Foreword

There is so much to ponder in this beautiful story of human challenge and triumph, so much that is real, honest, and moving. It should be on the bookshelf of every physician that cares for children with serious health problems and every parent facing the unknowns of raising a child with such issues.

The Chicken Who Saved Us is the remarkable story of a family struggling through the challenges of life threatening and chronic illness with wonderful strength, humor, compassion and honesty. In these pages, you will meet Andrew, a young man with autism and a rare genetic disorder so mysterious that other similar cases haven’t been reported. You will meet his best friend Frightful, and fall in love with his sister Hannah, who saves his life by donating her own bone marrow.

This amazing story of faith—the kind of faith full of human doubt, fear, and hope—helps us all navigate through the terrors of dealing with serious illness. It is the story of a woman who shares her innermost thoughts, dreams, fantasies, frustrations, and failings in such an honest and real way that I was moved to tears, or was left shouting out loud with laughter.

I have been a pediatrician for forty-eight years and thought I understood it all. I’ve sat in conferences giving terrible news to shocked and exhausted families. I’ve seen moms and dads cry as I gave them news that their child had autism, or was brain injured at birth, or had a rare genetic disease that we knew little about and had no treatment. I thought I could empathize. I thought I could imagine how they felt, how they might cope, how they would find the strength to endure. But until reading about this incredible family and the amazing people who walked alongside them, I don’t think I truly understood what their lives were really like.

I think about Kristin’s description of the mothers in neighboring rooms with their hair askew, in rumpled sweats and no makeup, with lost and exhausted looks on their faces—a scene I’ve witnessed numerous times, but never really saw. I think about watching a family leave the ICU after the passing of their child, not fully seeing how it impacted all the other nearby families. I think about the touching scene of the priest from Hannah’s school blessing the IV bag full of her bone marrow before it was infused into Andrew’s frail body before blessing the stuffed chicken that was Andrew’s stand-in for his best friend, a chicken named Frightful.

Thank you, Kristin Jarvis Adams, for sharing your heart with us, your readers. I, for one, have gained so much from being on this journey with you.

Charles Cowan, MD

Emeritus Clinical Professor, Department of Pediatrics

UW School of Medicine

Emeritus Medical Director

Seattle Children’s Autism Center