Local softball player inspires many in fight against cancer

LYNNWOOD — In the spring of her senior year, Ashley Aven should be enjoying her final season of high school softball. She should be picking out a dress for the prom. And she should be making plans for college in the fall.

But instead Ashley got cancer and, well, things changed.

Cancer — in this case acute myeloid leukemia, or AML — has turned Ashley's senior year into a hellish nightmare. In the fall, when friends at Meadowdale High School were going to classes and Friday night football games, the then-17-year-old Lynnwood girl endured three rounds of debilitating chemotherapy intended to kill the cancerous blood cells, even as the remedy itself made her desperately ill.

The treatments did some good, but not enough. In January, doctors at Seattle Children's Hospital told Ashley and her parents they could do no more.

She was given two months to live.

That was more than three months ago, which is a victory of sorts. But when the opponent is a pitiless and unrelenting disease like cancer, uncertainty overshadows every silver lining.

“We just keep battling,” said her father, Bill Aven, his eyes welling with tears. And when another month passes, he said, “she rips the calendar page off the wall.”

Of all the great and often tragic mysteries of life, perhaps none is more perplexing than this: Why do children, who have so much yet to live and love, sometimes suffer from terrifying diseases that can kill them? Because in a truly just world, no child would ever hear the words, “You have cancer.”

“I always say, ‘God has a reason for everything,'” said Tamara Aven, Ashley's mother. “But I don't know why (this happened). And I will never get that answer.”

A devastating diagnosis

The first symptoms were subtle and easy to explain away.

Ashley began having headaches near the end of her junior year, and she was often very tired. Her parents attributed both to the strain of late-semester studying.

Then Bill Aven noticed something odd while watching a softball game. His daughter always had a strong throwing arm and could deliver the ball to home plate on the fly from her position in right field. But at the district tournament in May, Ashley's throws barely reached the pitcher's mound.

He also thought she looked slower afoot, which was strange because Ashley — nicknamed “Speedy” by her teammates — was one of Meadowdale's fastest players.

Still, she was her usual cheerful self on and off the field, so Bill and Tamara Aven dismissed the anomalies. “Kids get burned out,” Tamara Aven said. “We thought it was end-of-the-year stuff.”

But soon there were other complaints. She had aching muscles and joints, a persistent cough, nausea and a fever. Suspecting the swine flu, her mother took Ashley to the doctor, where blood tests ruled out the flu. Only that good news was tempered by troubling follow-up questions. “They kept asking me about cancer in my family,” Tamara Aven said.

Ashley was sent to Seattle Children's Hospital for additional tests. It took the doctors two hours to return to her room with the devastating diagnosis.

“They said, ‘Your daughter has AML leukemia,'” said Bill Aven, who'd joined his family at the hospital. “And at that point you pretty much lose all control as a parent. You've lost every bit of what you thought you could give your child. It's all been taken away from you.”

Overwhelmed by his own helplessness, “I had to go outside because I didn't want to cry in front of my daughter,” he said.

Ten days later, Ashley started chemotherapy.

Fighting back

Chemotherapy is one of the great advances of medical science, but it is hardly a compassionate cure. Toxic drugs are used to poison the cancer, but they also pummel the patient's entire body. The side effects are often painful and always unpleasant.

And even with aggressive treatments, some cancers stubbornly, almost tauntingly resist. So it was for Ashley. Two rounds of chemotherapy in the late summer and early fall reduced the number of cancer cells in her body, but not enough for the bone marrow transplant doctors had planned.

Ashley bravely consented to a third round of chemotherapy using a different combination of drugs. This time the leukemia rallied and the percentage of cancer cells grew significantly.

Once again, doctors gave the Aven family grim news.

“They said, ‘There's nothing else we can do. She has terminal cancer,'” Tamara Aven said. “They said we should go home and enjoy the quality of life.”

That was in January. Ashley still receives three daily doses of oral medications “to keep (the cancer) at bay,” her mother said. And she returns to the hospital every few days for platelet and blood transfusions.

Beyond that, there is little to do but wait.

And hope.

‘She's our teammate'

Because of her illness, Ashley has not been in school this year. The primary link to her former life is softball.

“I think about (softball) almost every day,” she said. “I miss it a lot.”

She is on the bench for most Meadowdale games, and head coach Dennis Hopkins dutifully lists her name on the lineup card as one of his substitutes. Her teammates wear a special No. 2 patch — Ashley's uniform number — on their jerseys.

When she attends a game or practice, “I see a twinkle in her eye,” Hopkins said. “It's like, ‘I'm going to beat this thing and get back out here.' It's such an amazing fight this kid is doing. It's uplifting to the team and it's uplifting to me.”

“She's my inspiration,” Meadowdale senior first baseman Courtney Hook said. “I never really know ahead of time if she's coming to practice. But when I see her, she just makes me excited to play. ... She's an amazing girl. I've always respected her, but my respect has just gone up so much because she's so strong.”

It would be terrific to say that Meadowdale, which has been a so-so program in recent years, has reached new heights this season as a tribute to Ashley. But this is real life, not Hollywood, and the Mavericks have won just once in nine games to date.

Yet even in the midst of a difficult season, there are lessons and experiences that transcend a team's record of wins and losses.

“She loves to be with her friends, and it means a lot that she's out here with us,” senior second baseman Jade Lennstrom said. “This time last year she was playing with us and she was fine. And now when she's not here, that's when it hits me.

“She's our teammate,” Lennstrom said. “She knows we're playing for her.”

‘The strongest kid I know'

Time passes, and by now every additional day is a blessing.

The Avens have vowed to make this spring meaningful and memorable for their daughter. They are following the advice of Dr. Thomas Manley from Seattle Children's Hospital, who told them in January, “Go home and spend every minute you can with your daughter. Because time is the one thing you can't get back.”

So they find fun things to do, and they try to laugh because it troubles Ashley to see her mom and dad cry. But she also understands. During a recent media interview, Bill Aven choked up and had to pause.

Without a word, Ashley reached out and took his hand.

“She worries about us almost more than we worry about her,” said Bill Aven, who has not worked in recent months so he can be with his daughter. “She thinks, ‘If I didn't have cancer, then my dad could keep working and we wouldn't have a problem paying the bills.' Or, ‘Mom and Dad are arguing because I have cancer.' That's how she thinks.”

Friends from the school and community have stepped up to assist the Avens. Fund-raisers helped send the family — which includes older sister Leticia, a 2008 Meadowdale graduate, and younger brother Eric, a Meadowdale freshman — to Palm Desert, Calif., earlier this month so Ashley could spend her birthday — she turned 18 on April 6 — with her grandmother.

“The support,” Bill Aven said, “has been phenomenal.”

The Avens are thrilled that Ashley has surpassed the projected two months, but there are also disturbing new developments. She has muscle and bone pain in her legs, and doctors predict the pain will move slowly up to her hips and then into her stomach and chest.

Encroaching pain is what happens, Bill Aven said, “when you get to the end in leukemia. Because eventually everything is going to hurt, and then you die.

“That's why she's fighting. She doesn't want her legs to hurt because she wants to live. She's told us, ‘I don't want to die.'”

Through it all, “Ashley's been very stoic, very dedicated,” he said. “She's never been negative about this whole thing. That has a lot to do with the support she's been given, but it's also because of her attitude. She believes in herself. She's a fighter.

“She's the strongest kid I know.”