Source: http://venturacountystar.com/news/2008/mar/25/…
Source: http://myfoxla.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

By Kim Lamb Gregory
Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Most young women Melissa McClelland’s age are worried about looking their best — finding just the right dress, makeup, hairstyle and jewelry.

But the 22-year-old Ventura College student doesn’t have the luxury of that kind of angst. Instead, Melissa worries about the brain cancer that recurred five months ago. She wonders if the radiation treatment she had last week will work. On top of that, she has to cope with being legally blind and the fatty tumor on her upper hip that prevents her from wearing stylish clothes.

“When I want to buy tighter clothes that look better, I can’t,” said McClelland, who lives with her parents in Oxnard. “I have to buy baggy clothes that are not that appealing.”

McClelland’s dad, Jerry McClelland, couldn’t give his daughter a carefree childhood, teen or college years. He couldn’t cure the cancer or give Melissa her sight back. But there was one thing that he decided he could do.

In late February, Jerry McClelland submitted his daughter’s name to a segment on KTTV Fox 11’s “Good Day L.A.” morning show called “Knock Knock Makeover.” The segment, which has been a part of the Los Angeles morning show since September, involves surprising Southern California residents with a knock on the door, and a one-hour hair and makeup session with Beverly Hills stylist to the stars Jose Eber and his salon makeup team.

Viewers watch “Knock Knock” host Lisa Breckenridge, accompanied by Eber and a makeup artist, knock on the door and surprise the contestant during “Good Morning L.A.” Viewers then get to check in an hour later to see the results.

“I wanted her to feel good about herself on the outside as well as on the inside,” McClelland said when asked why he nominated his daughter for a makeover.

No sooner had he read Jerry’s letter than “Knock Knock” producer Steve Holzer picked up the phone.

“I opened Jerry McClelland’s letter, read it and I picked up the phone immediately because it was so touching,” said Holzer, who fields about 10 nominations a week.

The letter reads, in part: “At the age of 8 years old, this now 22-year-old girl was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. At the age of 10, Melissa was diagnosed with scoliosis, which required a 10-hour surgery where two rods were placed in her back. Because of the brain tumor, Melissa is legally blind.

“This young girl has gone through so much that this makeover would be such a pick-me-up for her. This special girl is my daughter Melissa.”

Not only was the letter moving, Holzer said, but it marked a first for the show.

“We get lots of letters from mothers nominating daughters, daughters nominating mothers and friends nominating friends, but this was the first time that I could remember that we had a father nominating a daughter,” Holzer said.

McClelland, 50, is a Los Angeles County firefighter. Fighting fires was his forte, not writing letters, so he really didn’t expect to be contacted. When he got the call from Holzer, he and his wife, Debbie, 48, were overwhelmed.

The segment airs every Monday morning, so the team would show up at their door at 9 a.m. Feb. 25. Jerry, Debbie and Melissa’s 23-year-old brother, Jason, would have to keep it a secret for about a week and make sure that Melissa was home when the camera crew arrived.

Jerry was thrilled that he could finally offer his daughter a happy surprise after years of unpleasant shocks.

The first shock occurred when Melissa was 8. It started with what appeared to be a vision problem.

“When she read a book, she would bring it closer and closer to her face,” Jerry said.

Jerry and Debbie took her to a doctor, who gave her eye exercises. When a year of the exercises failed to improve her vision, her parents took Melissa to an ophthalmologist; he, in turn, sent her to the Jules Stein Eye Institute in Los Angeles.

There, Melissa underwent a magnetic resonance imaging scan, or MRI. The McClellands were told that the results would be available in a week.

“That very same day, we got home and the phone machine is blinking,” Jerry said.

The message from the institute instructed the McClellands to bring Melissa back as soon as possible for more tests. Jerry and Debbie were scared.

They had reason to be. Brain scans in the days that followed revealed a malignant tumor the size of a quarter right where the optic nerves crossed. Melissa’s parents drove home in shock.

“It didn’t really hit me until we got home,” Jerry said. “It was a denial thing. How can it happen to someone so young?”

Melissa underwent surgery that removed 25 percent of the tumor. Then her parents drove Melissa to Childrens Hospital Los Angeles once a week for a year for chemotherapy sessions that lasted six or seven hours every time. She was now blind in her left eye, and the vision in her right eye was impaired.

Melissa struggled to grasp what was happening to her. At one point during her ordeal, her parents took her to a psychologist to try to find out why she kept falling asleep in school; there seemed to be no medical reason for her sleepiness.

With the help of the psychologist, Jerry and Debbie learned that, after her parents read her a bedtime story and turned out the lights, Melissa would force herself to stay awake all night. She knew that cancer killed people and she didn’t want to die.

“I was afraid to go to sleep and not wake up in the morning,” Melissa remembered.

More health challenges

Finally, there was good news. It appeared as though the chemotherapy had worked on Melissa’s brain cancer, which is called neurofibromatosis.

At the age of 10, Melissa was doing well. It seemed as if the crisis had abated. It wasn’t until she began building her strength up at an Oxnard gym that she noticed another problem. Her back was not bending properly.

A trip to a specialist yielded more bad news. She had scoliosis and would be required to wear a back brace for two years.

When the brace failed to correct her curvature of the spine, Melissa had to undergo a 10-hour surgical procedure in which two rods were placed in her back. After she finally recovered from the surgery, she resumed her school schedule, but had to use a white cane that made her feel different from the other kids.

She handled her disability by getting up in front of the class at the beginning of each school year and explaining who she was and why she would need special visual aids.

“I felt really proud of her,” Jerry said.

Most of the kids were curious but understanding, although there were some who picked on Melissa.

“Kids would come up to my face and hold up their fingers and say, How many fingers am I holding up?’” Melissa said. “And they would take my cane and run off with it.”

Beads became project

Melissa knows how hard it is to be a student with disabilities, so she often serves as an advocate for other visually impaired high school students. She will show up at parent-teacher meetings and help families navigate the difficulties of being a student with disabilities in a mainstream class.

When she lost her beloved grandmother to breast cancer a few years ago, Melissa wanted to create a legacy.

She and her grandmother used to make beaded angel ornaments together, so Melissa began making bead necklaces and bracelets for cancer survivors.

“No matter if I know them or not, I give them a bracelet,” Melissa said.

She also entered Ventura College with a major in general studies and plans to become a pediatric massage therapist. That’s because massage made her feel so much better when she was in pain, she said.

Again, her life appeared to be going smoothly until a regular MRI about a year ago showed a spot on her brain in a different area. After 14 years in remission, it was a blow.

“I thought, here we go again,” Melissa said. “I had mixed emotions. I’m like, OK, another spot. It’s hard to think positive.”

Doctors decided that the spot on Melissa’s brain needed to be treated, so almost two weeks ago, she underwent radiation therapy with a new technology called the gamma knife. According to Debbie, it may take as much as a year for doctors to know whether the treatment was effective.

Once again feeling powerless to help his daughter, Jerry happened to see the “Knock Knock” segment and thought that it was the perfect way to help cheer up his daughter.

“He’s just a big softie,” Debbie said when asked her reaction to Jerry’s gift to his daughter.

Knock knock

On the morning of Feb. 25, Melissa couldn’t figure out why her parents were dragging their feet getting ready. She was told she had to go and get some blood work done, but her parents were acting strangely.

“Mom’s going up and down the stairs. Dad’s sitting at the computer,” Melissa remembered.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. With her impaired vision, she could make out a group of people but couldn’t figure out what they wanted.

“My first thought was, Who are you and what are you selling?’” Melissa said.

Breckenridge explained who they were and began reading Jerry’s letter.

“I started to cry when they read the letter my dad wrote,” Melissa said. “Lisa kept asking, Are you all right? Are you all right?’”

Melissa remained speechless as the entourage whisked her into the kitchen and Eber went to work. He asked Melissa what kind of hairstyle she would like.

She wasn’t sure, so Eber asked if she liked Breckenridge’s cut. She said she did.

“The first thing they did was take my ponytail and go snip!’” Melissa said.

Debbie ran upstairs to get Melissa one of her nicer shirts while Eber curled and sprayed and fluffed and cut. The makeup artist applied foundation, then color to her eyes, lips and cheeks.

Less than an hour later, they had Melissa stand with her back to the camera as “Good Day L.A.” came back to the live shot in Melissa’s kitchen. They had her turn around for the audience, then held a magnifying mirror up so she could see.

Melissa began to cry again as she hugged Eber, Breckenridge, Debbie and Jerry.

“I love it,” she said. “Thank you guys. All of you. My family, too. Love you.”

Asked a few days later how she felt about a dad who would go to the trouble of getting her a live makeover, she grinned and said, “Gotta keep him.”

Source: http://thestar.com/sickkids

Last August, Caiden Steinhoff was diagnosed with medulla blastoma, the most common brain tumor in children. Following brain surgery, the Thunder Bay boy has undergone four chemotherapies, each of which wipes out his immune system.

After treatment, Caiden receives a stem cell transplant and remains in isolation to help his immune system recover. These photos were taken after his third round of chemotherapy last month.

The Heartbreaking Story of a Young Cancer Patient and Her Incarcerated Father

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=4490468

By CHRIS FRANCESCANI
ABC News Law & Justice Unit
March 20, 2008

For very sick little girls, sometimes a father can be the best medicine there is.

But the heartbroken family of a 10-year-old Nebraska girl diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, who is not expected to live through the end of the month, say the Federal Bureau of Prisons has denied the child’s dying wish: that her incarcerated father be furloughed to be by his child’s bedside when she dies.

Jason Charles Yaeger is serving the final year of a five-year sentence for a drug conviction in a minimum security prison camp in South Dakota, three and a half hours from his daughter, Jayci.

He has pleaded repeatedly with prison officials to honor the bureau’s apparent policy of allowing furloughs and transfers under “extraordinary” circumstances, but has been rebuffed time and again, he told ABC News in a telephone interview from prison today. He is scheduled to be transferred in August to a halfway house just an hour from his daughter’s bedside, but prison officials have refused to transfer him early, he said.

Linda Asher, a spokeswoman for the bureau’s Yankton, S.D., prison camp, declined to comment on Yaeger’s situation, saying officials there wanted to make sure to protect Yaeger’s privacy rights as an inmate.

But in a letter to Rep. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska — dated Feb. 20 and obtained by ABC News — a regional director from the Department of Justice wrote that “although Mr. Yaeger believes his daughter’s severe medical condition constitutes ‘extraordinary justification,’ a review of his case reveals this specific request was & reviewed & and denied & because his circumstances were not deemed to rise to the level of extraordinary.” The congressman had requested information about the denials of the furlough or transfer.

Late Thursday, after abcnews.com published this story, the Bureau of Prisons released a statement saying that officials there “have reviewed inmate Yaeger’s request for a compassionate release and have determined his situation does not meet the criteria…”

‘I Am Sorry’

The irony of Yaeger’s dilemma is not lost on him — he’s in a race against time, trapped in a place where he’s got nothing but time. He said he fears he’ll never see his daughter alive again, and he said he knows he bears the blame for that.

“I am sorry for what I have done,” he said. “I’m not asking to get out of my sentence — just to go from one place of imprisonment to another so I can be with my family.”

“Jayci is sitting in a hospice fighting for her life and [her mother] thinks she is holding on for me to get there,” an emotional Jason Yaeger said.

“She wants me and needs me and I want to be there with her on her last day.”

Yaeger said he’s grateful for one saving grace — that he gets to talk to Jayci daily.

“She can’t talk back, but I talk to her every day just so she can hear my voice,” he said. “She’s my heart. She’s my world. I tell her she’s the strongest person I know & Yes, I’ve made some mistakes, but I’ve been a good father and my children have always been really close to me.”

‘Extraordinary Justification’

He said he’s equally concerned about Jayci’s sister, Shelby.

“Shelby needs both her mom and her dad while she watches her sister, her best friend, fight for her life,” he said. “Shelby is going to need a lot of emotional support. I’m not asking the warden to do anything more than allow me to go to the state work-release center. They allow you to have a job there and support your family and spend time with them.”

But Yaeger said it’s up to the warden to decide whether an inmate has “extraordinary justification” to alter the terms of his sentence.

“I don’t know how he cannot see this as an extraordinary situation.”

Vonda Yaeger was at her daughter’s hospice bedside on Thursday and was not available for comment. But her sister-in-law Lori Yaeger told ABC News that Jason would do just about anything to be by his daughter’s side, and that the strain of the father-daughter separation is agonizing.

“The time he has left to serve? The 11 months? He’s offered to serve double that if they’ll only let him be with his daughter when she dies,” Lori said, her voice cracking.

Jayci, named for her father’s initials, has been fighting for her life since she was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 3, seven years ago. But in the past six months, she has taken a severe turn downward.

Doctors declared her condition terminal in October. Last month, they found they couldn’t transfer her to a children’s hospital closer to her Lincoln, Neb., home because they said she wouldn’t survive the trip, Lori Yaeger said.

Jason Yaeger has been allowed three brief supervised visits since the terminal diagnosis last fall, and the visits have prompted remarkable, if short-lived revivals in Jayci’s condition, she added.

“When he came home in February, Jayci was not expected to live through the night,” Lori Yaeger said. “She improved throughout that whole week. Jason was allowed to accompany her to get a CAT scan. He was able to pick her up and put her on the [examining] table,” she said, growing emotional.

“And this little girl who could barely lift an arm wrapped her arms around him and held on.”

As Jayci’s health has see-sawed from stable to the brink-of-death time and again in the past few months, her parents have been filing request after request for either a temporary furlough or at least a transfer to the halfway house facility an hour from the child’s beside.

Jason Yaeger is currently serving time at South Dakota’s most minimum security federal prison, a former college campus in the middle of town in Yankton. There is a two-foot fence surrounding the facility, and inmates move freely around the facility, he said.

Lifeline

For now, the Yaeger family uses the telephone as a lifeline, with Jason coaxing and soothing his daughter through the twilight of her young life.

“Jayci has maybe spoken ten works in the last three months,” Lori Yaeger said. “She opens her eyes and when she looks at you it’s as if she’s looking through you.

“When Jason called last Friday, they put the phone to her ear. I don’t know what the particular conversation they had that day was, but this little body that was so lifeless? This body that couldn’t move? Tears started rolling down her face,” Lori said. “She’s still in there.”

ABC News Omaha, Nebraska affiliate KETV and reporter Andrew Ozaki contributed to this report.

More information:

• Interview with dying girl’s dad from prison
• Writ of habeas corpus
• Exhibit A: Doctor’s letter
• Exhibit B: Father’s appeal

Source: http://action3news.com/Global/story.asp?S=8048317

Posted: March 20, 2008 03:46 PM PDT

Omaha, NE- Jason Yaeger talked with Action 3 News on the phone from a Federal Prison Camp in Yankton, South Dakota. He says after the warden denied his many requests for a special release, he’s been calling on Senators, Governors and even the President of the United States. He’s desperate to see his daughter before she dies. Jason Yaeger says, “It ain’t about me. It’s never been about me.”

The 34 year old father of two girls believes it’s about his daughter, Jayci. She’s ten and dying of brain cancer in a Lincoln hospice house. Jayci’s asked to see her daddy one last time. Jason says, “It would help her deal with what’s going on and give her more strength to fight to stay alive. I’m not asking the warden to release me from prison, that I’m not asking.”

With one year left on his five and a half year sentence for using and selling meth, Jason wants to go to the federal half way house in Council Bluffs, IA early.

He’s already scheduled to go there in August.

“I’m not even asking to go to a place where they’re not planning to put me. I want to go there now. Jayci may not have five months left. At the half way house, I can spend the weekends with my family and I can work and help with financial obligations. Ultimately what my goal is is to ask him (warden) the same thing the state does for minimum security prisoners, just like I am. I want to finish my sentence there, do my time there at the half way house.”

The warden did grant Jason two brief escorted trips last month and one previously. But is denying the inmate’s requests for early release to the half way house, compassionate release and a 30 -day supervised release. The warden states Jason’s case doesn’t meet the prison’s extraordinary circumstances policy.

Jason says, “I can’t understand how it can’t be extraordinary justification and how it cannot be. What else could it be. It’s not for me but for my children. They have extraordinary reasons for needing me there. If it’s meant to be, it will happen. I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be, so I believe in my heart it will happen.”

Concerning his drug use, Jason says, “I was a drug addict. I still am a drug addict. The difference between then and now is then I didn’t have God, today I do. Yes, Im very sorry for what I’ve done and my children are the ones suffering the most for it. ” Jason has another daughter, 8 year old Shelby. He says Shelby and Jayci are extremely close and he wants to be there for her too.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons released a statement Thursday.

“Officials at the Federal Prison Camp are sensitive to the request from inmate Yaeger and his family to allow him to visit his daughter. In response to inmate Yaeger’s request, he has been escorted by prison staff on three separate occasions to allow him to be with his daughter during this difficult time. Two of these trips have occurred within the past month. We have also assisted inmate Yaeger in maintaining telephonic contact wtih his family and daughter. The Bureau of Prisons routinely utilizes furloughs and escorted trips in response to family emergencies, whichever is deemed most appropriate based on a review of security and safety concerns for both the inmate involved and the community. Bureau of Prisons officials have reviewed inmate Yaeger’s request for a compassionate release and have determined his situation does not meet the criteria set forth in the Bureau of Prisons Program Statement, 5050.46, Compassionate Release; Procedures for Implementation of 18 U.S.C. 3582 c (1) (A) & 4205 (g), dated May 19, 1998. Inmate Yaeger’s request for extended placement in a Residential Re-entry Center is currently in litigation;therefore, we are unable to comment further on his request. The Federal Bureau of Prisons does not have the authority to release or suspend a court imposed sentence. Our agency’s mission is to protect society by confining offenders in controlled environments of prisons and community based facilities which are safe, humane, and appropriately secure.”

If you would like to help the Yaeger family with medical expenses:

Jayci Yaeger Fund Wells Fargo 1248 “O” Street Lincoln, Ne. 68508

Henry Marsh spends his holidays working 18 hour days for free in a Kiev, using the household drill

Source: http://timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article3559282.ece

March 16, 2008
Jessica Jonzen

The young man lies back on the hospital trolley and waits patiently as his head is secured in place with a vice.

Marian Dolishny’s nervous smile and worried, flicking eyes, betray the certain knowledge that what he is about to undergo will be anything but pleasant. But he also knows that time is short: if the enormous tumour inside his head is not removed, it will soon kill him.

Minutes later the team of doctors, including one of Britain’s most eminent brain surgeons, begins to break into the skull of their fully conscious patient – with a £30 Bosch PSR960 handy-man’s cordless drill.

Amazingly, and despite the low-voltage tool running out of power halfway through the process, Dolishny’s operation is a success, with his tumour skilfully excavated at the hands of Henry Marsh.

The procedure, captured as part of a documentary to be screened on BBC2 later this month, was a routine triumph for Marsh, who regularly takes time off as a consultant at St George’s hospital in south London to travel to Ukraine and save lives despite having access only to primitive tools.

In Britain, the same operation would only be undertaken with the benefit of a £30,000 compressed air medical drill.

Speaking about the trials of his visits to Ukraine, Marsh said: “I’m not recommending that we should all use Bosch do-it-yourself drills in England, but it shows how with improvisation you can achieve a lot.”

Marsh’s life-saving exploits in Ukraine began 15 years ago when he visited a state hospital in the former Soviet republic to give a series of lectures. Little could have prepared him for the conditions endured by both doctors and patients. “It was like being in a horror film,” he said. “It was so awful it didn’t seem real.”

Patients with benign tumours, which would have been diagnosed early and quickly dealt with in Britain, were only treated once they had caused blindness or were bulging grotesquely off the sides of patients’ heads.

In Ukraine so little money is invested in the state health system that Marsh has to drill through the skulls of patients under local anaesthetic because no one is sufficiently trained to fully sedate them.

Marsh said he had watched aghast as patients died while doctors were locked in bureaucratic meetings. “I couldn’t bear to stand by and do nothing,” said Marsh, 58. “A Ukrainian doctor told me I couldn’t do anything to help but I wasn’t prepared to accept that.”

Then he met Igor Petrovich, a Ukrainian neurosurgeon who wanted to fight against his country’s bankrupt medical system. Impressed by his willingness to speak honestly about the atrocious conditions in a climate where no one criticised the state, Marsh championed Petrovich and organised for him to come to Britain to learn more.

Since meeting Petrovich, Marsh has been making at least two private trips a year to work voluntarily with him at his neurology clinic in Kiev. On each visit, he takes a raft of disused equipment that has been thrown out by the NHS, and helps Petrovich make diagnoses and perform operations.

“I’ve taught him everything I know,” said Marsh, who has given Petrovich an advanced compressed air drill to replace his Bosch. “He’s now able to do things that I can’t.”

For all its failings, some aspects of the Ukrainian health service compare favourably with the NHS, Marsh said.

At the time of their first meeting, Marsh was a senior surgeon at the specialist Atkinson Morley hospital in Wimbledon, operating on 10-15 patients a week. “I was completely free; I made clinical judgments and was trusted to treat patients to the best of my ability.”

Today, though, their roles have more or less reversed, he said. “Igor is now doing a huge amount of operating, far more than me, while I, as with all senior doctors on the NHS, am struggling under a tsunami of regulation and bureaucracy.”

Working in Ukraine has also brought the wastefulness of the NHS into focus for Marsh. Drill bits used in brain surgery that cost the NHS £80 a piece are thrown away after a single use to help prevent the spread of prion-related diseases such as CJD.

In Petrovich’s practice, a drill bit will be used for up to 10 years, perfectly safely. “We never used to throw them away in the UK,” says Marsh. “They would be sterilised and reused. Now they just end up as landfill, and Igor’s rates of infection are no worse then ours. It’s insane.

“I am one of the government advisers on prion disease. In the case of the skull perforators, skull and scalp is not an at-risk tissue for surgical treatments. So that argument does not apply.”

More information:

• The English Surgeon

Source: http://nytimes.com/2008/03/18/health/18seco.html
Video: Revisiting Melanie McDaniel

March 18, 2008
Second Opinion
By DENISE GRADY

In the pages of a medical journal, Melanie Joy McDaniel is a study subject, listed by her patient number and tumor type. In real life she’s a little girl whose story is a reminder that medical research can change lives and that the pioneers include patients, some of whom are babies.

Melanie was 9 months old when her parents faced an agonizing decision. She had already had two operations for a malignant brain tumor, and doctors could not be sure they had removed all the cancer. She needed more treatment, but standard chemotherapy offered little hope in exchange for its harsh side effects. And yet the McDaniels knew that if they did nothing, the odds were high that the tumor would come back.

Doctors at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston offered another option, an experimental treatment. To qualify, a child had to have a progressive cancer, and it had to be terminal. The McDaniels took a gamble and a leap of faith, and signed Melanie up.

“It won’t save her, but it may help other people,” her father, Paul McDaniel, told me in an interview for a Science Times article published in April 2002. Then he paused and added, “Maybe it will save her.”

By then, Melanie had been receiving the test therapy for five months, and her brain tumor, a type called an ependymoma, had not grown. That was encouraging, but the treatment still seemed like a long shot.

After the article was published, I was afraid to call the McDaniels again. I didn’t think Melanie would survive.

Recently, Mr. McDaniel sent me an e-mail message. “Melanie is now 7 years old, attending first grade, and doing very well,” he wrote. “The doctors told us last year that they do not see any residual tumor in her brain. Their original diagnosis was that her tumor had no known cure.”

What had prompted him to get in touch was the death on Jan. 14 of Dr. Judah Folkman, a researcher at Children’s Hospital Boston whose work had led to Melanie’s treatment. Mr. McDaniel wrote that he wanted “to celebrate the accomplishments of Dr. Folkman, who faced resistance on his ideas that, by the grace of God, cured my daughter of an incurable brain tumor.”

Dr. Folkman founded a branch of research based on the theory that tumors need a blood supply in order to grow and can stimulate the formation of new blood vessels — angiogenesis — to feed themselves. If angiogenesis could be stopped, he reasoned, it might be possible to starve tumors. His work ultimately led to useful treatments but took years to gain acceptance in a field that was focused on attacking cancer cells directly.

Melanie McDaniel became one of 20 children with advanced cancer who were enrolled in a study that used drugs strictly to fight angiogenesis. The drugs included two standard anticancer medicines, but in small doses meant to stop blood vessels from forming, not the much bigger amounts needed to poison tumor cells.

The children also took two other drugs that had been found to block angiogenesis. One was Celebrex, usually given for pain and inflammation. The other was thalidomide, notorious for causing stunted limbs and other birth defects when pregnant women took it in the 1960s — damage, it was later learned, that the drug inflicted by halting the growth of blood vessels in the fetus.

Melanie and the other children were given small doses of medicine by mouth every day, instead of big doses intravenously every few weeks. The idea was that continuous treatment might keep blood vessel growth in check, whereas the usual schedule of therapy every few weeks could give new vessels a chance to sprout between doses. Doctors also hoped that the small doses would minimize side effects. The approach is called metronomic, low-dose or antiangiogenic chemotherapy.

“Our goal was to see whether we could keep the kids alive for an additional six months,” said Dr. Mark W. Kieran, Dana-Farber’s director of pediatric medical neuro-oncology.

The study was meant to test the feasibility of using the drugs for 26 weeks. But by the 26th week, seven children were doing so well that their parents refused to give up the drugs.

“Remember, you got onto this trial because your child had a progressive, incurable tumor,” Dr. Kieran said. “Many families said, ‘Why would we stop?’ ”

The McDaniels kept Melanie on the drugs for a year and a half. Then, she was monitored closely with M.R.I. scans.

Finally, last year, her doctors said there were no traces of the tumor left.

Mr. McDaniel said, “She goes to the survivor clinic now, instead of the pediatric brain tumor clinic.”

But the researchers are not claiming credit for Melanie’s recovery. The study was designed primarily to test the drugs’ safety, and it was not large enough to measure their effectiveness.

Dr. Christopher D. Turner, director of pediatric neuro-oncology outcomes research at Dana-Farber, said the surgery might be responsible, but he added: “Her type of tumor almost always comes back. Historically, we know that surgery alone is not usually enough.”

Every doctor encounters “miracle patients” who improve against all odds, Dr. Kieran said. But he also said, “We have a bunch of long-term survivors.”

A report on the study published in 2005 showed that seven children, including Melanie, were still alive a year and half to three years after starting the treatment.

“It’s immensely gratifying,” Dr. Turner said. “The study we did took the drugs we knew are commercially available and combined them in a way that hadn’t been used before. A number of doctors across the country have followed the published paper we did, the regimen, on their own patients, and have given us feedback that they have had some remarkable stories themselves across the country. We have to be careful — it’s not science; it’s anecdote. When someone calls and says, ‘We had a great response,’ what I don’t hear is how many others used it and didn’t have a good response.”

The next step is a larger study. One is already under way, involving 160 children at 12 medical centers, with eight categories of cancer.

“We certainly hope to have some answers within the next couple of years,” Dr. Turner said.

Meanwhile, Melanie, who has an older brother and a younger one and a lot of friends, is a normal little girl whom her mother describes simply as “hilarious.” But her parents know that her type of tumor can always recur, even after many years.

“As much as we’re excited about how good she’s doing, there’s that much fear of it coming back,” said her mother, Amy McDaniel. “It’s always in your mind.

“We need the science to keep going. We need to be armed and ready if it does return.”

An eight-part documentary follows the lives of a dozen girls as they move from freshman through senior year in “High School Confidential.”

Source: http://signonsandiego.com/news/features/20080308…

By Jane Clifford
UNION-TRIBUNE FAMILY EDITOR

As Sharon Liese readied her daughter – and herself – for Justine’s transition to high school, the single mother looked unsuccessfully for resources to help them both through this passage. When she couldn’t find what she needed, she decided to make her own.

Monday, we meet Lauren G. and Cappie, short for Caprice.

In the beginning, they are talking about going to high school, what they expect. Both have a little of that deer-in-the-headlights look, but they smile through a mouthful of metal braces and say they’re ready.

Over the next hour, we watch as Lauren, a born dancer, tries out for the drill team. But she doesn’t make it. Though she’s a trouper, saying it’s OK, her parents tell us how upset she really was.

Cappie, too, is finding her way, as she must, to fit in with the other 1,200 students in the school that is in an upscale suburb of Kansas City.

The narrator tells us, as if any of us could ever forget, that social cliques, academic standing and athletic performance “define you” in high school.

Cappie goes out for volleyball in the spring of freshman year, makes the team, but quits to get a job at Dairy Queen, working three days a week for extra spending money.

Cappie’s parents, we learn, separated before she was born. Cappie’s biggest need, she confides to the camera, is for her dad’s involvement in her life. In a moving scene with a counselor, her eyes fill as she says, “You go over to your friends’ houses and they hug their dad … and you don’t have that.”

How much of a role does that play in her decision to become a party girl by junior year? It’s left for viewers to ponder.

Lauren’s luckier, growing up with both of her parents. She tries out and makes the drill team in her sophomore year. Then her luck runs out. A talk with her mom about her menstrual cycle leads to a visit to her doctor, where blood tests signal potentially bigger problems. After an MRI, she learns she has a brain tumor. It’s small and benign, but it takes over her life. Any small headache can send her spiraling out of control with fear and running for her mom’s bed.

We watch how Lauren’s family and friends support her as she heads toward junior year and surgery. The tumor is growing ever so slightly, but enough to prompt her doctor to want to get it out now.

Cappie, meanwhile, is watching her grades slide, and her friends’ support, at least on camera, is limited to making sure she has enough beer or booze to drink, and pot to smoke if she wants it.

“I don’t really drink too much, to the point of throwing up and passing out. That’s only happened twice,” she says, giggling.

“She dabbles in things I don’t care for,” her mother, Pamela, says, which will resonate with any parent who’s had teenagers: Cappie is becoming someone her mother doesn’t always recognize.

Lauren’s parents are worried that her surgery might leave her unable to recognize them.

She comes through and is philosophical. She never thought anything like this would happen to her, that her charmed life would just go on. And on. She speaks of a new appreciation for each day, heading for graduation with a maturity that comes from facing death.

Cappie comes through the fog and realizes she’s made some bad choices but seeks redemption. No longer a party animal, she moves away from longtime boyfriend Sean and closer to her best friend’s ex. That causes both boyfriend and best friend to shun Cappie. And since they’re all friends with the same people …

“I don’t have any friends,” Cappie says, blinking back tears. She’s sad but doesn’t regret the new relationship. She’s just anxious to move on, be done with high school and its drama.

You’re left with the feeling that these two girls from the Class of 2006 will make it. Their strength is underscored by the soundtrack, a song called “Imperfection,” by Saving Jane:

This is what you get,
this is who I am …
Sometimes I trip and fall
But I know where I stand.
If you’re thinking about changing my direction,
Don’t mess with imperfection.

Unfortunately, Liese spent too much time on Lauren’s illness, as defining a moment as that was for her and her family, and not enough on letting us hear how that illness affected her love life, her friendships, her academic performance.

Yes, only so much can be covered in an hour, even focusing on only two girls at a time. But knowing that she spent four years working on this, I want 80 episodes, 800 episodes, not eight.

Still, though volumes go unspoken, the value of the program is going to be what is spoken – between parents and their daughters who are watching at home.

More information:

• WE TV - High School Confidential

D’Ann Lawrence White, Tribune photo

Having experiencing the death of two children, Renee Jones said she’s determined to do whatever she possibly can to make sure 4-year-old Brian survives. “I’ve got a lot of faith,” she said.

Source: http://brandonnews2.tbo.com/content/2008/mar/…

By D’ANN LAWRENCE WHITE, The Tampa Tribune

BRANDON - From the moment he was born, 4-year-old Brian Jones was determined to tackle everything life had to offer, said his aunt, Sonya McLaughlin.

“He started reading when he was just 18 months old and began adding and subtracting numbers shortly after,” she said. “Now, I’ll give him ‘The Cat in the Hat’ to read, and I’ll walk back in the room and find him reading ‘Pride and Prejudice’ instead. He’s just very focused, very determined, and I think that’s what will get him through this.”

McLaughlin is referring to Brian’s fight for life. The boy and his doctors are waging a battle against a deadly glioma tumor lodged at the base of Brian’s brain stem. The disease affects the central nervous system.

For his mother, Renee Jones, it’s a fight to save her son and her faith. Brian is her second child diagnosed with cancer. In 1996, her 3-year-old daughter Alysha died from a brain tumor, also found on the brain stem.

“Alysha was bright, smart, gorgeous and quite demanding,” recalled Jones’ best friend, Lisa Burke. “We all fell in love with her.”

One day, Jones got a call from Alysha’s day-care center. The toddler was dizzy and off balance. Jones immediately took her to Brandon Regional Hospital, where an MRI revealed the little girl had a brain mass.

She was flown to Shands-Jacksonville Hospital. Six hours of exploratory surgery confirmed the toddler had a rare tumor called a rhabdoid. Despite radiation and chemotherapy, Alysha died Feb. 18, 1996, six weeks after she was diagnosed.

“Renee was devastated,” Burke said. “All she ever wanted was to be a wife and mother. But she’s such an incredibly strong person. She’s got an amazing sense of humor and so much faith in God. I don’t know how, but she survived it.”

Years later, after a dramatic series of other family tragedies, Jones met, fell in love with and married Myron Jones.

“People always ask me how I coped,” Renee Jones said. “I really don’t know the answer. I guess I just had other people who depended on me, and I just had to keep going.”

When Brian was born Dec. 25, 2003, she said she knew she had been blessed.

“Brian was truly a gift from God,” she said.

Myron Jones was equally thrilled.

“He’s a daddy’s boy all the way,” he said. “We do everything together - walk around the neighborhood, go to Chuck E. Cheese, visit the tree park. Well, we did everything together before he got sick. Now, we don’t take Brian out very much because we don’t want him to catch any germs.”

Until February, Brian had been an active, healthy and precocious child. The Joneses did not have a reason to worry that Brian might become ill.

So the phone call Renee Jones received Feb. 8 from Progress Village Academy, where Brian attends preschool, seemed surreal.

Brian was having a hard time walking and had begun drooling.

Recalling similar symptoms with Alysha, Renee promptly took Brian to Brandon Regional’s emergency room and insisted that he have an MRI. The test showed a large tumor on his brain stem. He was transferred to St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Tampa, where doctors began a protocol of daily radiation there and chemotherapy at home.

Once the series of treatments ends April 1, doctors will measure the tumor to determine whether the radiation and chemo have shrunk the tumor. Doctors give Brian a 30 percent chance of surviving.

“I was in a state of shock,” said Myron Jones’ mother, Shirley Anderson. “He’s my youngest grandchild, and he means the world to me. It’s not something you expect to hear. And Renee’s already been through so much. My heart went out to her. If there was ever anyone in need of community support and prayers, it’s this family. It is truly heartbreaking.”

Two different kinds of brain tumors occurring in one family is extremely rare, said Cameron Tebbi, head of pediatric oncology at St. Joseph’s. Tebbi, who has written two books on pediatric cancer, said he has not seen another case of two siblings with brain tumors in his 39 years in practice.

“I was absolutely stunned,” he said. “My heart bleeds for this family - two major diseases that are extremely rare. They have my sympathy.”

“I guess I’m looking for a miracle,” McLaughlin said. “This is such an anomaly. We feel we need to try every avenue available. If there is a trial out there, we need to find it and pursue it. I want to make sure Brian has every chance possible. We’re also looking for a geneticist. We want to know if it’s possible for brain tumors to run in the family. This is too painful to relive again and again.”

McLaughlin also is seeking community resources that might be available to help her sister through this difficult time.

“She and Myron are both sleep-deprived from taking care of Brian,” McLaughlin said. “Myron’s still working full-time, and I’d love for him to be able to take some time off so he can spend more time with his family during this crisis. When there’s a sick child, it’s very important to focus on that sick child, and Brian needs his dad with him.”

Renee Jones takes Brian to St. Joseph’s every weekday for radiation treatments. Because he is so young, he is placed under anesthesia.

At home, Renee and Myron Jones take turns administering their son’s chemotherapy treatments. Brian can walk and play after radiation, and that’s a good sign, Renee Jones said. Alysha couldn’t walk.

“We just try to stay as positive as we can,” Myron Jones said. “There’s nothing else we can do.”

“We’re just very hopeful and prayerful,” his wife said. “We try focusing on the good things.”

“If something happens to this child, I don’t know what will happen to my sister,” McLaughlin said through a veil of tears. “My sister’s very strong, but how much pain can one person take?”

Friends of the family have set up a fund to help finance the cost of Brian’s medical treatments. Donations can be made to Bank of America in Brian A. Jones’ name. The or .

Reporter D’Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or .

More information:

• Hope For Brian
• Gliogene Family Brain Tumor Study

URL: http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5569831.html

By

Hassenbusch succumbed to glioblastoma at home, nearly three years after he was diagnosed and nine months after cancerous cells recurred. Throughout, he was a forceful spokesman who believed that, in his words, “life doesn’t have to end just because you have cancer.”

“Dr. Hassenbusch’s death is a terrible loss to all,” said Dr. Mark Gilbert, a professor of neuro-oncology at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Hassenbusch’s doctor and longtime friend. “He was a highly valued and universally loved colleague — skilled, dedicated, caring.”

Gilbert added that “it would have been great if Dr. Hassenbusch could have been a 10- to 15-year survivor. That it didn’t happen doesn’t detract from the way he put himself forward as a role model and resource for patients. He should inspire us to find better treatments.”

Hassenbusch, an M.D. Anderson professor of neurosurgery and noted pain control expert, showed no evidence of the cancer for more than two years after he began receiving treatment, providing hope he might resist its usually fatal course. Such recurrence often occurs in the first nine months of the disease.

View from the other side

In January 2006, nine months after his diagnosis, Hassenbusch talked to the Chronicle about his bout with the disease — the decision to use an experimental vaccine along with a new chemotherapy drug, the lessons he learned about how cancer feels if you’re a patient, his commitment to remaining active and fighting the disease.

“One of life’s truisms is, you don’t get to deal the cards — they’re dealt to you,” he said at the time. “All you can do is play the hand the best way you can.”

Hassenbusch played the hand like a dedicated doctor, continuing to see patients and perform operations. He said he became more compassionate.

More than that, though, Hassenbusch sought to inspire others. He shared his story with news outlets, counseled newly diagnosed patients on what to expect and spoke at patient cancer functions. He began a book — the working title is Physician Heal Thyself — that his son Jason is working to finish.

He also committed himself to enjoying life, spending more time with his family and going on long-planned trips on his beloved motorcycle.

But in May, tests revealed the cancer had returned. Its microscopic, tentacle-like cells, perhaps invisible before, clumped together in great enough numbers to show up in an MRI. It was the first time the disease had been detected in two years of monthly tests.

“I could see the sadness in his eyes,” said Dr. Raymond Sawaya, chairman of M.D. Anderson’s department of neurosurgery and another longtime friend. “He had been so magnanimous and upbeat, reaching out to patients and showing all how to make the most of life, but you could see the recurrence’s impact on his mood.”

Hassenbusch subsequently tried new experimental therapies, but all failed.

Though he went on medical leave last February, he continued working. But gradually his health declined — by November, when he began dragging his foot, a sign of an impaired neural connection stemming from his brain, colleagues knew he wasn’t doing well.

In December, he fell and became mostly bedridden. On Saturday, he slipped into a coma.

“He was incredible — the way he refused to give up, the way he kept living,” said Jason Hassenbusch, 27. “Until the fall, he was riding his motorcycle, and until last month, he was still helping patients, responding by e-mail to their questions about brain cancer. He wanted that attitude to be his legacy.”

A prolific career

Hassenbusch joined M.D. Anderson in 1993, where he was credited with developing novel techniques, therapies and methods for infusing drugs to block pain. During his career, he treated more than 500 brain cancer patients and authored more than 80 publications and 30 book chapters.

In 1987, he was one of four neurosurgeons to perform the first successful separation of twins joined at the back of the head.

In 2002, he appeared in the short-lived television series Houston Medical, treating Dr. Marnie Rose, the pediatric resident whose tragic battle with glioblastoma was documented on the show. She died at 28, after the show was canceled.

As a patient, he lobbied before congressional leaders in Washington for continued funding for cancer research and testified before a state a committee in Austin about the importance of clinical trials.

A trial investigating whether the combination therapy of vaccine and the chemotherapy Temodar prolongs survival of certain brain cancer patients is ongoing.

Glioblastoma is one of the most lethal of cancers. The most aggressive and common form of brain cancer, it kills nearly 10,000 Americans a year. About 10 percent of patients survive five years.

Survivors include his wife of 35 years, Rhonda; sons Jason and Jack; daughter Amanda Soar; and two grandchildren.

More Information:
CBS News video: Physician, Heal Thyself

URL: http://gilroydispatch.com/news/236803-a-promising-future

Thursday, February 21, 2008
By Sara Suddes ()

Dr. Jay Balagtas at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital checks Carter’s neck during a three-month check-up.
Photo by:

Carter Martinez and his twin brother, Brayden, sat silently in their double stroller as the doors to Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford whisked shut behind them. With their mother Robyn Martinez at the helm, they made a beeline toward the oncology ward. After countless hospital visits and overnight stays, the 18-month-old twins are pros this time around.

“They know where they’re at,” Robyn, 28, said matter-of-factly of her children’s angelic behavior. “They recognize the scrubs.”

The Martinez family spent what seems to them like an eternity confined to the various wards of the hospital whiling away the hours, days and weeks, waiting and praying that Carter, the younger twin by a minute, would survive a disease that no child should have to battle.

The Faraone family knows that battle all to well. Close friends, the two families have been through similar situations with very different outcomes. Carter has been in remission since September. Declared “cancer free,” he will lead a healthy life with the memories of his infancy, hopefully, fading with time. The Faraones lost their son, Christopher, to brain cancer when he was 3. After a chemical cocktail of chemotherapy ruined Christopher’s kidneys and sessions of radiation were unsuccessful, the Faraones were praying for a miracle that never came. The tumor that took over 75 percent of Christopher’s brain was too much to fight.

“I wasn’t supposed to bury my child,” Kim Faraone said. She put her life on hold for most of 1999, spending months by Christopher’s side at Lucile Packard. “You’re the mom. You’re supposed to protect them, fix them,” she said, the pain fresh in her eyes, even after eight years. “I still talk to him every night.”

Kim was nervous about meeting Robyn and her son for the first time. A mutual friend who knew of what the Faraones had survived and what the Martinezes were up against introduced the two families at the height of Carter’s illness. Kim remembered the encounter with photographic clarity, worried about getting too close to a little boy whose fate was in limbo, a situation that was painfully familiar.

“He looked so sick the first time I saw him,” Kim said of Carter. At 10 months, Carter weighed only nine pounds. Carter’s recovery has been a victory for many people other than just his parents, twin brother and 4-year-old sister, Alyssa. He has filled a hole in the Faraones’ lives that had been empty since they lost Christopher.

“It’s really good that there’s a happy ending this time since Carter’s doing so well,” Kim said. “We’re lucky he’s cooperating!” The families get together at least once a week and the twins adore the Faraones, Robyn said.

Coping with cancer

After a “perfect pregnancy,” Robyn and Graig Martinez gave birth to the twins July 30, 2006. The ease of Robyn’s pregnancy quickly faded when the small knot on Carter’s neck swelled to the size of a softball. At 6 weeks, Carter was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a common childhood cancer. “A nerve cell gone haywire,” Robyn explained. After consulting online resources and devoting a substantial amount of energy to working herself into a panic, Robyn, the rational counterpart to her husband’s emotional tendencies, asked herself, “How do I fix this?”

In the year and a half since her son was diagnosed with cancer, she has combated uncertainty with education, becoming a walking encyclopedia of medical knowledge, an expert in translating medical jargon into laymen’s terms. After so many trips to the hospital, she knows its maze of hallways like the back of her hand, she said. Or so she thought.

“You would think I’d have this down,” she said sheepishly when, twice, she passed the lab where Carter gives blood once a month. The toddler promptly began wailing the moment the lab technicians laid him on the examining table, his hazel eyes welling with tears. A struggle ensued, with Carter fighting to get as far away from the prick of the needle as possible with Robyn and the technicians trying to subdue him - for only a moment - to draw enough blood for the myriad lab tests to come. Brayden, seeing the look of panic on his twin’s face, burst into tears, adding to the clamor.

Unlike past trips to the hospital and despite the tears that still accompany pokes of the nurse’s needle, these visits are cushioned by a sense of relief now that Carter is cancer free.

More bad news

After getting into the habit of receiving bad news, Carter’s parents are still reluctant to rejoice in his recovery. They became accustomed to seeing their son’s smile hidden behind intubation tubes, getting to know far too many lab techs, nurses and doctors on a first name basis, going weeks at a time without seeing each other or their other two children, and hugging their bed-ridden son gingerly for fear of disturbing one of the many tubes that delivered the essential food, oxygen and medicine into his struggling system.

“When Robyn calls me at work, I’m always afraid of what she’s going to say,” said Graig Martinez, 26, who works long hours at UPS.

“My reality is forever changed,” Robyn said. “I look at Carter every day and wonder when the tumor’s going to come back. When’s the other shoe going to fall?”

It seems to them, when they let their guard down, another wave of bad news comes crashing down. Recently, Brayden was the reason for several hour long trips to Lucile Packard. Given Carter’s history, Robyn initially feared cancer when a lump formed on his head. A bone protrusion was removed from his skull for a biopsy. Not cancer, the growth will be closely monitored over the next few months for any new development.

“He’s growing a horn,” Robyn joked. She’s learned to take bad medical news in stride. Her daughter, Alyssa, is no stranger to medical complications either. At 14 months, Alyssa underwent a seven-hour surgery to correct a malrotated stomach, an abnormality that tangles a fetus’s bowels in the womb and can be life-threatening if not treated. Healthy now, she will have to avoid certain foods for the rest of her life.

“I play the waiting game better these days,” Robyn said.

“No she doesn’t, she just fakes it well,” Kim Faraone said. Robyn’s composure and sense of humor conceal what she’s coping with beneath the surface.

Giving back

The families lean on each other in times of need and have banded together to give back to the organizations that helped them through their bleakest days. With the help of families she’s met through Lucile Packard and Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Association, Robyn has organized An Evening of Hope, the proceeds of which will be split between cancer research at Lucile Packard and Jacob’s Heart. The dinner and auction will benefit families of children like Carter and Christopher Faraone.

“We’re doing the best we can to make it better for the next family,” Robyn said. “I woke up one day and realized I have to do something. I can’t complain anymore if I’m not doing anything about it.”

“Robyn’s been an army of one,” said Jacob’s Heart Executive Director Roy Melendez. “She should be doing this for a living, she’s so organized.” Funding for Jacob’s Heart, an organization that offers support to families of children with cancer, comes from contributions like Robyn’s. “Volunteers like Robyn are the backbone of Jacob’s Heart,” he said. “Man, she gives me energy.”

Robyn has managed to regain a sense of control from organizing the event, she said, doling out Cheerios to the twins as she waited for Carter’s doctor to arrive for his monthly checkup. When Dr. Jay Balagtas entered the examining room, Carter was all smiles, playing with Balagtas’s stethoscope and hamming it up for the doctor, his shirt reading “Hello, my name is Trouble.”

“He’s doing extremely well,” Balagtas said as he examined the spot on Carter’s neck where the tumor was removed more than a year ago.

The twins’ regular pediatrician agreed. “You have gone through a lot of hurdles, the hurdles that most families can’t even dream of,” Dr. John Huang said to Robyn. “Most families would fall apart.”

A charismatic patient

The little boy charms hospital staff around every corner. Nurses, doctors and families of other children in the hospital waved and asked about Carter when they saw him and his twin approaching in their stroller. He knows more adults than most other children his age. An especially close relationship has grown out of his physical therapy sessions at Children’s Therapy Center in Gilroy.

Carter’s occupational therapist, Elizabeth Clerk, works with him twice a week to bring him up to speed with other kids his age. Per the usual routine, Carter stripped down to his pants and Clerk ran a surgical brush over his skin to stimulate his senses.

Among the hula hoops and colorful toys that line the walls, Carter toddled down a balance beam under Clerk’s watchful gaze and outstretched arms. She coaxed him on with utterances of “good work handsome” and “you can do it buddy.” They straddled a swing that gently swayed back and forth to work on his underhand throwing, a developmental skill that Carter is trying to master.

“Good overhand throw,” Clerk laughed when Carter sent an orange bean bag flying past the target, a little too much energy in his throw. “He has worked through so much. He was really sensitive at first but he does so well in structured environments,” she said as Carter waited patiently in his tot-sized chair for the next activity.

On to snack time, Clerk used a warm washcloth to apply pressure to Carter’s hands, a way to desensitize them so he’ll touch more, she said.

“We like them to put their hands in the food and really make a mess,” she said. “As babies, we’re supposed to make messes.”

“Elizabeth’s taken him a long way,” Robyn said as she juggled Brayden on her hip and watched as Alyssa socialized with the other children in the waiting room, her Barbie computer blaring in the background.

“He was literally a different child when he started here.” At 10 months old, when Carter began his therapy with Clerk, he was at a 1-month-old level.

Now, Carter’s almost up to speed with his parent’s built-in yardstick, his twin brother. The two of them have switched roles with their parents, Carter clinging to his dad after spending so much time away from him in the hospital and Brayden gravitating toward the mother that he missed for almost the first year of his life. Alyssa is left in charge of weekend activities, Graig said.

Sundays are family days. The Martinez family hunkers down in their home in the eastern hills of Gilroy to spend some long overdue quality time together.

A friend of Robyn’s once offered her the most comforting words and Robyn still keeps them close to her heart: “Tomorrow will be a better day,” she told Robyn. “And it will be,” Robyn said. “We were so blessed.”

View more photos of A Promising Future at our photo gallery.

Sara Suddes

Sara Suddes covers education for the Gilroy Dispatch. Reach her at or call (408) 847-7158.