Friends, students rally to help sick teacher

Published 9:00 pm Friday, December 19, 2003

DARRINGTON — Friends, colleagues and students of Darrington history teacher Tom Shelby are chipping in for a last-gasp effort to save his life.

Shelby, 38, is suffering from a rare and crippling form of brain cancer that attacks its victims with multiple tumors.

Shelby was diagnosed in the spring, said Greg Powell, who also teaches history to middle and high school students in Darrington.

"He had been having trouble with blinding headaches," Powell said. "The kids were pretty devastated by the news."

Shelby and his wife, Lorray, have found a clinic in Houston that has had some success with an experimental treatment for his cancer, which is called glioblastoma multiforme.

"It’s his last chance," Powell said.

Shelby’s health insurance won’t cover the Houston clinic’s treatment, though, because the Federal Drug Administration has not yet completed clinical trials on it.

Costs for treatment at the Burzynski Clinic in Houston start at $12,000 for the first three weeks.

"If the treatments prove to be working after the initial three weeks, the cost of the entire treatment will be near $30,000," Powell said.

As desperate as Shelby’s condition is, his friends and co-workers still have hope after finding out that the Houston clinic has healed some patients with his form of cancer.

Shelby left school in May as his health deteriorated but returned in June for the high school graduation ceremony.

The Shelbys are now living near relatives in Moses Lake.

Powell worried that Shelby might get too weak to make the trip to Texas in another few weeks. He asked people interested in helping to send donations to Tom Shelby Medical Account, Cowlitz Bank, 195 N. First St., Kalama, WA 98625.

The Burzynski Clinic has a Web site at www.cancermed.com.

Reporter Scott Morris: 425-339-3292 or smorris@heraldnet.com.