Photo by Daniel Henry, Executive Services Ashley Reimer (left), a 17-year-old patient in the pediatric oncology ward at Walter Reed, waits patiently as her nurse, 1st Lt. Ashley Torrence, adjusts a central line for her medication.

At any given time, the staff of 16 treats or follows a hundred patients with tumors of the kidney, brain or bone, diseases like sickle cell anemia or childhood leukemia, explained Lt. Col. Margret Merino, chief of the pediatric hematology-oncology service at Walter Reed.

Patients range in age from infancy to 25 or older, since the service follows patients 10 to 15 years after their treatment with specialists at WRAMC. According to Merino, the ward treats 20 new patients annually with an estimated 1,500 patient visits to the hematology-oncology clinic each year.

‘They’re here more than they are at home,” said Mia Johnson, a registered nurse on Ward 51.

‘‘Each patient and their family [are] important,” said Helen Williams, another registered nurse on the ward. ‘‘Each person who comes is a part of our family.”

Patients like 17-year-old Ashley Reimer, who spent more than 155 days of her high school senior year as an inpatient at Walter Reed. She was diagnosed Sept. 11, 2009, with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), a fast-growing cancer of the blood and bone marrow. Fewer than 10 percent of people with AML are children.

In February, Ward 51 staffers organized a sweetheart dance at Walter Reed to provide Reimer, who attends Mt. Vernon High School in Alexandria, Va., with a common rite of passage. The girl was moved to tears of appreciation on that special night, which many of her classmates attended.

‘‘We’re no longer a regular family,” said Sgt. 1st Class Troy Dennison, Ashley’s step-father. ‘‘We’re a family with a kid who has cancer, and our normal is now whatever her normal is.”

The military police liaison officer who works for the Old Guard at Fort Belvoir, Va., explained how well the Ward 51 staff knows Ashley, and said he is thankful for the care his daughter receives.

‘‘They’re no longer ‘nurse this’ or ‘doctor that’; they are a part of our family now,” Dennison said. ‘‘We’ve added them into our family.”

With their closest relatives more than a thousand miles away in Miami, 1st Sgt. Karl Briales said he and his wife Maria really counted on their Walter Reed family for support when his 4-year-old daughter, Kalia, received her most intensive chemotherapy treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia between July and November 2009. The two shuffled the responsibilities at home caring for the couple’s three other daughters, ranging in age from 2 to 15, in between hospital-stays with the then 3-year-old Kalia.

‘‘We lived at Walter Reed,” said Briales.

The administrative officer for the 701st Military Police group, criminal investigative division at Fort Belvoir, Va., explained at first he was skeptical of the care his daughter would receive at the hospital since no one in his family had ever been treated in a military treatment facility for a major illness before. Kalia was diagnosed a month earlier at a civilian pediatric hospital when she fell ill on a family vacation to Florida.

Briales said the difference between the two facilities was clear immediately.

‘‘At the other hospital...it was routine for them, they didn’t go above and beyond. They weren’t compassionate for the parents...so the parents can trust them,” said Briales, who explained how Walter Reed staffers reassured his family and earned the trust of little Kalia with the kindness they showed her.

Ward 51 staffers brought Kalia popsicles and played games with her, to keep her mind occupied and distract from the pain, her father recalled.

‘‘They would let her help them, play nurse,” he said. ‘‘Three months into it she would cooperate and stopped crying so much; she got close to a lot of the nurses,” Briales recalled.

‘‘I couldn’t ask for a better place: Walter Reed, definitely. I trust my daughter’s life, my life, with them,” Briales said.

Merino said all parents need to be assured their child is getting the best care possible. ‘‘It’s our job to show them, by the way we take care of them every day,” the oncologist said.

According to Capt. Kara-Marie Hack, the pediatric hematology-oncology fellow who serves as primary physician for Reimer’s therapy, relationships make a big difference in patients’ healing and recovery.

‘‘I think it’s everything. We see what a difference a strong family and friends can have, but the doctors, nurses and other staff provide that other part so that you’re coming to your second home when you’re coming for treatment,” Hack said.

‘‘We’ve got to look at the picture; it’s not just what a doctor writes down, it’s how we need to carry out that order,” explained Stacee Springer, a social worker at Walter Reed for six years who has worked in oncology for more than 20 years.

‘‘Our goal is to cure every one of these children,” Springer said. ‘‘This is what I have to do — this is the place where I want to be.”

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