Joy in the Darkest of Days : 4 1/2-Year-Old Girl Dying of Cancer ‘Just Radiates Love’

Those who work on floor 4W of Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles have become accustomed to the sight of a little blind girl playing make-believe in the hallway, wandering about in way-too-big size 8 red shoes, pretending to be Dorothy from the “Wizard of Oz” and having the time of her life, even though she is fully aware that her life may soon be over.

“She’s amazing,” said nurse Cammie Lancaster. “If people could only view the world the way Kati views it. With Kati, everything is magical. . . . She’s always reaching out to other people. She just radiates love.”

“Kati” is 4 1/2-year-old Kati Sleeman, who has suffered more hardship during her short life than most people will ever know.

At seven weeks, she was diagnosed with retinoblastoma--a cancerous tumor of the eye. Her right eye was removed shortly thereafter. At 2 1/2, she lost the other eye. After a year of intensive chemotherapy and radiation, another cancerous tumor appeared, this one near her brain.

Her cancer has now spread into her bone marrow, her spinal fluid and her lymph glands. Her doctors say she will not live much longer.

But Kati, who has resided at Childrens Hospital for the past six months (and on and off for most of her life), is by all accounts a wondrous child--ebullient and friendly with a crackerjack wit, mature beyond her years and more accepting of her fate than is even her own family.

Full of love and full of life, she has charmed the hospital staff, from her doctors to the public relations people to the housekeeper, a close friend even though the two speak different languages.

And so it came as no surprise at Childrens Hospital that when the Make-a-Wish Foundation offered to fulfill her fantasy, Kati did not do what most children do. She did not choose to visit Disneyland, or to meet a celebrity or take a trip to Hawaii--even though her parents told her she could have any one of these things.

Instead, she simply asked for a party. She wanted it at the hospital, with the staff by her side. And with pizza--even though she cannot eat solid food anymore. “I like parties,” she explained when asked about her decision. “I love the hospital.”

Tuesday, at 2 p.m., Kati got her wish. It was a poignant affair; more than a few of the guests had tears in their eyes. But it was also a typical, if a little bit elaborate, kids party--colored balloons, toys, a clown, a scrapbook for the guests to sign, a cake that depicted the Emerald City of Oz and dozens and dozens of friends and admirers who came to pay homage to the little girl who has stolen the heart of Childrens Hospital.

“They almost need two scrapbooks, she’s got so many friends” said Patty Kelly, a special-education teacher who works at the hospital, as she and about a dozen others waited in line to sign.

“She’s an incredible little girl,” said Barbara Edelman, who as the hospital’s tumor registrar is required to report all cases of cancer to the state. “She recognizes people by voice. I can walk into the room and she knows who I am just by my saying, ‘Hi Kati.’ ”

According to her doctors, Kati’s disease, retinoblastoma, is the most common form of eye tumor in children but is still relatively rare. It strikes 1 in 20,000 youngsters and accounts for about 1% of all childhood cancers, they said.

About 90% of all children who have retinoblastoma survive it, said Dr. A. Linn Murphree, an expert in the disease who has been treating Kati since she was an infant. Most victims are affected in only one eye, he said, and generally that eye is removed and sight in the other eye remains intact.

But in Kati’s case, the cancer is particularly vicious. Although doctors have tried “everything that is available to mankind” to put it in remission, Murphree said, it has returned with a tumor in the center of her forehead. Now, there is “virtually no cure,” he said. The tumor got so big that doctors were forced to remove one of Kati’s glass eyes.

Through all this Kati is not at all depressed--a fact her doctor finds remarkable. “I think Kati has a special spirit,” Murphree said. “She has always been able to overcome the pain that she was experiencing. She has never been down. She has never felt depressed.”

But on Tuesday, instead of prancing up and down the hospital corridor as she normally does, she was lying in a buggy, ordering her father to wheel her about. Her condition has deteriorated considerably in the past few days, and Glenn Sleeman explained that his daughter had been unable to walk since the weekend.

When a neurologist appeared and told her he wanted to check her legs and feet, Kati’s retort was quick: “You’re not gonna do nothin’ to me, are you?” When those around her laughed, she issued a firm instruction: “Don’t laugh. It gives me a headache.”

When the doctor tried to have her stand, she was unusually uncooperative. But not more than a half-hour later, after her mother had dressed her in her pink satin party dress and pink sparkled slippers, she did something typically Kati.

“I want to walk,” she declared. And she did--almost all the way to her party.

Murphree and others credit Kati’s pluck and her positive outlook to her parents. Although the family makes its home in San Bernardino, Kathy Sleeman since January has lived in her daughter’s room in the hospital, amid electronic monitors and sealed-off chambers and intravenous equipment.

“She’s taught me so much, more than I have ever learned in my whole life, and I’m very thankful for it,” she said. “I feel like I’m the luckiest mother in the whole world.”

The Sleemans decided long ago to be open with Kati about her illness and its prognosis. When she expressed a curiosity about cemeteries, they decided to bring her along when they selected a burial plot for the family.

Now, as she nears the end of her life, Kati has been talking more and more frequently about heaven. At times, her mother said, the little girl uses these conversations to comfort not herself, but those around her.

Because she cannot see, touch means a lot to Kati, and one of her favorite things to do is to snuggle close to Kathy Sleeman and rub her mother’s ear. Not long ago, her mother said, Kati remarked upon that habit:

“She said that when she’s in heaven and I feel a tickle in my ear, it will be her.”