In Loving Memory of Our Angel Josh

In Loving Memory of
Joshua Raul Martinez
December 4, 2002 - August 11, 2007

To hear a special message from Sponge Bob to Josh, and also to read more about Josh's guardian angels,
please click the button below ~

This first picture is of Josh and spongebob in Disney world. My Josh loved spongebob since he was 1 years old, he was his favorite.

The illness that took Joshua's life

Joshua was only 14 months old when I noticed he had a bump on his left shoulder, it looked as if his left shoulder was just slightly bigger than the other one. We also noticed that he was using his right arm over his left even though he was right handed. My husband said that every time he picked Josh up he would cry. The only way he was happy was when he had taken some Tylenol so he must have been in pain. The following day I called his doctor. When I took him in to see the doctor she said, "I think it is nothing, but I am going to order an x-ray just in case." The doctor's office called the next day and said that they had seen something in the x-ray and wanted him to have an MRI done. So the following day we took him for the MRI.

The doctor called that evening and said she wanted to see us in the office after all the patients were gone. I was so scared, I knew something was wrong. When they don't want to tell you the results on the phone you know something is wrong. My husband and I went in about 5:00 pm. The doctor started to cry and said that they thought he had a type of bone cancer and she was sending us to Children's hospital in Denver, Colorado. She had spoken to a cancer specialist, and they were waiting for us. It was a Friday when we went up to Children's. We got there praying that they had made a mistake and there was nothing wrong with him. The doctors took a look at his x-ray and MRI and thought it was just a cyst and made us an appointment with bone doctor the next week.

The next Friday we went in to see the bone doctor. He said that Josh had a type of bone infection, so he had to do a biopsy to check what kind of infection to know how to treat it. So many different diagnoses we did not know what to think.

This pic is Josh playing on his computer; he loved to play on the computer.

February 20, 2004 was the day of the surgery, I will never forget. We gave Josh a kiss and told him we loved him then they put him to sleep. I remember the doctor's face to this day when he came out of surgery to tell us that he had a type of bone cancer called, Ewings Sarcoma. They sent us back to a room on oncology and started chemo right away. He went through 14 rounds of chemotherapy. Two different rounds of chemo every 21 one days; one time it was for 5 days and the other it was for 3 days, and in between he would get sick from the chemo and had to be in the hospital here in Pueblo. The first time he got so sick. His white cell count would go down to zero and he got a lot of mouth sores. The fever got as high as 104. He was just laying there, in so much pain. They had him on morphine for the pain which made him sleep a lot. Then he would run fevers, and we would have to force the Tylenol down with a syringe. He did not want to open his mouth because of the sores. His hair started falling out. I remember touching his hair and the gobs of hair would just fall out. It was sad but was the least of our problems, hair. Everyday they would check his blood and his white cells were the same, and in order for the sores to go away, his white count had to go up. It took him 7 days to pull out of that crisis.

He had three rounds of chemo before the doctors said they had to do surgery. I thought they will take out the tumor and then give him more chemo, and he would be fine, but that was not the cause. The doctor said that they had to amputate his right arm and shoulder because bone cancer can not be killed with chemo alone. On May 28, 2004, they amputated his right arm and shoulder. It was so hard, but the doctor told us right before surgery you either want him alive with one arm or dead with the both of them. We said go ahead and do the surgery. When they called us back to see him after the surgery was done, my husband and I went into recovery room, I was so scared to see him. One of the nurses was holding him in her arms and she had a cover over him and right when we walked in the room she uncovered him so we could see it. It was such a shock we started crying. I think she should have asked us if we were ready to see. We thought that was the going to be the hardest thing we were going to have to go through, not knowing we were going to loose all of him not just his arm.

This is Josh playing a game with his foot, since he lost his arm to the first bone cancer when he was one.
His foot was like his arm, and he was good at it too.

On August 11, 2006, when we went to Denver for one of the checkups for the bone cancer, they found out he had Leukemia. They say he got it as a side affect of the chemo he received for the bone cancer. The plan was three rounds of chemo then bone marrow transplant. His little brother Max was a perfect match for Josh but unless he went in remission they could not do the bone marrow transplant because the cancer would just come back.

This is Josh and his brother Max in the morning in Max's crib. They would play in there while I made the bed every day.

Since Josh had AML (Acute mialitic leukemia), we had to stay in the hospital all the time. We lived there in a little room. Max was only 2 months olds when we found out about the leukemia and I was still breastfeeding so he had to stay with me. We lived there for months on end. We had a play pen set up as Max's crib. My mom would stay with me during the week to help me so my husband could come home to Pueblo, it was two hours drive from Denver, to go to work. On weekends he would go up to Denver to be with us. Every Sunday was hard for us. Josh knew his dad had to leave and would always start crying. My husband did not what to leave but he had to.

Here are Josh and his dad dancing, he loved to dance ever since he was little.

My three boys lying around at the hospital.

Every chemo had a different side effect. With the first chemo, he got strep, and since he had no white cell to fight the infection, Josh got real sick. He would run fevers that went up and down but never to normal. He was in pain so they had him on a morphine pump. He was always asleep. It was very difficult for us to see him suffering so much and not be able to anything about it. This one took about two to three weeks to get out of. One of the chemos affected his eyes, and he did not open them for a whole day. He would say, tell me what is happening on TV. We took a walk around the hospital, and he would say tell me what you see. It make me so sad I wanted to take everything away but I couldn't. The next day what made him finally open his eyes was to see his brother. He loved his brother a whole lot. He suffered a lot with every chemo. If you know what chemo does to you then you will understand.

On a day before Christmas, the doctor came and told us that the cancer had come back, and there was nothing else they could do for him, so they sent us home. They thought he was only going to live for another two weeks to a month, but he lived a happy 8 months more. You would not have even known he was sick. We were doing a lot of natural stuff on him. We took sugar away from him because the man that was helping us said that cancer thrives on sugar. We also would take him to a machine called the vibe machine. The man that helped us did it all for free, he was ever so good to us. I think it gave Josh more happy days.

Josh and his mommy in Disney world.

On August 11, 2007, exactly a year to the day that Josh was diagnosed with Leukemia, he passed away in my arms in our home. The last days of his life he had to be on oxygen because he was having trouble breathing. That night before we were getting scared because he was having trouble keeping his oxygen levels up. At about four in the morning I called one of his nurses, who was a friend of ours. She came right over. She put him on two oxygen masks, one in his nose and the other mask around his whole mouth. At around six in the morning, we knew it was getting close so we called my family to come over and the nurse called the doctor. We already had decided that we wanted him to go in his own home where he was comfortable. At around six thirty in the morning, he was on my husband's lap, very weak, when all of a sudden he got strength from I don't know where and sat up, yanked both masks off, and said, "Mommy, I am in another place." Those were his last words. After that, I told my husband to let me hold him. Josh took his last breath, and then he was gone. He fought so hard for so long, but at the end the cancer won, and we lost our angel. He was only 4-1/2 years old.

My niece got this poem from http://www.ikimi.com. The strange thing about that poem is that I had not even read it yet; my niece just told me she had made something for me. But that night before I even read it I had a dream that my mom and I were in a place, I don't even know where, but there was
a bunch of white feathers falling down. I have found feathers in strange places in my house, like on the kitchen floor by the fridge... not a place for a feather,
so where did it come from? Anyways, that is the story on the feathers...

Josh was only a litte boy when he passed away. I don't have his entire story written yet, but I am going to make one. I do want everyone who sees this page to know that Josh used to tell me he had two angels, a boy and a girl. He said he was not scared to go to heaven because his angels were going to be
his mommy and daddy until we get there. He also told me everything that his angels told him heaven was like. He even knew who his angels were
and their names, it is a long story. So I thought we could do one part of Josh's web page on just his angels.

My baby's last words were, "Mommy, I am in another place." That was the last thing before he died.
We were so close that he had to tell me he was on his way to heaven already since we used to talk about it all the time.

Joshua's Personality

Joshua was only four years old, but beyond his age of maturity. He was a gentle, kind, passionate little boy, and very lovable. Every person he met, he touched their lives in some way. Joshua knew things that were not known by little boys his age. He had a gift of making people enjoy life. He was very inquisitive little boy who always loved to learn about many things. He was very honest - he'd literally tell you that you smelt funny or that your breath stunk.

Josh was making twenty four to thirty six piece puzzles at the young age of only one-and-a-half to two years old. He loved to draw, play games on his computer and video games on his play station and game cube. He would play with one hand and one foot since he had lost his arm to the bone cancer. It never bothered him that he did not have a right arm. He could do everything with one arm just in a different way. Joshua enjoyed playing in the water. I would give him a bath every day since he was born. Josh liked to dance and sing his favorite Spongebob songs (Employee of the Month and The Best Day Ever.) He would always say when I am big I want to be a hall monitor and a cook like on Ratoutulli.

Josh told his dad, "When I am big I am going to build you a house with 5 floors, one floor for each of us." He was the best big brother ever. He loved his brother ever so much. He would always protect him like older brothers do. He probably still is protecting him from heaven. He loved to play with his dad who he called Papi. He would say, "Papi, do you want to wrestle?" There were certain video games he would only play with his Papi, never with his mommy. He was very strong boy. Whenever we would ask if anything hurt, he would always say, "I am OK." There are never enough words to describe him. He had many gifts and he was an angel here on earth.

My father had cancer also. He had a tumor in his liver. My father died two days after Joshua. My father and Joshua were very close.
Josh was waiting for him at the gates of heaven.

Joshua

Only four years old
Got a sickness at the age of one
The cancer took over his right arm
Then years later when he was about to turn four
He was diagnosed with leukemia
Which is known to be cancer in the blood
It was caused from the chemo of the other cancer
I don�t understand
He is just a little boy
He means so much to all of us
Doctors say they can�t do no more
They say he won�t make it to live another day
But all his family and loved ones
Have lots of hope and faith
He has the smile that will make your day
The personality that an angel would have
The prettiest sparking green eyes
That blow up your day
Day by day struggling to stay alive
While others commit suicide
Spending his day making his mommy laugh
This little guy that everyone will miss
Will never be let to go bye
They will do anything to keep this boy alive
But to know he will live
He is loved very much
He is my little and favorite cousin
Who makes my day, day by day
This is Mr. Spongebob's number one fan
Joshy, I love you very much
I won�t let you go
Written by Joshua's cousin, Maira Cornejo

They gave these cards out in Josh's memory at the funeral home.

The song playing on Josh's web page is the song they played for the service. It is "Wish You Were Here" by Mark Harris.
I just hear it, and it takes me back to those days after he passed away.

Many, many thanks to Angel Jason's Mom, Susie, and for all her hard work in getting the music just right for Josh's web page!
You can visit her web page for her son Jason at Jason Dunn's Web Page

Always There
Although I am in Heaven...
Remember that for every smile that you make,
I will be smiling with you.
For every tear that you cry,
I will be crying with you.
For every dream you have to reach,
I will be there...to reach it with you.
~Unknown Author~

My Angel Son Michael.

When I got your email about little Joshua, I just had to make him a little something for his first anniversary. Since I had some Sponge Bob graphics, I knew that
I must have downloaded them for this reason. Anyway, I am attaching the gift and hope you can forward it on to his mom and dad for me.
Thank you for sharing his pages - they are as beautiful as he is. God bless you.
With love, Judi, Mom to My Angel Andrew

To Joshua's Family
What a handsome little guy your Joshua was.
So brave after all he had to go through.
Now in the safe hands of our Lord.
He will always be watching over you.
GOD BLESS YOU ALL
Sue-Anne/LEE