In Praying for Emily, Tom, Kari, and Emily Whitehead has written a personal autobiography about the journey that they had to face as a family. A little background on Emily’s parents is Tom works for a power company and Kari works as a registered dietitian and research project manager. They open up sharing about how they got married and how they struggled having a child. They eventually were blessed with a little girl. They described Emily’s personality as someone who loves to laugh, has high energy, loved being outdoors, and a prankster. In the book, Tom also opened up about a few health scares and how he was diagnosed in his twenties with Crohn’s disease and how it affected his family. Sadly, this wasn’t the only health scare that was about to come to his family.
They begin the book by explaining that Pam, Kari’s mother was watching Emily during the day and she noticed some bruises on her arms and legs. Emily was a high energetic child so they didn’t think much of it at first. Later that night, Kari noticed that she had a total of 21 bruises on her body. She also realized at around this time Emily’s gums was bleeding when she brushed. She explained all of her symptoms to her sister, Brenda who is a nurse and she told them to get her checked out because all of this was signs of leukemia. Emily was still running around and playing outside on her swing. Tom and Kari thought maybe she was still fine other than the bruises she appeared fine. Later in the night, Emily woke up screaming that something was wrong with her legs and they tried a warm bath and she screamed that it was too hot. They took her to her doctor and then the ER for blood work and it was confirmed that Emily’s blood cells are 90% leukemia cells. Throughout the book, he walked readers through the different hospital visits and stays and what Emily experienced and faced along the way. Kari also started a blog to get people to pray for Emily and to keep everyone updated along the way. They also shared how the chemo failed and the cancer come back a second time. Then later in the book, they revealed how Emily received a miracle by being the first child to try an experimental treatment plan that included something called, CAR-T cell therapy. She eventually recovered and was cancer free. This in turn lead to documentaries and meeting President Obama and them starting the Emily Whitehead Foundation.
I would recommend this inspiration book to anyone who is experiencing cancer or they know someone that is. This is the first time that I have heard of Emily’s story and is very eye opening in learning about CAR-T cell therapy and how this started. I immensely loved how Tom also shared about how he had different whispers when Emily was going through her cancer treatments and sometimes it would be like a voice and flashes of things that would be to come. He has a cool story about a kid in the elevator and how it gave him hope and then later he learned more about the boy. I also liked how Tom shared how he was more the faith believing one and how this influenced his family during the difficult season. I also appreciated how they shared the science too and how Kari loved the facts and how this helped them during their journey. In reading the book, I liked how they explained the challenges and what they learned along the way during Emily’s cancer journey.
"I received this book free from the publisher, Faithwords for my honest review.”
If you would like to purchase a copy of Praying for Emily, check it out on Amazon.com:
https://www.amazon.com/Praying-Emily-Science-Miracles-Daughter/dp/1546034110
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