Prayer brings an angel

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, October 11, 2003

EVERETT — Angel Flight 54Z appeared just before sunset like a twinkling star in a thick band of clouds.

In a steady rain, it touched down on the Regal Air runway at Paine Field Saturday evening. A small group of people grabbed blue and white umbrellas and ran out to meet the Cessna P206.

Of the five people climbing out of the packed little plane, it was tough to tell just which ones were supposed to be the angels.

It could be Lake Stevens resident Tanya Kennedy, 36, returning from California, where she just finished nine intensive weeks of proton radiation treatment for a brain tumor.

Or it could be her three bronze-skinned, curly haired, brown-eyed children: Josh, 10; Josie, 7; and Joey, 2. Their single mother took them with her to California and enrolled Josh and Josie in school during her treatments.

Or maybe it’s the pilot, Edmonds resident Dale Terwedo, 44, who rearranged his weekend and volunteered his time, his expertise and his plane to pick the family up in California and bring them home — all free of charge.

Terwedo is part of a group called Angel Flights that matches good-willed pilots with medical patients who need to travel for treatments but can’t afford commercial transportation.

"I absolutely love this," Terwedo said as he unloaded the Kennedy’s luggage. "I love helping people. I love flying. And what a way to put them together."

A friend from Kennedy’s church, Lake Stevens resident Tove Nelson, brought her van to pick up the family.

"She’s being taken care of by a lot of different people," Nelson said. "That’s how everything has fallen into place. It’s been wonderful, very exceptional kindness. And because of it, her children get a mother."

It was the second Angel Flight Kennedy has taken since her saga began in late 2001 with an occasional throbbing headache. That headache turned out to be clival chordoma — a tumor in the spot where her spinal cord and brain meet.

At first it didn’t seem like surgery was an option, because Kennedy, a Jehovah’s Witness, cannot accept a blood transfusion.

But in an answer to her prayers, a University of Washington doctor decided to work around her religious restriction and performed two lengthy surgeries to remove the tumor on her brain stem.

Her prayers were answered again earlier this year when she got a letter from Washington state telling her that Medicaid would cover a series of proton radiation treatments to zap what was left of the tumor in hopes that it will never return.

And once again in an answer to her prayers, the Angel Flights stepped in to return her and her children home.

"I just feel really loved. I wish we could all do this for each other," she said. "I feel like I really didn’t have to worry about anything through this whole procedure in my life."

Kennedy and her children had been in California since Aug. 11, when she moved to a campus apartment at Loma Linda University, a 3,000-student, Seventh-day Adventist health sciences institution about 50 miles east of Los Angeles.

At Loma Linda University, Kennedy and her three children lived among dentistry and medical students.

Weekdays, Kennedy would walk the four minutes to the hospital, where technicians would place a plastic mask with little holes over her face.

They’d "practically staple" her to a table so she wouldn’t move, and after about 30 minutes of getting her in position, the localized beams of protons would begin to hit her skin.

"I’d hear a beep, beep, beep, beep for two or three minutes, and then I’d be done," she said.

Though doctors warned her of side effects to the radiation such as red, blotchy skin, rashes, hair loss and fatigue, she said the treatments mostly made her tired.

Because she was an outpatient, and because her children were with her, Kennedy opted to spend her days in California taking her kids on walks and to the campus swimming pool.

"If the kids weren’t here, I’d probably just sleep all the time," Kennedy said Friday night via phone. "It gives me a reason to get up and get motivated. Nobody wanted me to take the kids, but I said, ‘No, no — they’re going.’ I think it was a good call on my part."

At her last treatment on Thursday, doctors presented her with a gold lapel pin of a proton and a certificate.

Kennedy said the whole experience was positive, and "good healing."

"That’s why I feel confident that this is going to work. And for taking nine weeks out of my daily life to do it," she said.

As they headed home, life offered no guarantees to the young mother and her children.

They will head back to their downtown apartment in Lake Stevens, and perhaps redecorate it.

They will return to the fold of the Kingdom Hall.

Josh and Josie will go back to school.

Their mother will get a magnetic resonance imaging exam every three months to make sure the tumor on her brain stem is not growing back.

She will apply, as she has several times before, for Social Security benefits so she can stay home to take care of her health and raise her children.

"Who knows how long I’ll live, and who knows if it’ll go away," she said. "But right now, I feel well enough to be a good parent."

But, she says, there will always be angels around.

Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.