, and staff were constantly amazing to us, and we credit them and the doctors for saving our son’s life, who is presently cancer-free and had his port removed a few weeks ago.”
While Kam was inpatient, he desperately wanted to eat his
own food, yet not all the Four South rooms have refrigerators in them. This was
difficult for Kam and his family. Sarah describes that “one of the hardships on
him during his treatment was when ‘he’ would get a room without a refrigerator.
As you can imagine—having cancer, and not always wanting to eat, it is
important for cancer patients, on an anti-microbial diet, to be able to keep
their foods at proper temperature to keep them safe. This was a luxury ‘he’ had
often—but not always.”
In gratitude for Kam’s incredible treatment at St. Luke’s,
Sarah and Jesse want to give back. They want to ensure that every cancer
patient has access to a refrigerator in his or her room. There are 24 oncology
patient rooms on the Four South Unit at the Boise Hospital; nine of them
currently have refrigerators. The Maddux Family is hoping to raise $21,000 to
fund the remaining fifteen refrigerators.
Always positive, Sarah made the comment that “out of ashes
comes a beautiful phoenix”. She said this because after his caring, loving
treatment at St. Luke’s Cancer Institute, Kam isn’t afraid of hospitals
anymore. In fact, he asks to visit his friends in the Four South Unit each time
he has a follow-up appointment at St. Luke's.
Be a part of our village and help families suffering from
cancer with a gift to the Four South Fund today: https://www.stlukesonline.org/give.
