TOP STORY:
Dying Child Makes Ludicrous Last Request
Overly-Ambitious Plea Still Detrimentally Affects Parents
Minneapolis, Minnesota – Emerging from what may be her last round of chemotherapy, young brain cancer patient Ramona Thompson muttered what sounded like “I wish I could receive one million postcards from people around the world”. She then threw up and passed out onto her bed at the Minneapolis Children’s Hospital, nurses said Saturday.
“It’s truly a simple, heartfelt request,” said Dr. Aaron Channarayapatra, the specialist directing Ramona’s treatment. “But, at the same time, it is entirely unrealistic. I mean, if you look at how much time Ramona has left- one month, tops- and the rate at which she’s been receiving postcards so far, she’d be lucky to receive a quarter of a million postcards. And as time goes on, the public will lose interest in her story, making her goal of receiving one million postcards even more unattainable.”
Ramona was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer six months ago, which has acutely afflicted the frontal lobe of her cerebral cortex. Three months ago, she was admitted to Minneapolis Children’s Hospital’s intensive care unit.
“Now, if Ramona had made her request when she was first diagnosed, or even when she first came here, it might’ve been attainable,” said Dr. Channarayapatra from his office at the children’s hospital. “But it’s too late for that now. Far, far too late”.
“‘A
simple request?!’” exclaimed Dr. Channarayapatra’s assistant Dr. Sarah Allens during an interview on Tuesday. “
Simple?! This is a request that entails enormous complexity!
In order to persuade people to send one million postcards to Ramona during her short time left, we’ll have to stage numerous publicity stunts and interviews with Ramona and her relatives, and broadcast them continuously on all the major news networks! CNN, Fox News, the BBC the major news outlets in Europe, Asia, Africa, YouTube! The stress demanded by that alone would kill her in a few days. It’s impossible, I tell you. Impossible.”
“She’s not even that photogenic” Allens added.
Although Ramona’s request may be overly ambitious by any means of reasoning, that hasn’t prevented thousands of people from around the world from mailing a postcard to the address of Ramona’s parents, Bill and Brandy Thompson, after one of Ramona’s nurses posted Ramona’s last request on the social networking site Facebook on Saturday. Another Facebook user created a page for the cause and posted the Thompsons' home address soon afterwards. The postcards began arriving en mass the next day.
“We’ve received thousands of postcards, from places like Britain, France, Germany, China, Japan, and a whole lot of countries I’ve never even heard of before,” said Mrs. Thompson, a grocery clerk and mother of three other children. “It’s horrible. They’re filling up every bit of free space in our tiny apartment. And every day, thousands more arrive. Our landlord is threatening to evict us. I’m scared.”
“We lost count of the postcards on the very first day. At first we didn’t know what to do with them,” said Mr. Thompson, a truck driver. “We considered putting them in a rented storage unit, but it turns out that we can afford either that or Ramona’s continued medical care. So we’ve ended up burning most of them. It really cuts down on our heating bills. Of course, now it's all a question of whether we can burn more postcards than we receive each day.”
During one of her intermittent periods of consciousness, Ramona was recently asked what she thought of the developments that had ensued since she had stated her request.
“What request?” she replied.