Grim diagnosis sets stage for overwhelming help

That last Mother's Day in May, with the girls finding time to do all the right things for Mom amid the hectic end-of-school schedule, wasn't any more remarkable than any other Mother's Day.

"I don't even think Rosie had a cough yet," Ben Baldwin says of his wife. When the Arlington Heights mother did develop an annoyingly persistent summer cough, it still didn't raise any eyebrows.

"I was getting blamed for giving her the cough," remembers Ben, who shed his pesky spring cough.

The oldest of the Baldwins' three daughters, 14-year-old Hannah, had pneumonia. But she only missed a week of soccer and recovered quickly with antibiotics. Rosie kept coughing.

"I'm the paranoid one," Ben says. "I said, 'Rosie, you've got to go to the doctor.'"

The first chest x-ray confirmed pneumonia, but the antibiotics only made Rosie sicker. She was sick through July and the family vacation to New York.

"I feel like I'm dying," said the mom who rarely got sick.

It was after an emergency room visit in August that the Baldwins took the first step toward learning that Rosie, a 48-year-old nonsmoker, had advanced lung cancer.

"This is stage 4," a doctor eventually told them. "This is not the kind of cancer that we try to cure."

There was evidence of cancer in her lungs, at the top of her femurs, in her hips, spine, shoulders and brain. Just like that, a family who imagined spending future Mother's Days with the kids and grandkids was forced to wonder if they'd ever share another together.

"It was a huge shock," Ben says. "And that's where we were, in shock."

Having lost her own father when she was 12, Rosie knew she had to fight for her life, if only for Hannah and her younger sisters, Madeleiene "Maddie," 12, and Lara, 8.

"To think they'd go without a mom just killed us," Ben says. "We have great girls and Rosie's such a great part of that."

The parents were forced into a world of chemo, drugs and insurance, got new doctors and became sudden experts in things such as "L858R mutation in Exon 21." The Baldwins didn't hold anything back from their kids, family, friends or the Arlington Heights community.

"We found unbelievable resources just by saying, 'Help,'" Ben says. "You have no idea who knows who, or what they've already been through. You feel a lot less alone when you make things public."

Dozens of people came forward.

"I had 50 names on an Excel spreadsheet of people who insisted that I let them know how to help," says Katie Leipprandt, Ben's sister. Within 48 hours, volunteers had signed up to deliver meals three days a week to the family through Dec. 31.

"You really kind of pinch yourself and say, 'Really?'" Katie says.

The Baldwin family has been involved in charities, Rosie has helped lead the scholarship committee for Arlington Heights Elementary District 25, and they've built up good karma in the community. But "I never thought it would come back like this," Rosie says. "It's crazy insane, really."

The Greenbriar Elementary School's PTA organized an effort to send her cards, deliver the family's favorite breakfast cereals and hire a cleaning service. Friends, neighbors and loved ones organized car pools and healthy fruit delivery. Volunteers mow the yard and run errands. The Arlington Aces soccer team is planning a fundraiser. Ben's barber in downtown Arlington Heights cut his hair and returned his fee, saying, "Do something for the kids." An in-law's cousin even has school kids in India praying for Rosie.

"It's been unbelievably heartwarming," Ben says, his voice choked with emotion. "It's just so moving. It bucks you up when everything is pushing you down."

The patio Ben hoped to build this summer was just a big pile of dirt until someone mentioned it to Dave Rooney of Rooney Landscape.

"I saw what he was up against and just jumped in," says Rooney, who didn't know the Baldwins. "But the really cool thing is how everyone else jumped in."

Local businesses such as Able Concrete Correction, Heller Lumber, John K. Fitzgerald Landscape Design and Craiger Custom Design donated the labor that should have Rosie sitting under the pergola on a beautiful, new patio by next weekend. Even the employees in the village's building department cut through all the red tape to get them a permit in a day.

"Cancer sucks, but this part of it, and getting our kids to witness this, I think it's good for them to see how good people are. We are blessed," Rosie says.

"This is weird," Ben says, "but we feel almost like we're lucky to have this. We're not, we know we're not, but it almost feels like it."