Wild rumpus parade3/15/2023 ![]() ![]() I felt as if Sonoma had a heartbeat that I could feel pulsating all the way in the city.” We were in our darkest hours and in the very thick of it all Sonoma stepped up and provided us with a level of support I am eternally grateful for. In a her speech at a fundraiser last month, Madeline said, “During the course of the transplant, Jack took a turn for the worse and spent 19 days in the ICU, incubated and medically paralyzed. Hospital toys, a parent support room, music therapy, parking fees, a huge range of needs are met. Madeline recently became a UCSF Ambassador, helping to raise funds and lend support to the hospital’s Child Life Services that take care of patients’ and families’ non-medical needs – and when you have a sick child, there are many. “We feel like normal people again,” she said. Now they don’t have to go in for three months. When he first returned home Madeline brought Jack back to the hospital in San Francisco three times a week, then once a week, then every two weeks. This week marks a year since his transplant and his recent round of medical tests resulted in all healthy scores. He goes to “school” one day a week at a family friend’s home where he plays with three buddies. He plays games on his orange-covered iPad, loves “Goodnight, Gorilla” and still watches the movie “Frozen” over and over, just as he did in the hospital. Madeline opened the back door to let Jack go out and play and he took off running – and he ran and ran and ran, laughing. “He slowly got better over months and months,” she said.įinally last May his white blood cell count returned to normal and he was released from isolation. Jack still had a feeding tube and multiple medications, and Madeline was both mom and nurse. Everything was constantly being sanitized – each item in a grocery bag had to be wiped down. Every time Madeline, Alex and Jack’s 11-year-old brother Zack entered the home they had to shower and change before they could get near Jack. Jack had to remain in isolation when he returned home – and “clean” took on a whole new meaning at the Yankee home. Holding Jack, Madeline rang the hospital’s success bell in the lobby and, as the family joyfully walked out the door, the hospital staff gathered round, cheering. After enduring chemotherapy, a transplant and infinite tubes and needles, he was released on New Year’s Eve. He was there for almost three months and Madeline rarely left his side. Jack was admitted to a hospital isolation room in early October last year. No potential donor shared with Jack the desired nine out of 10 genetic markers, so Jack’s dad, Alex Yankee, with seven of the markers, was his son’s hero donor. There was no match for him on the international registry – and so friends launched Team Jack, a donor search that had 3,000 people, most of them in Sonoma Valley, swabbing their cheeks to give a DNA sample that hopefully would match Jack’s. He was born with this challenge, and by the time he was 18 months old he needed a bone marrow transplant. Jack had, emphasis on the past tense, a very rare autoimmune disorder that made even a common cold life threatening for him. “(Not once, but twice) they had the talk with us that he wasn’t going to make it,” says his mom, Madeline Yankee, her emotions still exhausted as she watches Jack with elation only a mother who has been through such an ordeal can understand. Last year at this time he was in the intensive care unit at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital where, at times, his prognosis wasn’t good. Like Max, he’s been through a terrible rumpus. He is 2 years old, and for Halloween he’s going to be Max from the children’s book, “Where the Wild Things Are.” Jack Yankee runs around the backyard in his tiny blue jeans and dinosaur? T-shirt, his angelic blond hair catching the sun and his smile, oh that smile.
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