ABSTRACT
Poliak learned of the fam ily ’s troubles and approached the Hirschbecks about telling their story. They agreed. And she ex plained it all to The Sun's readers. She told a story about how the problem was discovered, the efforts to treat it, and the death of John. The story told about the continuing treatment of Michael. And it de scribed the emotions and experiences of these individuals in exqui site, rich details. H ere’s how Poliak (1996) began her story of “The U m pire’s Sons” :
How do you survive the death of a child? How do you go on knowing another child shares the same genetic disease? When you’ve traveled John Hirschbeck’s journey, being spit upon is just a footnote. The boy loves games of chance. He loves slot machines and play ing cards and instant-win lottery tickets. He learned at an early age to count coins, and to bet them. He learned in the hospital that money comes in get-well cards. Michael Hirschbeck learned to play gin in the hospital, too. His father taught him, during the long weeks of waiting, between the
chemotherapy and bone marrow transplant and seizures and pneumonia and days when he was too sick to even eat a cup of ice chips. He never asked a lot of questions, even the day his parents told him he had the same disease as his older brother, who was al ready dying, and that it would take his baby sister’s bone marrow to save his life. He was five years old.
