Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
When her newborn daughter Charlotte is diagnosed with a rare and deadly leukemia, Pia and her husband Robbert make a momentous decision: they reject potentially devastating chemotherapy and instead choose to wait for what will come. As the following year unfolds, Pia enters a disorienting world of doctors, medical procedures, and a colorful cast of neighbors and protectors in her native Amsterdam. Her seventeenth-century canal house becomes her inner sanctum, a private cocoon where she sweeps away distractions in order to give Charlotte the unfiltered love and strength she needs. Pia s instinctive decision, now known as watchful waiting, has become the standard medical protocol for Charlotte s type of leukemia.
This deeply felt memoir reveals the galvanizing impact one child can have on a family, a neighborhood, and a worldwide medical community. Vivid and immersive, Saving Charlotte is also a portrait of one woman s brave voyage of love, of hope, and, in its inspiring climax, of self-discovery.
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Synopsis
On a still summer night in a seventeenth-century canal house in Amsterdam's old quarter, Pia de Jong gives birth to a delicate, bright-eyed baby girl with a riddle on her back--a pale blue spot that soon multiplies. In a bare, air-conditioned hospital room, a doctor reveals the devastating answer: it is a rare and deadly form of leukemia, often treated with chemotherapy, a cure nearly as dangerous to a newborn as the disease itself.
Pia and her husband Robbert make an intuitive decision. They do not subject Charlotte to chemotherapy; they bring her home. They transform their canal house into a sanctuary where Charlotte can live surrounded by love and strength, where Pia can give her a chance to live. In return, Charlotte gives her mother the greatest gift of all: purpose.
Saving Charlotte is the story of a daughter's fight to survive, and of a mother's fight to live a life of passion and meaning alongside her.