Make Medicine Better

Sharon Coleman
Patient Liaison, St. Louis Children’s Hospital

She’s not a doctor, but she has a gift for fighting cancer.

Cancer, according to those who’ve had it thrust upon their lives, changes everything. It changes schedules, relationships, plans, and finances. Cancer changes what you think about and what you talk about. It has a way of defining how you see yourself and how others see you. For some cancer patients, the ability to cope and recover can be a long time in coming. But for Sharon Coleman, it’s been a gift, literally. The kind of gift one gets from giving.

Her remarkable journey has been marked by an unending series of gifts that she has given in the form of knitted clothing, throws, animals, and knickknacks of every shape and type. She makes these items and leaves them in parks, restaurants, at street corners or anywhere she thinks her creations might be found and enjoyed by others.

“I have knitted most of my life and over the years built quite a collection,” says Sharon. “But when I was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, I didn’t want to burden my sister or other people with all my projects if I didn’t make it.”

So Sharon began to share.

“The idea came to me at a restaurant one night when we were looking out at some trees,” Sharon remembers. “There was one small, struggling tree that had bare branches. All around it were healthy trees with leaves. So I knitted this little tree some leaves. And I hung them with a note.”

The response to Sharon’s leaf project bloomed and so did her commitment to spreading good will.

She found that knitting helped her focus her attention away from the rigors of chemotherapy and gave her something to think about other than cancer.

“When you are diagnosed with cancer, it changes how people respond to you,” she says. “People start to avoid you because they think they have to talk about your disease, which, for me, was the last thing I wanted to talk about. Now I had something that the cancer couldn’t touch.”

The thoughts of leaving her gifts for others to find gave her something to look forward to at 4 a.m. when she couldn’t sleep. It helped her get through the chemo.

So she would knit things: rock covers, rock socks, apple cozies, scarfs, hats, tree ornaments. Then she would tag each item with a red card that read postmarkfromtheedge@yahoo.com, and leave her work in public places around town.

Her great sources of joy are the notes she receives from strangers who respond to her e-mail address with responses that range from curiosity to gratitude.

This correspondence gives Sharon an outlet to talk with people who don’t know she has cancer. It’s conversation free of the disease.

Today, Sharon is doing well, still undergoing chemo but in a maintenance phase. Hopefully, soon, that too will pass. In the meantime, her project continues to grow. You can find pieces from her collection in businesses around town. Left Bank Books has a corner of the store dedicated to her work.

But what she still likes best is leaving a gift somewhere in the city to be found by a stranger who will then, by taking it, share the joy she received by placing it there.

So if you’re out one day and come across a knitted scarf or bear, or a who-knows-what with a big red tag, remember: It’s finders keepers and a gift from someone who knows first hand the joy that it brings to all concerned. Take it and give it a home.

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This Hero was nominated by Daniel Brown:

Working as a Patient Liaison for nearly 10 years in the emergency unit at SLCH, Sharon has witnessed her fair share of what life can throw at people in the community. It wasn’t until early this year that those same hardships fell upon her. Sharon was diagnosed with lung cancer. During her journey to recovery, she has taken her hobby of knitting to the next level and used it to grow as a person. Recently, she has been knitting everything from items of clothing, to throws, to animals, and has been placing her works of art around the city for anyone to use or enjoy. She does this without anyone knowing about her or her good gesture. It’s a way for her to stop thinking about her illness and realize that there are other people that need a smile too. So if you’re walking along a street and see a scarf around a statue, remember that it’s yours if you need it.