Sam Myers doesn’t walk the halls of Archbishop Murphy High School these days, but he’s there all the same.
Every school morning, the 17-year-old senior is up, showered and ready for class by 7:50 a.m. At home in Mukilteo, in his upstairs bedroom, he goes to his computer and signs into Skype.
At Murphy, several friends use an iPad to take Sam to classes via the Internet. “I have second-period theology and fifth period,” said classmate Liam McDonnell, 18. When Liam turns the iPad camera on a teacher, Sam is part of the class.
Sam has been in a grueling fight with cancer for the past year. On March 6, he underwent a bone marrow transplant, a powerful weapon in his battle against acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of the blood cancer known as ETP-ALL.
It takes time to rebuild the immune system after a bone marrow transplant. Sam can’t attend school or be around crowds — not yet. If he continues to do well, doctors will give him the green light to return to Murphy on Feb. 1 for the second semester.
“I’ll get to graduate with everybody,” said Sam, a National Merit Scholarship semifinalist who plans to study physics in college. A year from now, he hopes to be at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana or at the University of Chicago.
It was Halloween night 2014 when his world turned upside down. Before that, life centered around “the normal stuff,” Sam said. At school, he participated in mock trial and tennis, and played trumpet in the band.
A severe nosebleed brought Sam and his parents, Tracy and Robert Myers, to the emergency room at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett that Oct. 31. He had been feeling ill, and treatment hadn’t cured a stubborn case of pneumonia.
At the Everett hospital that night, blood tests and Sam’s enlarged spleen told doctors he had leukemia. By 2:30 a.m., he had been sent by ambulance to Seattle Children’s Hospital.
He would stay there, with a few breaks at home, for 125 days.
Before the bone marrow transplant, overseen by Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, Sam endured multiple courses of treatment with different chemotherapy drugs and whole-body radiation. He had blood transfusions and emergency surgery to fix a problem with a catheter in his chest.
On Wednesday at his family’s home, where visitors are asked to use hand sanitizer, Tracy Myers said she has never heard why-me anger from Sam. “His treatment has been tough. His strength through the whole thing has amazed my husband and me,” she said.
The Archbishop Murphy community has been wonderful, “like a family,” Myers said.
She unfolded a quilt made by Beth Mock, a math teacher at the school. The red-and-white quilt includes squares signed and decorated by students.
“Everybody wanted to help if they could,” Mock said.
Her quilt was delivered to Sam by Deacon Dennis Kelly, the school’s campus minister. Kelly brought it to Seattle Children’s along with Peter Zupke and Lola Forde, students involved in an Acts of Random Kindness movement that’s part of campus ministry.
Orange wristbands and T-shirts were sold at school to raise $500 for research into acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Myers was touched when the school’s Choral-Aires group came to the hospital to sing Christmas carols. And in January, about 80 people took part in a school blood drive in Sam’s honor.
Along with Liam, Sam’s friends Adrian Szymanski and Ashley Halmans, armed with iPads, split up his schedule. “They all take me to classes,” Sam said.
His heavy academic load includes AP government and politics, theology, AP computer science, AP calculus BC, AP physics and AP language and composition. He’ll take band second semester, and will get a PE credit online.
Roger Brodniak, an AP government teacher at Murphy, said Sam is a star pupil. “I’ll call on him, he always has the right answers,” said Brodniak, who also is the school’s mock trial coach.
Sam was the only sophomore on the mock trial team that placed second in at the state championships two years ago.
Brodniak said a spot is reserved for Sam to be a bailiff at this year’s state mock trial competition in March.
With technology and good friends, Sam isn’t isolated. Kids say hi as friends carry the iPad down the hall. “It’s amazing,” said Brodniak. “This would not have happened in my generation.”
It is amazing, but Sam and his pals are ready to finish high school the old-fashioned way.
“It will be great to have him back,” Liam said.
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
