Unknown to most, routine hardship for her

Comic & text by Micah Liesenfeld

There are places in St. Louis known by a small group of people that you will probably never visit. There are places like this in every area. It doesn’t have to be a forgotten tunnel or a small Mississippian island only accessible by foot during droughts. My 9-year-old daughter and I know one of these places very well. It is the infusion clinic at a local children’s hospital. My daughter has been receiving treatments there since she was two.

When children finally complete their last treatment there, they get to ring a bell on the wall.

An alcove holds food for patients and their families. I get my Keurig pod of coffee and my child’s milk or grape juice here.

Siblings of the patient can play with a jumbled stockpile of toys.

Donated toys and coloring books fill a prize drawer. My child always rummages through it to see if there’s anything new since her last treatment.

If we’re lucky, dogs visit with their Paws for Hope caretakers. After my child has some time to pet the dog, a caretaker sprays her hands with sanitizer and gives her a collector card of the dog. We have more than 20 of these cards (shout out to Finley).

If we’re really lucky, there is a visit from Dr. Too-Me and Dr. Celia from Circus Flora’s Clowns on Call program. They dispel jitters with a comedy act that gets parents and child laughing.

But most of the time, an infusion is pretty uneventful.

My daughter is a pro at these treatments.

I hope you’ll never have to be in the chair on the other side of the curtain. But if you are, you’ll most likely hear us making the best of it, and it will sound something like this:

Micah Liesenfeld is an instructional designer by day and a cartoonist by night, but if you rip off those disguises, you’ll find that he’s a husband and father of two who lives in St. Louis. You can also find him on Instagram @micahnova. Micah is a regular contributor to Supplement St. Louis. (And we are very happy to have him.)