My Eulogy for Chassity

Whenever I used to come visit, Chass in the hospital, she would lean over and say… “Okay… entertain me…” and then wait for me to tell her stories…

So I couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to talk about her… then to tell everyone stories...

I remember… when Chass and I first met…

I was walking down the hallway when the emergency light went off by her room.

I ran in and Chass was on the bathroom floor. Carrie was kneeling next to her with her eyes wide open and all she could say was, “Help.” The chemo that Chass was on kind of messed with her head a little bit. So she had stretches where she could walk and do stuff, but she was off in another world. So apparently, Chass had gotten to the bathroom with Mom’s help and then on the way back… decided to rest on the floor… as soon as possible.

So I picked Chass up and had her arm around my shoulder and started walking her back to her bed… but that chemo… it really really messes with the head… because as we were walking, Chass’ legs would kind of buckle every few steps and she would let out this, “Yip, yip.” And I remember just thinking, “What in the world is this child on?” But we got to the bed… yips and knee bucklings and all. And once we got her situated, I introduced myself to Carrie so that she knew that this total stranger that had walked in and picked her daughter up off the floor was actually someone who worked there and was going to be there for physical assistance throughout the day.

Later that day… when Chass woke up… her Mom told her what happened… and I guess Carrie got Chass’ attention real quick when she said some guy picked her up off the floor. I suppose that when you’re a 16 year old girl and you hear that some guy picked you up off the bathroom floor while you were in a hospital gown that didn’t cover your back very well… you tend to get… concerned…

So when I came in afterwards… and introduced myself to her… she had this nervous smile on her face… and she kind of just chuckled and said… “I don’t remember anything.” When I told her about the “yips,” … for the first and only time I can ever remember… Chass was actually at a loss for words. Seeing as how I could tell she was embarrassed, I told her, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.” And she laughed and said, “you have to promise that you won’t.” And it was our ongoing joke that I would always threaten to tell people the story, and she would scream, “NOOoooo!!”

In fact, during her last few weeks, when she was kind of out of it and not really responding to anything… I jokingly asked her, “Is it okay if I tell everyone the story of how we first met?” And in her out of it state, she started to frown and shook her head and let out a grunt.

But that was the beginning of my walk with Chass`.
From that point on, she and I shared a lot of conversations… and started a lot of trouble…

I remember Chassity as my partner in crime…

We used to talk about what it’s like having cancer… and we started talking about all of the perks…

Perk #1 – You can get out of doing a lot of junk that you don’t want to do…
We even worked out a whole routine… “Oh… I really wanted to do my homework, but I couldn’t… because I have cancer… cough cough… achoo!”

Perk#2 – You can guilt a lot of people into doing stuff for you…
“Not even for a poor little girl with cancer? Cough… cough… cough…”

Perk #3 – When you start to get bored with someone… you can just go to sleep and blame it on the chemo.

Perk #4 – You can say whatever you want and blame it on being emotional because of your medications. We worked out a routine for that, too. “Screw you! I’m sorry… I just get emotional because of my medication… sniff sniff…”

Perk #5 – You get full access to TONS of narcotics. In fact, one day she was prescribed morphine drops for her throat. She was looking at the bottle and wondering if people would buy morphine drops like they buy oxycodon or heroine. I told her, “Are you kidding? We could make a fortune! Fast, easy to swallow.” We worked out a distribution plan… what corners we would sell it on. We just couldn’t agree on what the split would be. I wanted it 50-50, she wanted it 100-0. It was a fun joke up until the day she asked Dr. Kitchens if she could go on morphine drops. Dr. Kitchens looked at her and said, “What for?” And Chass just said, “Oh… I might be feeling some pain… or something…” Smooth, Chass. Real Smooth. Dr. Kitchens looked at her and then over at me and I made out of there like a bat out of hell.

I remember Chassity… the mischievous…

During one of the first weeks I took care of her… someone handed out some goodies to the Hem Onc kids. Among the goodies they handed out were these tubes of green and blue hair coloring… I’m not sure what kind of sick mind gives hair coloring to a bunch of kids with cancer… but we definitely made the most of it. Me, Chass, and these 2 other Onc kids, Loren & David decided that since no one really had hair… except me… we would use the hair coloring to paint each other’s faces. After we had all gotten each other… we gathered in Chass’ room and took pictures. We joked around that we all looked like the cover of some bad National Geographic Magazine… The lost children of the Chemo tribe…

When Chass got bored, she thought of ways to vandalize me. One day, Chass decided to make little pigtails with my hair. It took 10 rubber bands… and about 3 hours… and in the end, my head looked like the sides of a pineapple.



One day, she decided she was going to tattoo me… with a black sharpie… I was walking around the hospital the rest of the day with “Chassity was here” written on my arms.

One day she decided she was going to get me with some water-filled syringes. And she got me… what she didn’t count on was that I had access to BIGGER syringes than she did and… I didn’t really care whether she had cancer or not.

I remember Chassity… and food…

We used to LOVE to talk about food.

Our favorite food to talk about was canned peaches… wonderful, glorious, chilled, canned peaches… We once had a 30 minute conversation about canned peaches. Then we spent an hour talking about the fact that we couldn’t believe we talked about canned peaches for 30 minutes.

She also loved to talk about Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable Soup, cabbage, and brussel sprouts…

She used to LOVE to order food… She never really ate any of it… but whenever she came in the hospital, she LOVED looking at the menus and ordering.

I remember Chassity… the National Enquirer…

Chass LOVED gossip. She liked hearing it. She liked spreading it.

If I ever wanted to know about any of my co-worker’s dating situations… all I had to do was ask her.

Through Chass, I always knew who was pregnant, thinking of buying a house, going on vacation, or had diarrhea.

When a bunch of the families that knew each other would be admitted at the same time, everyone would pull their chairs out into the hallway and talk… we called it “the porch.” And there were a couple of times when Chass was feeling crummy and had to stay in bed. When I would go into see her, the first thing she wanted to know was what was happening on the porch… who was there… and what was being said.

I remember Chassity… the smart ass…

One of my all time favorite nicknames for Chassity… I believe created by Penny Cummiskey… was Sarcasity…

And she lived up that name. Boy did she know how to dish it out…

I remember when she was in the PICU, they were giving her pre-meds for Platelets by giving her benadryl and Tylenol, so that she wouldn’t develop a reaction. The nurse asked her if she was allergic to anything… and Chass said, “Ummm… Platelets…” The nurse looked up at her and didn’t know what to say… I was about to crap my pants I was trying so hard not laugh.

While she was in the PICU, she was also told that she wasn’t supposed to get out of bed. So when it came time to go to the bathroom, she called the nurse. The nurse told her to use the bedside toilet, and Chass replied, “Umm, hello, you said that I wasn’t allowed to get out of bed.”

Whenever someone new walked into the room, it was like… “fresh meat.”

I remember sitting with her one day, when the dietician came in. Chass had been having problems with her gall bladder and the dietician was going to come in and talk to her about her nutrition. The lady that came in didn’t speak English very well and was kind of awkward and as they started talking, I knew Chass was going to eat her alive. The lady looked at Chass’ tray and was telling her that she shouldn’t be eating greasy foods. And Chass told her, “Ummm… talk to YOUR people in the cafeteria… they’re the ones that made it. I just eat what they send up. What do I know, I’m just a little girl with cancer.” The dietician looked at me with these eyes that said, “Help.” I quickly left the room. And when the dietician came out later… she looked like she had just finished wrestling with a giant alligator… and lost.

When you have trouble with your gallbladder you go on a special diet where you’re supposed to primarily eat, Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, and Toast. It’s called the BRAT diet. I think that when the dietician put Chass on the BRAT diet, she might have done it with a little extra feeling.

When Carrie told me that they had asked a Psychiatrist go into talk with Chass, my reaction was, “huhuhuhuhuhuh hah hah! Just imagining what that first time must have been like. And when she told me that Chass threw him out, I laughed even harder.

I remember feeling sorry for any of the residents that came in to see her for the first time, because they had been warned that Chass could dish it out… so they would come in walking on eggshells… and then Chass would say something smart alecky… and they would start sweating and saying, “umm and uhh, a lot.”

I remember Chassity… utterly and completely in charge…

Whenever a new nurse came in… Chass was ready to tell her how and when things were going to get done… And most of the time… all the nurse could say was, ok.

Even during her last few incoherent days in the hospital, Chassity was completely in charge. There was one night when she was surrounded by Carrie, me, and 2 of her favorite nurses, Kimber and Cameron. Chass started having some hallucinations, where she was seeing a very large bug. And it freaked her out a bit. And it was a bit unsettling. But the funny part was how she had everyone on edge doing exactly what she wanted. Cameron was going to get up and swat the bug for her… Chass screamed at her and Cameron sat very still. All of us were yelling at Cameron to stop moving and stay very still. Then Dr. Weil came in… and Chass started screaming. So Dr. Weil stopped in her tracks. And Chass was screaming at her about the bug. Dr. Weil started to walk out of the room and Chass screamed at her No. So Dr. Weil just stopped and had this look on her face of… waaaaaaahhhhhhh….. I don’t know what to do…..

So we finally started to get her calmed down… and we started telling her that we had gotten the bug. Chass asked us if we flushed it. And we all said, yes… That’s right… we flushed it… About 10 seconds later… Chass asked why she hadn’t heard the flush… We all just looked each other… Oh, we took it outside, yeah, yeah, we took it outside. None of us thought to just flush the toilet. Doctors, nurses, med students… stumped by a kid with cancer on morphine and atavan.

It was a really stressful hour and all of us were frazzled by it… But afterwards we laughed until we had tears in our eyes… thinking about how even in her incoherent state… Chass still had the entire room completely controlled… right down to every move we made…

Chassity was really something. Working on a Pediatric Floor, you get to meet some really amazing kids. But even out of that group of kids, Chassity stood out.

I remember Chassity… the kindest child I have ever met.

One of the first stories I had ever head about Chass, before I had even met her… was from one of the other kids who was going through treatment. This little 9 year old boy David was telling me about his girlfriends. And among that group of girlfriends… was Chass. So when I finally did meet her, I went back to David and said, “Hey, I met your girlfriend, Chass. She seems really really nice.” And David looks at me and says… “Yeah… plus she’s really hot.”

But Chass more than any other patient I ever saw… was so full of empathy for other kids with cancer. She never really wanted to talk about how tough it was for her. Instead, she always talked about how tough it was for some of these littler kids… or as she called them… her little buddies. When they were trying to get David to walk more, Chass volunteered to sit on a bench at the end of the hall and call out to David to come to her for a hug.

Whenever any of her little buddies came into the hospital for treatment, she wanted to make sure that she could leave her room so that she could go visit them. And when she couldn’t go visit them… the little ones would come to her room and visit her.

When she got the opportunity to meet Beyonce through a program they were having at the Ronald McDonald House, Chassity asked if her favorite little buddy, Ryan, could go in her place, because she knew how much Ryan loved Beyonce. Luckily, they were both able to go. But Chass was willing to let him go instead.
No matter how bad things were, Chass always focused on others and focused on the good. One thing Chass used to say all the time was that, in a way she was glad that she got cancer, just because it allowed her to meet the people that she did.

If you ever read Chassity’s website… and if you go through her entire journal history… you’ll never find a single time when she asked anyone to pray for her. She filled her journal with prayer requests for other kids.

Last year, when so many kids that were close to her were dying… she didn’t worry about herself even though it was tough on her… seeing as how she couldn’t help but wonder if she was next… instead, she worried about those of who were close to these kids… she worried about all of us and how we were getting through this…

She was a complete paradox. She was the ultimate diva, yet the epitome of selfless.

One of the last full conversations I got to have with Chass was over Thanksgiving weekend. We talked about her Celebration of Life party and all of the funny stories and the food and the people. We talked about her scrapbook where people left her notes… and I told her that I was sorry that my page was so lame. I couldn’t think of the right words… because there was so much that we had already said… and what was left to be said… was really just between me and her. And Chass looked at me and said, “But you have to understand that you may have thought it was lame, because you wanted to say more… but what you said meant something to me… even if it was just a few words… because I know you… and just seeing anything meant something to me… so quit saying you’re sorry… because I promise you… no matter what you think… it wasn’t lame.”

My little, perfectly selfless diva.

But we also talked about something else. We talked about today. We talked about what she wanted to be said at her funeral.

First and foremost… she wanted to thank her Mom.
Chass wanted everyone to know… how much her Mother did for her…
Chass wanted everyone to know… how sorry she was that her Mom had to go through all of this…
Chass wanted everyone to know… that her Mom was like her best friend….
Chass wanted her Mom to know… that she wished she could have bought you the world…
Chass wanted her Mom to know… that she loved her… and that she was so grateful that she had the Mom that she did…

But Chass also wanted everyone to remember the fun times that we all shared together.
She wanted everyone to remember funny stories… and remember all of the things that made our relationship with her special.

Chass didn’t want us to sit around here and mope and be sad and depressed.
Chass wanted us to celebrate her life… and remember her.
During one of her last nights, Chass and I were alone, we got a chance to say a lot of the things we wanted to say… and I sat there with her and held her hand and stared into her face. After a while, she looked at me and started to struggle to talk… and I leaned in and I said, “What is it, Chass. I’m here. What do you need to say?” And she blurted out, “Do you have a problem?” This totally threw me off and I didn’t know what to say or what she was talking about. And then I understood. I asked her, “Chass am I annoying you because I’m just sitting here staring at you?” And she nodded her head emphatically, yes. And I laughed and kissed her head and said, “Ok. No more moping.” She said, “Turn on” for me to turn on the TV. I asked her if she wanted to watch Grey’s Anatomy and she nodded yes. I told her that it was a re-run and she said, “don’t care.” Chass had had enough of us sitting around feeling sad together.

This is Chass. She didn’t live her life feeling sorry for herself. She doesn’t want us to sit here and feel sorry for her either. She wants us to “turn on.” Go out and live.
She wants us to live life.
She wants us to cherish each other.
She wants us to be thankful for every moment that we get.
She doesn’t want us to remember her death.
She wants us to remember her life… and how she lived it.

To my dear sweet Chassity,
In 2 ½ years, I will graduate Medical School and start my path as a Pediatrician. I will probably see over a million more kids in my lifetime. But during that time… I will never meet another Chassity Simone Flint.

Every time I see a ladybug, a sarcastic comment, a can of peaches, an x o, campbell’s vegetarian vegetable soup, a wild cherry slurpee, red lobster, … a dragonfly…
I will remember your beautiful smile and your kind, gentle heart.

Thank you, Chass, for your friendship.
Thank you for sharing your time in this world with us.
Thank you for your love.
Know that I will always remember you,
And that I will never forget that God gave me the privilege of walking side by side with one of his angels.
Thank you, Chass. I’ll love you forever.