Staff sends 3-year-old home from hospital with a song celebrating end of chemo

Usually when you hear “pack your bags, get out the door,” it means you’re getting kicked out. But to 3-year-old Hadley Gray, it was music to her ears — literally.

Hadley was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia at her two-and-a-half year check up, her mom, Brittany Edgeworth Gray, told CBS News. The toddler has spent the past six months at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, where she received chemotherapy treatment and lost all of her curly brown hair.

Last Thursday, the staff at St. Jude kicked Hadley out of the hospital — in the sweetest way possible. A group of doctors and nurses walked into Hadley’s room holding balloons and confetti and singing a song.

“Our patients have the cutest S-M-I-L-E. Our patients have the sweetest H-E-A-R-T. Oh, we love to see you every day. But now’s the time we get to say, pack up your bags, get out the door, you don’t get chemo any more,” the group of staff serenaded the 3-year-old.

Hadley has been living at St. Jude in Memphis, about eight hours away from her home in Bluff City, Tennessee, since February. On Saturday, she got to go home. Like the staff’s song lyrics explain, “you don’t get chemo any more.”

The staff at St. Jude in Memphis sings the song to every child who completes their chemotherapy treatment, Hadley’s mom said. The happy mother shared video of the song on Facebook, and it has gained widespread attention.

Gray praised St. Jude, which receives the majority of its funding from individual contributions, according to the children’s hospital website.

“They’ve given us the gift of continuing on as a family of three with our baby girl. We owe them everything,” she said. Her daughter will continue to have follow-up appointments every four months with St. Jude, but she is officially in remission and at low risk for relapse.