For the second time in two days, I went to a niece's high school graduation. This one was for Lauren, my second-oldest brother's youngest daughter, who attended Andover High School.
The ceremony was at Century II, and couldn't have been much different from the commencement for Hutchinson Trinity on Saturday than the earth is to Pluto.
Trinity's program was a folded piece of lightweight cardboard with little more than the schedule on one page and the names of the students on the other. Andover's was a 20-page glossy with photographs of each student, their destinations after graduation, and lists of the faculty, administration and board members.
Trinity's speakers were filled with gratitude for their parents and their teachers and coaches.
One student even referred to a coach as his second father, and talked about how teammates and classmates helped him grow as a person.
I think I heard one Andover speaker thank all the parents of the students once, along with faculty and staff, in the way you roll the credits at the end of a movie.
But, boy, was Trojan Night a blast --- and they BEAT ANDOVER CENTRAL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER in football.
This is a class that will be remembered for using hundreds of zip ties to seal lockers shut around the school. Oh, and they BEAT ANDOVER CENTRAL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.
This is a group that won Class of the Year for three straight years --- and they BEAT ANDOVER CENTRAL FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER.
Depth? Substance? Humility? Not on this night. Perhaps that can be forgiven on a high school graduate's big night, as they stand on the summit of secondary education. College - and life itself - will soon enough remind them how much they have yet to learn.
But the contrast to the tone at Trinity was still striking. Almost startling.
Yet it still made me smile to see Lauren peform a piece of music with the rest of the instrumental band during the ceremony, and to walk across the stage to receive her diploma in bright red shoes (I immediately thought of Dorothy from 'The Wizard of Oz').
And I couldn't help but beam when I saw the name Theodore Herbert Bamford IV on the list of graduates. I first met him when he was just a small boy fighting cancer, and his parents feared he would never get a chance to grow up.
Instead of showing me his box of toys, tiny Teddy showed me his green tackle box filled with everything needed to keep clean his Hickman catheter - the device inserted into his chest so the chemo and medications could be administered more efficiently and with fewer scars from needle sticks. He knew the purpose of every item in that box, and carefully explained it to me. He was so small, and yet so spirited.
He recovered from his kidney cancer, and he remembered "Mr. Newspaper Man" when I approached him in the crowd afterward. "Wow, you came! That's cool!" he said, and then it was off with one of his classmates.
He's headed to the University of Kansas to study music - but I wouldn't be surprised if I see him on television or the big screen some day. He's got a knack for acting, too.
He's already achieved one role that seemed unlikely several years ago: adulthood.
-------------------
Here's the story I wrote in 1995, chronicling Teddy's fight against cancer:
THE WICHITA EAGLE
TEDDY'S LONG ROAD BACK
Friday, March 3, 1995
Section: LIVING
Edition: CITY
Page: 1C
By Stan Finger, The Wichita Eagle
"OK, Teddy, it's your turn."
Teddy Bamford made a beeline for the first barber chair within reach at
the Fantastic Sam's hair salon on South Rock Road.
"He's been excited about this all day," Trey Bamford said with a grin
after his 3-year-old son had clambered up the chair and plopped on the
seat.
This was Teddy's first haircut in 13 months, his first since a tumor the
size of an orange had been found on his kidney, surgery had been
performed and chemotherapy had robbed him of his hair.
For Teddy and his parents, this haircut was a visible sign that he is
getting better. It will take another 18 months of clean check-ups before
Teddy is considered cured, but the night at the hair salon was another
milestone in his long road back to recovery.
Kellie Bamford pulled a small envelope from her purse and carefully
unfolded it.
''I don't want them to throw away any of his hair," she said softly.
She handed the envelope to Linda Blythe, the hair stylist who would cut
her son's hair, and said, "Don't cut it too short. We've gone with the
ol' no-hair look for so long."
Silence fell onto the shop as every eye in the place became riveted on
the little boy getting a touch-up on the flaxen-colored mop that had
sprouted since his chemotherapy sessions ended more than six months ago.
Even though Teddy had received a first-haircut certificate from
Fantastic Sam's a couple of years before, Blythe filled out another
certificate for him. ''The first haircut for the rest of his life,"
Kellie Bamford said happily as the family walked out into the winter
cold.
Her mood changed within seconds, however.
''I'm so scared," she said suddenly, grabbing a friend's arm.
"Everything seems to be going just fine. But everything seemed to be
going just fine then, too."
Kellie had suspected nothing more than a run-of-the-mill pediatric
malady when Teddy developed a fever in late December of 1993. A check-up
revealed a heart murmur.
When he was re-checked two weeks later, the murmur was still there. The
couple took Teddy to a pediatric heart specialist, who found no heart
murmur. Teddy's blood pressure was alarmingly high for a toddler,
however: 135 over 95. A sonogram revealed a mass, and a computed
tomography (CT) scan identified it as a tumor on the left kidney. The
tumor, called a Wilms tumor, is a type of cancer that strikes about
7,000 children each year.
The next day, Teddy waited in the small holding area next to the
operating room with his parents, along with other patients awaiting
surgery and their family members. The anesthesiologist, a friend of
Kellie's, came out to get Teddy.
''She said, 'Let's skip on out of here,' and they left," Kellie said. "I
hit the floor. He skipped out of there like he was going to go play. I
don't even know how we got out of the holding room. I was thinking, 'Oh
my God, they just took my kid.'
''Everyone in that waiting room was bawling. He was so cute. And he was
only 2 1/2 years old."
Doctors successfully removed the tumor, along with most of Teddy's left
kidney. The Bamfords were told that Teddy had only a 30 percent chance
of survival without chemotherapy. With it, he had a 90 percent chance of
being cured.
There was no hesitation in the family's choice. But chemotherapy's
impact on Teddy was profound.
Before the tumor was discovered, Teddy was able to rattle off the
alphabet with ease. He soon lost the letters from his memory, and his
speech development slowed to a virtual halt.
He began stuttering, a common side-effect of chemotherapy. The sessions
drained his immune system, forcing him to stay at home in virtual
isolation. Kellie put a homemade quarantine sign on the front door to
warn visitors of Teddy's delicate state.
He could not go anywhere large groups of people gathered or he would
risk infection and a stay in the hospital.
''He's getting used to drive-throughs," Kellie said last fall as Teddy's
white-cell count, reflecting the strength of his immune system,
stubbornly refused to climb.
The chemotherapy made his jaw hurt and his tummy ache, particularly at
night. On many nights, Kellie could count the amount of sleep she got in
minutes.
''He's afraid of going to sleep," Kellie said. "He fights it so hard.
It's like he's afraid he's going to miss something."
Trey's workload at Beech Aircraft required frequent overtime shifts,
meaning he would often get home just in time to tell Teddy good-night.
''They've been very good through all of this," he said of Beech, "but,
yeah, it's been hard."
Kellie eventually had to leave her nursing job in the pediatric
intensive care unit of Wesley Medical Center because she missed so many
days tending to Teddy. She held onto her job as a school nurse in
Andover only because a friend with a medical background agreed to fill
in for her on the days she couldn't make it.
Kellie talked of seeing two Teddys as the weeks crawled by. There was
the one who scampered around the ranch-style home where he lives much
like any rambunctious 3-year-old. And there was the one who would curl
up on the floor, knees drawn up to protect his ailing tummy, his clothes
so loose on his drawn body they seem ready to fall off, his bald head
shining against the dark carpet.
The days of the chest X-rays and CT scans are anxious ones.
Teddy brings candy, hugs and kisses for the staff of Dr. David Rosen,
his pediatric oncologist, at each visit. On his way to the examining
room, he walks past the "wall of fame" rows and rows of photos of Rosen
patients.
Some of the children on the wall are dead now. Others have recovered and
now lead healthy, normal lives.
Teddy's picture is up there, and he can find it within seconds.
''He looks for it every time we go in there," Kellie said.
Rosen said Teddy has tolerated the chemotherapy well.
''Kids tolerate it much better than adults," he said. "They don't know
they're supposed to be sick. That's why they are great to work with.
They might feel sick and throw up, but then after that they're ready to
go play again. They don't know it's supposed to be any different."
Routines have helped the family deal with the chemotherapy and its
aftermath.
The entire family is involved with Teddy's medical care. Teddy drags out
the green tackle box that holds his medication, syringes and bandages
and shows it off the way other children display the contents of their
toy boxes.
He knows what heparin and betadine are, and what roles the medications
play in his treatment. He knew that he had to keep sharp objects away
from "Freddy," the Hickman catheter that was inserted into a blood
vessel and fed out his chest following the cancer surgery.
Often it would be Aubrey, Teddy's 6-year-old sister, who would take a
large cotton swab and sterilize the skin around the catheter with the
betadine, swirling a large burnt-orange circle on her brother's chest.
Getting Aubrey involved in Teddy's care has helped her feel like she is
still an important part of the family, her parents said. But there are
still times she rebels, angry that Teddy is getting attention she feels
she deserves. Teachers tell the Bamfords that she has been acting out
more in school to draw attention to herself, and Kellie said her
daughter has feigned illness more than once in the past year usually
when Teddy's treatment has required the parents to be with him a lot.
She was angry by the time the family had returned home from Teddy's
special haircut at Fantastic Sam's a few weeks ago, pouting, stalling
and scuffing her shoes when her mother asked her to get some gauze and
medicine from the green tackle box.
''I know you're angry, but you still have to help," Kellie said.
''But I'm not the one with cancer!" Aubrey protested loudly.
''No, but you're in a family with cancer," Kellie said, "so we all have
it."
Mother and son often pass the long, sleepless nights by putting jigsaw
puzzles together. Kellie estimates that she has completed more than 60
puzzles in the seven months since Teddy's chemotherapy ended, while
Teddy has put together his children's puzzles more times than she can
count.
When Teddy's not in the mood for puzzles, Kellie rocks him and reads to
him.
Sometimes she gets out the letters.
There are hundreds and hundreds of them, sent from school children all
over the region. St. James Catholic School in Augusta has pictures of
Teddy hanging in its halls, and students there write to him regularly.
As the family passes one milestone after another on Teddy's road to
recovery the end of chemotherapy; his first haircut since cancer was
discovered and chemotherapy was completed; the string of clean
check-ups; the removal last week of Freddy, his chest catheter a sense
of confidence in the future has begun to take hold.
''He told me on the way here that he was not going to be all well until
Freddy was out," Kellie said of Teddy last week after the catheter had
been removed.
Watching Teddy bouncing around the family room one recent evening,
showing off for company the way so many children do, Trey caught himself
making plans for the rest of his son's life, as if the medical crisis of
cancer had passed. ''Yeah, because it's over, pretty much," he said.
The little boy laughing and screaming while he wrestled with his sister
was a far cry from the pale, gaunt child dressed as a cowboy in a photo
hanging on the wall, a cowboy hat not entirely hiding his bald head, his
earnest smile not masking the haunted, serious gaze from brown eyes that
reflect a deeper grasp of pain, hospitals and sadness than any
3-year-old should have to have.
Trey watched the cancer and chemotherapy slow down his son's
development, and now he's watching Teddy make up for lost time.
''He's midway through his 'Terrible Twos' now," he said of Teddy, who
will turn 4 next month.
Even as they plan for a future free of cancer, however, the fear is
never very far away.
''It's just so scary," Kellie said. "How do I know that the next chest
X-ray, there won't be a blip in it?"
All content (c) 1995 THE WICHITA EAGLE
and may not be republished without permission.
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