As Madison moved among Ascension Sacred Heart's perinatal specialty care, labor and delivery and neonatal intensive care units and into hospice over a three-month span this summer, her care team did all they could to help her achieve her main goals: to keep her daughter, Marie Sterling Ann Martin, healthy and to spend as much time as she could with her.
Julie Adams, patient care manager for the Level III NICU at Ascension Sacred Heart's Studer Family Children's Hospital, was among the hospital staff who helped to ease the way for Madison to stay in a hospital bed in her daughter's NICU room when Madison was healthy enough to do so, and to view the newborn by webcam when she was not. Adams and team also arranged a photo shoot for Madison and her daughter and created keepsakes for the family to treasure.
Madison's mother, Robin Henderson, says the staff created deeply meaningful "gifts and crafts and the photo shoot so Marie can see what kind of person Maddy was and that she loved her."
Robin says of the staff: "They were phenomenal."
A lifesaving choice
Madison was born in 2003 in Columbia, Missouri, the seventh of eight children. She moved with her family from Boonville, Missouri, to Pace, Florida, and graduated from Pace High School in 2022. She enrolled in classes at Pensacola State College with the plan to become a nurse, and she took a job as a home care aide, assisting disabled veterans.
In April 2024, clinicians diagnosed Madison with chondroblastic osteosarcoma, an aggressive and fatal bone cancer. She endured 15 weeks of chemotherapy and a 14-hour pelvic surgery followed by another 12 weeks of cleanup chemotherapy. The cancer went into remission.
But last December, Madison learned the cancer had returned in her tailbone, and that it was inoperable. During the diagnostic process, an MRI revealed that Madison was pregnant.
Robin recalls when she learned Madison was pregnant, "I was terrified, and shocked, and I cried. I was upset." During the prior treatment, Robin says, clinicians had warned that the treatments might upend Madison's dreams of being a mom and of having a big family. So the pregnancy astonished Madison and Robin alike.
Being pregnant with aggressive cancer forced an unthinkable choice on Madison: to pursue potentially effective cancer treatment, she would need to terminate her pregnancy. She chose to forego the aggressive treatment and prioritize her baby's life.
The family traveled to Germany for experimental treatment that would not affect the pregnancy.
Stuffed animals and favorite books
Robin says family surrounded Madison throughout her ordeal with cancer - two of her brothers even moved to Florida to be near her. Loved ones threw her a shower, Robin says, overwhelming her with so many gifts that she no longer worried that the baby would go without the things she needed.
During her pregnancy, Madison chose nursery decorations, stuffed animals and a rocking chair for Marie. Robin says she picked out "tons of books" for her daughter and even recorded herself reading one for Marie to listen to someday.
Madison talked to Robin about her hopes for her baby. "She hoped Marie would definitely live life to the fullest. She was like, 'You've gotta make sure that she doesn't follow into these little cliques and groups, that she'll be her own self and that she'll stand up for what she believes in and what's right, and all those things, and make sure she goes to church,'" Robin recalls.
'Weighed heavy on my heart'
Madison was admitted to Ascension Sacred Heart's perinatal specialty unit for women with high-risk births, where clinicians helped her manage her pregnancy. She gave birth on June 8, when Marie was at 30 weeks' gestation, or about 10 weeks premature. Initially, Madison stayed in the perinatal specialty unit while Marie stayed in an incubator in the NICU. While Madison was able to view Marie on a webcam from her hospital bed, what she really wanted was to be in the NICU with her newborn.
NICU nurses shared with Adams that Madison was in too much pain to walk or to use a wheelchair to spend time in the NICU, but that Marie was too fragile to be discharged from the NICU into Madison's care.
"When the nurses shared the situation," Adams recalls, "it prompted me to get involved because Madison and Marie's situation weighed heavy on my heart."
Adams met with Madison and her family and with the care teams and the group came up with the solution of bringing a bed into Marie's NICU room to allow Madison to lie down, hold her baby comfortably and sleep when she needed to. This gave mother and baby precious bonding time. Robin says before Madison died she wrote a letter advocating that hospitals create rooms to accommodate moms like her.
Family keepsakes
Since family was a top priority for Madison, the care teams made a special accommodation to allow for those visitors.
Also, when Marie's father, Jayden Martin, had a diabetic episode while visiting the NICU, the medical team helped stabilize him, and Adams ensured that he'd have the foods and drinks needed to manage his blood sugars safely thereafter.
Adams helped arrange a professional photography shoot that preserved special moments between Madison and Marie. Staff also created handprints and footprints of Marie and cast a mold of Madison, Marie, and Jayden's hands clasped together. They also recorded Madison's heartbeat and the recording is now in a stuffed bunny toy that Marie can squeeze to hear that heartbeat.
The NICU team saved Marie's safety wristbands for the family.
When Madison was discharged to inpatient hospice and Marie was discharged from the NICU into Madison's care, the hospice team enveloped the duo and the family, Robin says. A particularly special memory for Robin is a party they threw for Madison and Marie with gifts.
Madison was discharged to home hospice Aug. 15 and died Sept. 19. Since Madison's death, the family has been caught up in a dispute with her baby's father over access to the child.
Heart and soul
Adams says that serving people as the Ascension Sacred Heart team does, helps to reveal who God is. She says Madison's care team "poured their heart and soul out to this family and met them in the thick of it."
And, she says the way Madison put Marie above herself is "beautiful symbolism" of the sacrificial love that God shows people.
Robin recalls that Madison worried Marie wouldn't know how much she loved her because she couldn't do all the things other mothers did. Robin assured Madison that Marie could feel that love. Robin told her, "She knows you are her mom - that you are her person."
Robin says she knows Madison will be remembered. "She was fearless and loving and selfless," she says. "And she loved with all of her soul."