From Patient To Son

In 2014, little Jeremiah was born with significant and complex medical needs. Unfortunately those weren’t the only obstacles he was facing. After spending most of his first year of life hospitalized, he went to foster care. He would need a family with extensive medical training.

Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital nurse, Jordan Dickerson, first met Jeremiah when he was a patient on the pulmonary unit in 2016. After a month or two, Jordan, who was newly married, started to feel a tug at her heart. She couldn’t really explain it, but she had a strong feeling about Jeremiah that she couldn’t shake.

She and her husband, Cole, had often talked about potentially fostering one day, but as newlyweds, that day felt far in the future. One afternoon while working on the 11th floor, Jordan texted Cole and asked him to start thinking seriously about foster care and told him the Lord had placed Jeremiah on her heart.

By the next day, they were looking into foster parent classes and starting the process to understand what all that might involve. The couple was initially told there wasn’t a great need for foster parents for children younger than 5 years old, but Jordan knew that medically fragile children would be a different case. Among other things, Jeremiah was on a feeding tube and had a tracheostomy to help him breathe. These medical needs would require special training and certifications for any family who would foster Jeremiah.

The training and resources that Le Bonheur provided helped us feel loved and thoroughly equipped to care for our son and his medical needs. We are forever grateful for the staff at Le Bonheur.

A caseworker came to Le Bonheur to discuss long-term expectations with Jordan, because even for a skilled nurse, taking a child into her home with such intense needs would entail thoughtful and realistic consideration.

Finally, in June of 2017, then 3-year-old Jeremiah came home with Jordan and Cole. One evening at dinner, Jeremiah prayed, “Thank you for my mommy, thank you for my daddy, thank you for my Leo [the family dog] and thank you for my little sister in two weeks. Amen.”

As precious as that prayer was, Jordan and Cole had no plans for any siblings for Jeremiah just yet — they were still getting into the groove of being a family of three, not to mention the unique requirements in the life of a foster family. They gently reminded him that maybe one day he’d have a sibling, but it wouldn’t be for quite a while.

Two weeks later, Jordan learned she was pregnant, and before too long, Caroline was born. She was the little sister Jeremiah had prayed for.

In July of 2018, Jeremiah officially became a Dickerson when Jordan and Cole formally adopted him. A joyous day for the Dickerson family, several years in the making.

“The training and resources that Le Bonheur provided helped us feel loved and throughly equipped to care for our son and his medical needs,” said Jordan. “We are forever grateful for the staff at Le Bonheur,” said Jordan.

Jordan is an example of the heart and dedication of so many nurses that make up the Le Bonheur family. While they won’t all follow the same path of bringing a child into their own family home, Le Bonheur nurses find a way to bring their patients into their hearts as they provide skilled and compassionate care every day.