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Rays manager Kevin Cash thankful for a daughter's mended heart

 
Rays manager Kevin Cash holds his two daughters, 18-month-old Camden, left, a few weeks after her surgery in 2008, and her baby sister, Ella.
Rays manager Kevin Cash holds his two daughters, 18-month-old Camden, left, a few weeks after her surgery in 2008, and her baby sister, Ella.
Published Nov. 26, 2015

They will likely rise early this morning and begin getting their three children ready for the big day. It's their first holiday season in their new home, and bedlam will arrive just as reliably as the invited guests.

Surely, somewhere down the road, these will be the moments they cherish. Keepsakes of the heart, never to be tattered or lost.

But those memories will come later. After they drive across a bridge, and steer toward St. Petersburg's downtown. After they park, and walk through familiar doors.

After they give thanks for the worst hours of their lives.

Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash and his wife, Emily, will join other team officials at All Children's Hospital Johns Hopkins Medicine this afternoon to provide and serve Thanksgiving meals to patients and families tethered to the center's grounds.

It's an idea rooted in compassion, but also in camaraderie. Kevin and Emily understand this heartache better than many. They know the fear of standing in this hospital's corridors, uncertain of what's happening beyond the surgical doors down the hall.

Emily was midway through her first pregnancy and Kevin was in his second spring training as a catcher in the Rays organization in 2006 when a routine ultrasound revealed their unborn child had two holes in her heart.

"Agonizing," Emily and Kevin say in perfect unison of the months that followed.

"This was the first time we were going through any of this, and the joy of pregnancy was ruined," Kevin continued. "We were stressed out every day, every night, not knowing what to expect. And we were getting worse and worse news as we got closer to birth."

They had been prepared for their daughter to face immediate surgery after the delivery, but the prognosis wasn't as grim as initially feared.

Camden spent eight days in the neonatal intensive care unit at All Children's and was then sent home to Tampa as Kevin returned to Durham to finish the Triple-A season.

They carried on their lives as close to normal as possible, and a second daughter, Ella, was born just about a year later. By the time Camden was 17 months old, the time had come to try to correct the condition that was hampering her development.

Many of the day's details have been washed away by the fear that gripped Kevin and Emily as they settled in at All Children's. They knew Camden's chest would be cracked open, and doctors would spend hours trying to mend her tiny heart. When surgery was complete, they walked in to discover her hooked up to wires and tubes with staples lining her sternum.

For six nights, Emily stayed in a nearby Hilton with Ella while Kevin slept in a makeshift hospital bed next to Camden's crib in the NICU.

"The day we came home, we had a pizza party," Emily said, "and she's been like a different kid ever since."

Kevin parted ways with the Rays a short time later and his playing career eventually wound through Boston, New York and Houston, with coaching stops in Toronto and Cleveland before returning to Tampa Bay as the Rays manager late last year.

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The Rays try to find ways to match players and staff with various community organizations, and the choice was obvious for Cash upon returning to town.

"Fate kind of brought us back here," said Emily, who also gave birth to son J.D. along the way. "And we immediately thought about doing something with All Children's because they were so amazing for us when we needed them."

Plans are under way for Cash to take part in a fundraiser for the hospital next year, but he and Emily also had a desire for something more personal. Something that connected them to the types of families they spent so much time with in the NICU so many years ago.

So the idea for the Thanksgiving meal was born, and another celebration for Christmas is planned for patients and families next month.

"We're very lucky because there are a lot of parents who don't have the good endings to the story that we've had," Kevin said. "You see kids who have been in there for 90 days straight, or you hear about a little girl having her fourth heart surgery, and you realize how mind-boggling that is.

"Once Camden had her procedure, we were 90 percent confident it was going to be corrected. Now she'll probably have to stay on top of this and have annual checkups for the rest of her life, but that's a small price to pay compared to what some of these kids and families go through."

It is part of the incongruity of a children's hospital that it is the one place parents dread the most, and yet it's the most reliable place for them to somehow discover hope.

And so today, Camden will return to All Children's Hospital. She'll help deliver turkey dinners alongside her parents in the same facility where she was once a patient.

And hours before they sit down in their own home for a Thanksgiving meal, Emily and Kevin Cash will count their blessings.