The Road To Recovery

The last time I wrote about my friend and his son with Ewing's sarcoma, the teenager was just going into treatment. This was back in early fall, when Niko and I went hiking with Michael and Orion, my friend's older son, while Tally, his youngest, was at the hospital as part of his prolonged preparations for his eventual surgery.

We just walked up an old logging road near Snoqualmie Pass, my four-month-old Dizzy weaving between our feet along the path. Michael and I listened to Niko and Orion's boys talk, and occasionally, my friend would call Tally at the hospital to check in with him and Kayla, his wife, or send them a cell phone picture of our hike.

That's when our friends' long scary fight against cancer just started. For us, it was a new experience. Karen's mom had an end- of- life battle with lung cancer some years ago, but it wasn't unexpected. She had been a heavy smoker for many years.

Tally's rare bone cancer came as a bolt out of the blue for the youngster. One day he complained about soreness in his hip after playing soccer, his favorite sport. The next day (or so it seemed) he was at Children's Hospital in Seattle for biopsies and meetings about a long-term cancer treatment plan.

We were suddenly a small part of the struggle many families go through: facing the Big C at a young age. Months of very painful therapy and surgery followed. Our friends rented a home near Children's for winter and spring. Tally effectively missed a year of school. Playing soccer became a distant memory. His hair fell out. His leg shrank. His body became super vulnerable to infection. There were hopeful days. There were desperate days. But, fortunately, his days were never numbered, thanks to his own fighting spirit, that of his family and his friends from school who were always by his side.

He survived the ordeal.

We went to see them this weekend on Bainbridge Island. For the first time in many months, we saw him at home for good instead of the rental in Seattle. No more treatment trips to the hospital. No more "two steps back to go one step forward."

Now every step goes towards his recovery and physical rehabilitation. He has already graduated from the wheelchair to crutches (for most situations anyway) and he knows he will regain his ability to walk - there's no going back.

Before we visited them at home, we caught up with our friends at the big island auction. This is a gargantuan yard sale put on by the Bainbridge Island Rotary Club. Each year, local residents donate all sorts of household goods to the club at Woodward Middle School.

For almost an entire week, families pull up to the curb and volunteers unload their items, which eventually end up in various classroomsturned store departments ranging from furniture, clothing and books to building materials, camping gear and aquatic sports.

In one day, thousands of people come and buy the stuff through direct purchases or silent auction bidding, and by mid afternoon it's all gone. What doesn't sell is donated to Habitat For Humanity or shipped to Africa.

The event raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for community projects from library programs to swimming pool improvements and from emergency relief to overseas well-drilling efforts.

We previewed the sprawling campus on Friday afternoon. I have found incredible deals here in the past: a distressed leather hide the bed for $50, a bicycle for $20, a roof rack for $10. As an island Rotarian, I volunteered at the event for years, something I would have done anyway just to help an effort with so many community benefits.

My friends poked around the grounds looking at bikes, doors and filing cabinets. But one unusual item shot straight to the top of everyone's list: a golf cart for Tally.

It emerged as the perfect transitional mobility device for him. Though he's making great strides in regaining his mobility, getting around is still slow and somewhat cumbersome.

The golf cart seemed like a great way to inspire his momentum and give him something fun to noodle around in with his teenage friends Maxina, Quinn and Ben, whose nurturing energy, presence and laughter has been a big part of Tally's healing and recovery.

When we all returned the next day, auction day, the bidding for the golf cart began. Over the course of several morning hours, dollar amounts started to appear on the bid sheet, the interested parties anonymous until about half an hour before the close when the bidders began to hover around their item.

One bidder had already bowed out after discovering my friend's purpose for the purchase. Now, there was one left. But he too declined to up his bid after learning Michael was buying it for his recovering son, so the Black family was the happy winner, getting the fully functional cart for less than $800.

Bainbridge Island doesn't have an ordinance allowing golf carts to use city streets like Waitsburg does. But there's a large point called the Country Club, where Tally's grandparents have a home and there's plenty of room for Tally and his posse to ride around.

It was remarkable to see how the cart lifted everyone's spirits. For Tally, it was a liberation to go from many months of being bed-bound, then wheelchair bound to getting behind the wheel and choosing his own destination.

It was a fitting change from where he'd been, surrendering his body to the intensive cancer treatment and not being in charge of the outcome. All he had was his spirit and those of many others around him to drive him to his destination.

It was good to see that it prevailed.