In an instant, the will of an entire family focused on beating leukemia.
When Evan Meade was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2010, his entire life moved to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health. The 16-year-old Franklin resident started months-long chemotherapy treatment immediately that required him to stay in the hospital for weeks at a time. The Meade family — parents Patty and Jake Meade, and sister Claire — stayed with him.
During an emotionally and physically draining time, they found a respite from the stress with the Ronald McDonald House.
“The services the House provided did more than keep my family close in proximity to the hospital — the House was our support system and kept us close to each other,” she said. “It was also a space for me to grow and be my own person as a sibling of a Riley patient.”
Evan Meade won his battle against leukemia, and the 27-year-old has been cancer-free for the past 11 years. But the Meade family remains connected to Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Indiana. Claire Meade now works for the organization as the Riley Guest Services manager, coordinating volunteers and services for parents and siblings of patients at the hospital.
Providing families with kindness and compassion during their worst moments — just like others did for her more than a decade ago — is a way to carry on the giving spirit of Ronald McDonald House.
“It gives me the opportunity to be someone that my 13-year-old self needed, to be someone my family needed in those times. I can be someone who can talk to them when they need it,” she said. “It’s a special way to be connected back to the organization that has done so much for my family.”
Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Indiana is an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that provides a place to stay and support for families with children battling devastating diseases such as cancer. The Ronald McDonald House got its start in the early 1970s in Philadelphia. Dr. Audrey Evans, chief of oncology at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia at the time, recognized a need for parents to be near their children while they were hospitalized.
Evans understood that young patients benefited when their families could be near them, and set about creating a standard of family-centered care.
“She saw families sleeping next to their children’s bedside, eating out of vending machines, those kinds of things,” said Karin Ogden, CEO of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Central Indiana.
With the support from the Philadelphia Eagles football team and McDonald’s, the first Ronald McDonald House opened in 1974. The nonprofit has since spread all over the world, including to central Indiana.
The local organization’s two facilities are located in downtown Indianapolis, with one adjacent to Riley Hospital for Children and another located within the hospital itself. As many as 58 families can be housed at the facilities each night, where they can enjoy meals, a room to stay in, places to study or unwind, and laundry facilities.
Inside Riley Hospital, “family rooms” that will open in November will provide a designated space where parents and siblings can try to relieve some of the stress from the ordeal they’re going through. Parents can be near their children while they receive care, and siblings can stay with their parents with minimum disruptions during a difficult time in their lives.
“What we do is really strengthen this family-centered care model, that puts the family and the child at the center,” Ogden said. “The main thing we do is keep families close to their children.”
Meade had the opportunity to experience this first hand. Evan Meade was diagnosed with leukemia after experiencing increasingly severe fatigue, nausea and achy muscles. A blood test found cancer cells, and he was admitted to the hospital for chemotherapy.
Over the course of nine months, he endured the toxic side effects of chemotherapy as the medication wiped out his immune system to kill the cancer cells. He developed an infection that caused his kidneys to fail, his lungs to fill with fluid, and his liver to stop working. He was confined to the hospital for 42 days before he was allowed to go home.
Those long days in the hospital were devastating, Claire Meade said. Any comfort was welcomed, which made the efforts from the Ronald McDonald House even more valuable.
Most importantly, the resources provided allowed the Meade family to stay together, to hold one another up and help Evan Meade get well.
“It was a place that was not only close in proximity, but also allowed our family to be close. If it wasn’t for a place that was literally right around the corner, we wouldn’t have been able to have the level of support we did,” Claire Meade said.
She remembers frequenting the Ronald McDonald House facility often, coming down to get a soda after finishing her homework. Other times, staff members would give her candy to cheer her up.
“That was their way of getting away from all of the stuff they were going through. It was a moment of normalcy in a different place,” Ogden said.
The impact of the Ronald McDonald House has always stayed with Claire Meade. So when an opportunity came for her to give back and help provide that care for others, she jumped at it.
She started her role as Riley Guest Services manager in July. Through the position, she oversees volunteers while also working with a coordinator to make sure Ronald McDonald House sleeping rooms at Riley Hospital are ready for families to stay. She also helps ensure that aspects such as the continental breakfast, hot lunch and grab-and-go food are ready when parents and children need them.
Within the new Ronald McDonald House room in Riley’s maternity tower, Claire Meade helps make sure services such as a designated “nap pod,” where people can take a quick rest, or the hydro-massage table, where people can get a touchless water massage, are prepared.
“Our main goal, between myself and my fellow staff, is to meet families where they are,” Claire Meade said. “We want to provide a place for families to be away from all the medical, and to let families just be families.”
