The Beginning of Our Adoption Story

In case you missed the article from the Sunday ABQ Journal.... 

Cancer Survivor Making New Wish

By Leslie Linthicum

I knew I was at the right house when I saw a fire engine red Jeep Wrangler in the driveway. Meghan Black answered the door and ushered me in to meet her husband, Santa Fe firefighter Jacob Black.

Meghan is a nurse at the pediatric specialty care unit at University of New Mexico Hospital, a unit that fills many of its beds with children who have cancer.

Jacob was one of those patients eight years ago, long before he met Meghan and before she had an inkling that pediatric nursing would be her career.

Funny coincidences like that meeting a girl in college who ends up working on the hospital floor where you became the man she might consider marrying follow Meghan and Jacob Black. They're both devout Christians, and they see God's hand in all the twists and turns that brought them to where they are today.

It was one of those twists that brought me to the townhouse they rent in the Northeast Heights.

Jacob got that Jeep when he was 16, a teen in Santa Fe who was busy in high school and sports and unconcerned about the little bump he felt along his belt line. By the time the bump had grown to nearly the size of a baseball and Jacob told his parents about it, he was 17 and hours away from being diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma, a cancer of the connective tissue.

He had emergency surgery, followed by more surgery and weekly trips down to UNM for chemotherapy for the next 43 weeks. Like a lot of kids who are being treated for a life threatening illness, Jacob had an opportunity to apply for a gift from the Make A Wish Foundation, and he decided no surprise on a shopping spree for parts to further trick out his beloved Jeep, a 1998 Wrangler.

"It provided an escape for me," he told me. "When I felt up to it, I would go out and I would work on my Jeep, and then when I wasn't feeling great, I could go out and drive my Jeep and have fun.

With his Make A Wish grant, Jacob added a KC light bar, a snorkel, a new bumper and a winch, and he took the Jeep with him to UNM when he recovered from rhabdomyosarcoma and enrolled to pursue a business degree. He met Meghan, who was a nursing student at UNM, at Hoffmantown Church, where both were members, and the two became college friends and then more. They married on Jan. 3, 2009.

They had been married nine months when Jacob pulled on his pants one day and noticed another little lump. This time he didn't delay. A CT scan revealed his cancer was back, and the newlyweds spent the next months getting Jacob through three surgeries. The recovery was tough, but Jacob has now received a clean bill of health, and he and Meghan are making plans for a family.

Meghan, as a nurse on the pediatric unit, and Jacob, as a board member for the Make A Wish Foundation of New Mexico and the Children's Cancer Fund, were both aware that one of the consequences of his earlier cancer treatment was infertility, a side effect of the drug cytoxan.

That ruled out their making a child biologically, but it opened up adoption. Meghan and her two brothers are adopted from South Korea, so they liked the idea of continuing that family tradition.

The one obstacle to adoption has been money. Even though they have medical insurance, cancer is expensive. The two recent college graduates have been hit by expensive co pays for scans and surgeries that some months have totaled as much as a mortgage payment. They have found that domestic adoptions run between $16,000 and $20,000 and foreign adoptions can cost much more.

So with a heavy heart, Jacob decided to sell his Jeep the one thing the couple owned that they loved but didn't really need. Jacob figured he could get $8,000 to $9,000 by selling it, and he and Meghan would have a good start on the cost of an adoption. "It was a very tough decision," he told me. The Jeep has sentimental value to him, and it has also become well known on the pediatric oncology floor as children ponder their own Make A Wish choices.

"Kids always ask me what my wish was, and when they find out they always ask, 'Do you still have your Jeep?' " Jacob said. "Of course I want to be able to keep it," he said, "and I wanted to maybe someday give it to my son or work on it with my children."

Hearing that broke my heart, and it had the same effect on the board of directors at Make A Wish Foundation of New Mexico. The organization can't grant Jacob's adoption wish he no longer qualifies for the program because he's an adult and he no longer has cancer board President Nancy Harrington told me. But there's no way the board is going to let Jacob let go of that Jeep.

Make A Wish has set up a bank account to take donations to build the adoption fund. Board members are contributing to it, Jacob and Meghan's friends and family can contribute and, if you'd like to see this young nurse and firefighter get a jump on starting a family, you can, too.

Contributions of any amount can be made at any branch of New Mexico Bank and Trust to the "Jacob Black Save His Wish Fund."

"It's just something that the board wants to do to give back to him," Harrington said. "We want him to have his Jeep."

When he found out about the bank fund, Jacob was floored. "I am just overwhelmed by people's generosity and how much they want to help us," he said.

Needless to say, he's holding on to that Jeep.