Elementary school students make Valentine’s Day cards for patients at Hall-Perrine Cancer Center

CEDAR RAPIDS — What started as a lip balm fundraiser for cancer patients turned into an effort that’s been more than lip service to those going through chemotherapy and infusion treatments at Mercy’s Hall-Perrine Cancer Center.

On Feb. 13 and 14, nurses in Cedar Rapids distributed hundreds of Valentine’s Day cards made by students at Echo Hill and Novak elementary schools in Marion’s Linn-Mar Community School District. With plenty of glitter, pom-poms and ribbons, it was different from the usual paperwork patients were used to handling before or after treatment.

Judging by the reactions, it felt different, too — showing the outsized impact small gestures from strangers can have on those going through often harrowing journeys.

For Chuck Martinec, 83, gestures like this come once in a while, and the Cedar Rapids resident often returns the favor. This Valentine’s Day, he urged every nurse to take some chocolate from a tin his wife arranged.

Twice a month for the last 11 years, he’s been receiving infusion treatments for an immunodeficiency disorder. Each infusion takes five hours.

As he progresses in his treatment, these gestures mean more and more.

“It gives me a boost,” said Chris Peck, 73, of Fairfax, who received a card with her chemotherapy in the room next door to Martinec.

Hand-decorated hearts from children take on a different meaning with treatment, she said. Now, the impact comes to the forefront for her and her husband more than it might have before.

How it happened

Echo Hill Elementary School kindergarten teachers Heather Agnew and Wendy Edwards saw lip balm fundraisers in other states and wanted to start one in their community.

“Cancer catches everybody,” said Edwards, who started organizing the fundraiser. “People (here) didn’t hesitate to pay it forward and help someone going through cancer feel better.”

After going through breast cancer treatment last year, Agnew knew the havoc that chemo wreaks on a patient’s lips. But more than that, she knew the meaning of small gestures from strangers while going through what can be an emotional experience confronting one’s mortality.

“I think you look at life differently when you’re going through something like this. Every little thing seems more important and touching toward you,” she said. “In today’s world, we take so much for granted when you’re healthy and busy that when something happens that impacts your life like that, it’s those little things you never would’ve thought about. They make a difference.”

So when Mercy asked if her classes could make Valentine’s Day cards for patients, she didn’t hesitate to expand their effort even further.

With 105 students, their five kindergarten sections made enough cards to go with the 130 lip balm treatments they donated. Independently, Novak Elementary kindergarten teacher Jen Welsh heard about the idea from someone else and organized her own card drive, expanding it to all K-4 students in the school to donate hundreds more cards to the effort.

Kindergartners were told the messages were simply for those who were sick in the hospital. But the students starting to learn about social-emotional concepts like empathy mustered an emotional salve as healing as the lip balms with messages like “I hope you feel better,” and “Know that you are loved.”

“I just tried to make them feel that empathy of what it would be like if it were them in that position. They think it’s just a nice thing to do,” she said. “We talked a lot about being a member of the community and showing care, even if we don’t know who the people are.”

Pairing younger students with older fourth-grade students, the Novak Elementary participants used the chance to just talk about life, too — “the kind of stuff we don’t always have time for in school anymore,” Welsh said.

“Sitting in one of those chairs and being given something from someone else makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside — knowing there are people out there that care for you that you don’t even know,” Agnew said.

It’s a medicine that delivers instant results — Valentine’s Day or not.

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