Jim Harriman looked lovingly at his wife, Pam, who laid stiff in her bed. He held on to her hand and looked in her eyes, smiling gently.

“We’re praying for a miracle,” he said, softly.

Pam, a frail 86 pounds left on her 5-foot-6-inch frame, didn’t move. She can’t and hasn’t been able to for years.

And it all started with a rash on her face.

“She thought she was just rubbing her make-up on too hard,” Jim said of his wife, who was then a busy stay-at-home mother who was raising two children, now 16 and 12.

A trip to the dermatologist told a very different story. She was diagnosed with dermatomyositis, an inflammatory skin and muscle disease that causes the skin and muscle to harden up, Jim said.

That was in the spring of 2004. Now, Pam, once an active mom, is bedridden, with her arms frozen in 90 degree angles across her chest.

“Her skin is like concrete,” Wilma Gentry, a family friend, said.

After years of multiple treatments and things only getting worse, the family almost started to give up that there could be a cure.

Then, a Reader’s Digest article was just what the doctor ordered. A friend showed Jim an article about the disease and how doctors were using stem-cell transplants from the patient’s own body and putting them back into the person after a series of chemotherapy treatments.

Jim described it as the stem-cells right now are confused and fighting against Pam’s body.

“By taking them out and putting them back in, you kind of erase the hard drive, so to say, and start all over,” he said. “It’s like rebooting the computer. The new cells don’t see the body as an enemy anymore and they reproduce even more cells” that work to help the body.

However, the treatment is new and considered experimental, so it’s not covered by insurance. After appealing and getting a third party’s binding review, the Harriman family was again denied. The cost of the surgery itself is $100,000, not including post-operating expenses.

Gentry is heading a fundraising campaign to raise the costs. But the hospital requires the full amount beforehand. So, The River Foundation, a charitable organization in Stanford, Ky., loaned the amount to the family until they can repay.

In the best case scenario, patients receiving the treatment slowly regain their muscle strength, usually over the same time period it took to lose it, Jim said. In the worst case scenario, patients can die.

“The doctor said if you don’t do anything, she’ll die,” Jim said. “It’s a matter of time.”

Friday she left to fly to Chicago to see the doctors to start the procedure. Now, she’s undergoing chemotherapy while doctors prepare to harvest her bone marrow, according to Gentry.

Jim said it is a matter of Pam getting through days of chemotherapy, which takes a toll on any person, let alone someone who has been losing muscle mass for years.

“If she makes it through that, she’ll make it,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes and his voice cracking with emotion. “I told her to fight one more time for me and the kids.”



TO HELP THE HARRIMANS

• WHAT: Fundraising auction to benefit Pam Harriman

• WHEN: 10 a.m., Nov. 15

• WHERE: Christian Academy, in New Albany

• MORE INFORMATION: Items up for auction include a personal flight for two to Owensboro to eat at Moonlite Bar-BQ Inn, hotel stays, four new tires and more.

• MAKE A DONATION: Anything that can be sold in an auction is being sought. Contact Wilma Gentry for more information, at 812-246-0746.

CRUISING FOR A CAUSE

• Those donating $100 or more for the Harriman family can cruise for free on the Star of Louisville on Oct. 16. Reservations are required. Call 812-218-1565.