The little girl arrived at the Fox Theatre with her mother, stepdad and two sisters in tow, not sure what to expect.
She knew "Beauty and the Beast," the Disney classic that for years has captured our heart, was playing, and well, that was enough for Lauren Morris.
The timeless tale had long been one of her favorites because the character “Belle is not afraid of anything and, no matter how someone looks or who they are, she loves everybody.”
At the theater, Lauren, 12, was led to a room where the show’s makeup artist applied her makeup, ruby red lipstick and all, then to Belle’s room, where she got dressed up in that yellow gown, then spent time dancing a waltz with the Beast before meeting the entire cast.
“It was fabulous and perfect and wonderful,” she said recently.
The evening was made possible by Sharecare, the Atlanta-based digital health and wellness company co-founded in 2010 by former WebMD founder and CEO Jeff Arnold and Dr. Mehmet Oz. Sharecare provides personalized information and resources to consumers to help them live healthier lives. It also produces a video series called "Sharing Care," which showcases uplifting health stories that inspire us to make a difference in the lives of others.
Such gestures have turned many a dark day into bright ones for children like Lauren across the country. So how did Sharecare find her? It all comes back to Belle and Sharecare video director Matt Preis.
Preis was at a production when he was struck by the similarities between Belle’s story of taming the Beast and a friend battling stage 4 cancer. What if by turning a kid into Belle for a day Sharecare could inspire a kid facing the fight of their life? he thought to himself.
Preis approached officials at the Fox and "Beauty and the Beast" on Tour about his idea, and they were ready to help. They just needed the right understudy to step into Belle's shoes. Preis turned to Camp Sunshine of Twin Lakes and Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, two organizations with whom Sharecare had worked on previous "Sharing Care" stories to see if they had a candidate. Both recommended Lauren.
I met Lauren and her mother, Karen Furr, early this week at their home in Cumming.
In the spring of 2014, they told me, Lauren and about 19 other schoolchildren from their neighborhood were suddenly stricken with a stomach virus.
Within 24 hours, they all got better. Lauren didn’t.
Furr, a former pediatric nurse at CHOA, called her family’s pediatrician and headed to the hospital emergency room.
Lauren, then 10, was dehydrated but she complained of a headache, too. A CT scan showed “something” on Lauren’s brain and, after more tests, doctors decided to operate.
“I’d been in that situation as a nurse with so many people, helping them deal with the diagnosis,” Furr said. “To be on the other side of the situation was surreal.”
As questions raced through Furr’s mind, the surgeon walked into the room, and just like that, she knew God would take care of her little girl. Dr. Barun Brahma was a skilled neurosurgeon who cared for every patient like they were a relative.
He would treat Lauren, the runt in the family, the same.
He scheduled her surgery the next morning. Karen notified her family.
It took him six hours, but Brahma was able to cut every bit of the tumor from Lauren’s brain. That was the good news. The bad news was it was cancerous. Lauren would get a couple of days to recover from the surgery, then she’d have to undergo 51 rounds of chemotherapy followed by two months of radiation.
But first, she needed three more surgeries to prepare her body for treatment: one to insert a feeding tube in her stomach, another to put a port in her chest and a third to put a port in her scalp for direct chemotherapy.
In April, she and her mom headed to Jacksonville, Fla., to begin treatments.
Furr wondered where God was in all of this.
She was assembling a stroller for her little girl, who by then was too weak to walk, when he showed up.
“I glanced at the manufacturing date and it was March 12, 2014, the same day Lauren was diagnosed,” she said. “Then I realized how he had gone before us and prepared the way.”
She thought, too, about the doctors and nurses at Scottish Rite who had cared for Lauren.
“They were all my closest friends,” she said. “From the diagnosis to the surgery, she was in the hands of someone who I had worked closely with and knew personally.”
She recalled conversations with Lauren’s school Principal Lynne Castleberry when Lauren was being bullied. They had wondered where Lauren got the courage to stand up to the constant pokes about her size. Castleberry told her that her daughter had that spunk for a reason. Now she knew.
It was for this fight with cancer. The bullies had been placed in her life to prepare her.
Over the next year, Lauren fought hard.
At her last appointment a week ago, doctors assured her the cancer was gone. Just like Belle, Lauren Morris had tamed the beast.
