Pressured by family, we got married at town hall. I wore a black maternity gown to the ceremony. There were no witnesses. The justice of the peace had the grace not to glance down at my protruding stomach. That night, Sid and I drove into town to celebrate. As we were walking from the car to the restaurant, my contractions began. 

Steven, the love of my life, was born healthy and beautiful. But a few months later his skin, from head to toe, turned an angry red. At the supermarket strangers would stare at him. Mothers would pull their children away, afraid that they would catch my son's "disease." 

The doctors told us that they had never seen such a severe case of eczema. Steven's body, fighting unknown allergens, succumbed to infection after infection and fever after fever. The medications the doctors gave him did nothing to ease his suffering. I felt powerless. My little baby was miserable and I couldn't make him well.

Sid and I used up our money and credit flying Steven to specialists in other cities. Staying in cheap hotels, we'd take turns holding Steven as he cried through the night. During the day I’d hold and try to calm him as the nurses took yet another sample of blood from his tiny leg. Meanwhile, the creditors were calling. All I could afford to eat during the day was a blueberry muffin. I would eat enough dinner to make sure that I could breast feed my son. 

Because my relationship with my disapproving parents was terrible. . . because my friends were busy with their lives. . .because my husband's way of dealing with the stress at home was to stay late at the office, I had no one, absolutely no one. Except Jenny.

When my friend John heard that I was pregnant, he asked his sister, who was moving into her parent’s home, if she would rent her small condo to Sid and me. Jenny was thrilled that someone “responsible” would be living in what had been her and her children’s first home. She didn’t have a lot of money, but she decided to charge us only enough rent to cover her mortgage.

Jenny would call me from time to time to see how things were going. I would tell her how dizzy I was getting from the lack of sleep, how I kept getting into fender benders, how I was scared. She would listen to my problems and help me solve them. She told me to let Steven sleep in my bed; that way, I wouldn't need to make so many trips into his room at night and I would sleep better. This woman I hardly knew was what I needed most: a lifeline, a mom on the other side of the phone who could feel my worries and pain.  

And then gradually, our money situation got even worse. I picked up the phone one day and called Jenny. "I need to ask if you could lower the rent for us.” I felt terrible asking her that, especially after she had asked only enough rent from us to pay her mortgage.  

Jenny was silent, but only for a moment. “How about a hundred less a month? Will that help?”

I knew that a hundred less a month would be a sacrifice for her. “Thank you so mu –“ I started to say. But she didn’t let me finish.

“Tell me how Steven is."

Sid and I glanced outside our bay window. Our seventeen-year-old son was playing soccer with his friends in the backyard of our home. As he dribbled past his friend Greg and made a goal, you would never believe that he had suffered so much in the first years of his life. When he was four, after years of medications and hospital visits and a very close brush with death, we discovered Steven had an allergy to latex. The medical establishment was just beginning to realize that allergies to their latex gloves were causing nurses to die of anaphylactic shock. No one had realized that a reaction to the latex elastics in Steven’s diapers and even the cuffs on his yellow dump-truck shirt were anathema to his body. When latex was removed from Steven’s life, he healed and thrived.

Sid looked outside the window again and then back at me. “OK. Let’s send her a thousand dollars,” he said.

I spent an hour at the card store. None of the cards with pre-written words could convey the gratitude I felt in my heart. Finally I found a card I liked. On the cover it had a black-and-white photo of a single tulip growing in a field. It was a simple image but also a strong one. And I placed a check for a thousand dollars inside.  

I heard from John that Jenny used the money to go on a vacation to the Bahamas with some of her friends. She told John that she felt like she had just won the lottery. That's exactly how I feel when I look outside and see my beautiful, healthy son.

NOTE: Several names in this highly personal account of a pregnancy and son's disease were changed at the writer's request.     

Periodically I will be presenting reader stories in this blog. It is my deeply held belief that, by sharing our stories, we can help others address the unfinished business in their lives and inspire them to do the right things. If you'd like to share a story, click here. I will be including the best reader stories in the paperback edition of UNFINISHED BUSINESS, which will be available in May 2011.