But as if that wasn’t tragic enough, Cammie also knew she had to make arrangements for her five-year-old daughter - known as Cammie, Jr. - after her death. So she contacted a young white couple she had met during her pregnancy. They ran a home for unwed mothers, had a farm in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (known as the U.P.), and had adopted other children. So Cammie asked if they would adopt young Cammie after she died.

It was settled. Young Cammie would go to their farm for one weekend of every month so the girl would get to know her future adoptive parents. She would come home after these weekends just bursting with exciting stories about how she had milked cows, hand-fed baby chicks, and ridden horses. “It’s so wonderful, it’s like what you see on TV,” young Cammie bubbled. Which gave the dying mother an idea.

She asked VITAS employee Patty Ray to make a videotape of her saying good-bye to her daughter. Of course, Patty said yes.

“I videotaped Mom in her home for about an hour,” Patty recalls, “telling little Cammie things about herself and their family, including why she had chosen the folks she did to adopt her. Then, I videotaped Cammie at school one day, so Mom could see what it was like. Finally, I taped the two of them together - mother and daughter - as they were talking, playing, singing.... it was wonderful to watch them!

“It was during these times that Mom expressed a heartfelt desire to see the place Cammie would be living.... the place that was so wonderful it was like a place you’d see on TV.”

So Patty and Brenda Patterson, based in Homewood and Lombard, Illinois, decided to make their patient’s wish come true. And not via a videotape or on TV. They decided to take Cammie to the farm - in person.

“Brenda and I arranged a ‘road trip’ to the U.P.,” Patty says. “We packed lunches and snacks and lots of Roxinol, and picked up the two Cammies at six in the morning. We’d mapped out all the hospitals along the way, just in case, because it was about a five-hour trip by car! But everything turned out just fine. We dropped them off on a Wednesday with arrangements for the adoptive parents to bring them back the following Sunday.

“It was just so great for both of them. Both trips went off so well - without a hitch, really - that Brenda and I were on a spiritual high that we will never forget.”

Patty and Brenda won the first Emmy Philhour Award, for literally going the extra mile for their patient.