It was just before dawn on a clear, slightly breezy Tuesday when a Danville couple checked their 2-year-old daughter in for surgery at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.
Three months had passed since the girl, Ailee, began saying, “Owie, tummy,” during a family trip to Las Vegas, leading to the discovery of a mass on her liver and a diagnosis of stage four cancer. On this day, doctors were planning to remove about half of the organ.
In researching the best care for Ailee, who was the youngest of their three girls, Tom and Truc-Co Jong had initially focused on Stanford’s prestigious children’s hospital in Palo Alto. But the couple discovered that John Muir Health, a community health system in Contra Costa County, had formed a multimillion-dollar partnership with Stanford to bring in pediatric doctors to treat more urgent and complex cases in the East Bay.
Doctors and hospital leaders at John Muir had assured the Jongs they could perform Ailee’s surgery there, giving them confidence that they would receive Stanford-level care 40 miles closer to home, the couple told The Chronicle.
In a pre-operative room, Ailee clutched one of the blankets that Tom and Truc-Co had used to swaddle her as an infant. The girl was never without what she called her “towel,” and at night her mother would tuck one under her chin before lying next to her and singing.