June 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 3

I am grateful for Red beads.

The first thing that happens when I arrive is a call to the blood bank: “The lady of the hour is here at the hospital now! Please start prepping her units.” The nurse then lines the apheresis machine with miles of clear tubing and tightly screws the ends to the joint in my chest. I can feel this alien plastic track as it moves through my veins, depositing into the superior vena cava deep under my collarbone; deep in my beating core.

In this our thrice weekly ritual, she makes eye contact through her clouded shield and jokes that my medical waste must make up half of the world's collective trash. The scanning of my bracelet and setting of her sterile field, her movements are routine and normal, like shopping for groceries. Another arrives by her side and suddenly my numbers are cross checked per

protocol:

MRN: 0-2-0-5-4-7-0-5-5?

0-2-0-5-4-7-0-5-5.

DOB: July ten, nineteen ninety five?

July ten, nineteen ninety five.

O Negative?

O Negative.

Fresh Frozen Plasma?

FFP.

Seeming satisfied that I am myself, she finally declares me by my name as she slaps the packets on the table: “These came from far off today, Hannah! There is a shortage. You are lucky we could find any!”

The weight of her words rolls off me as I check off a red bead in my pamphlet. Unabashed perhaps not, her spoken tune still inspires reflection. I feel indebted to my donors and to the nurse and to the little plastic pipe now feeding my ailing body replacement bloods.

I am grateful for Magenta Beads.

Far from the expected response to this morning’s transfusions, my figure now aches. I sit at the table, I lay in bed. I hold my fathers hand as he eyes me with concern. Out of the corners of my ears, a clacking noise. Could it be my own teeth, chattering away as he frets?

Dad now rushes me back to the hospital in a dramatic scene. Here I fight for my right to a blanket while the others work to keep me cool, and how is one supposed to stay composed in a moment such as this, with staff and noise all around? “Her temp is too high!” Their fluorescent lights burn bright against my red skin. “Her blood pressure is too low!”

Has anyone been keeping track of my beads? “Yes of course, dear. You will earn a magenta bead for this!” It was promised in exchange for my cooperation here, now. In the ED of the Children's Hospital; in this my second home.

I am grateful for Yellow Beads.

“We are going to admit you to five again, Hannah.” says the doctor, though I try to protest him with other plans — of movies and school and free time with friends. “Sometimes illness is just inconvenient dear, your line is infected. This is an emergency. I am so sorry.”

I am wheeled up, up, and away to my room — larger even than the dorms I dream of. I look out its bay windows and at its multiple TV screens. Its hidden refrigerator and pull out couch. Its colorful lights and friendly faces. It could be Ydulf Hall, I think in my feverous state, if I squint hard enough.

My child life specialist now brings me a yellow bead for my collection. It helps to ease the prospect of another night inpatient. Another night where I am grateful for the amenities to be found in pediatrics, even as I straddle adulthood. Even as the thermometer now reaches 104.7 degrees.

I am grateful for Black beads.

The sight of the IV team entering my room blurs behind tears and torment. The pain they inflicted in the past spilling now into the present; everyone is geared and ready for another round of hide and seek with my uncooperative arms.

“I am so sorry, my dear. I know it hurts. But we need to run fluids and antibiotics. You need new IV access, now.”

A black bead for each needle stick, and indeed, they make up the bulk of my collection. It seems even here, where the walls are full of drawings of giraffes, that intravenous access still dictates life. I am grateful, I think, for their numbing spray and colorful bandages.

I am grateful for Purple Beads.

It is dark now, the antibiotics finally up and running. My mother collects for me a purple bead as each dose enters the hard fought line. Long hours here and ahead dealing with sickness and side effects and the expectation of clear cultures.

“How can she still be septic after 24 hours?” She asks the doctor in her exhaustion.

The medication is so corrosive, I require new access every few hours. My mini glass medallions, purple and black to match the bruising, now hang next to my medication pumps as a testament to my endurance. I am grateful for her and for my medical team and for anti-nausea medications.

I am grateful for Square Heart Beads.

The bead awarded for a transfer to the third floor, as I now need pressor support and better vascular catheters, it seems. It is explained to me that this level of care can not be provided on unit five, thus ripping me from my comfort zone.

In the elevator as it ascends, I confirm to myself that while this may not be my first square heart bead earned here, at the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital, it will be my last in this Pediatric version of Intensive Care.

The doors open to a different world, where infants are more machine than mortal. Their parents as well, in a constant bedside vigil. Here where the headwaters of life are so often extinguished, I give thanks for myself as an already established and complex river system.

I am grateful for Star Beads,

just as I am grateful for anesthesia. The source of this particular crisis, the line in my heart, removed in the safety of the operating room sometime in the wee morning hours. Importantly, it is now afternoon — the surgery happened while I was entirely unaware.

Sedation for simple procedures is a privilege I do not yet appreciate, here where even the greatest gambles have little consequence; where the aged decide for the young. Here where I now live and here where I have outgrown.

I am grateful for Lime Beads,

one for each of the days on days and weeks on weeks of isolation and low counts. My body, still recovering from infection, now unable to fight off simple bacterias. I take my visitors only wearing yellow suits and masks, printed with images of rabbits and dogs. In their inconvenience, I feel gratitude. In their costuming, I feel familiar.

I am grateful I have movies and books and dreams to keep me company in place of the playrooms I am barred from. I run away in my mind, to the complex and grown narratives of J.R.R. Tolkien; to the Shire, to the Fellowship, to Middle-earth. I imagine lush, green landscapes that now replace my dulled reality. My heart aches for these stories, for where would I be without them?

I sit idle in my recovery. I sit and I wait and I dream.

I am grateful for my Make-a-Wish bead.

Not all beads mark regular occurrences. In my miles-long chain earned over a decade of cancer and its complications, a charm inscribed with the logo of the Make-a-Wish Foundation dangles most predominantly.

While my bags are packed and PICC line removed, as I wave goodbye to the units and hallways and faces of my adolescence, a volunteer dressed in blue crosses my threshold. She hands to me, a packet of possibility. She hands it to me, a trapped and imaginative human, only moments away from eighteen.

“The most common request is to go to Disney World.”

Her words make dark my grin. I meet eyes with my mother, who knows already I am not the child to ask for this. I wish instead for something more elaborate and grown. If I am a river, I wish now to touch the sea.