MONROE — Turner Patterson is smiling a lot these days.
For good reason.
For the first time in nearly two years, the 10-year-old Monroe boy who had a bone marrow transplant for leukemia is back in school, able to ride his bike and play with his friends.
Gone are the days when a weakened immune system ruled out trips to the supermarket, movies or his favorite Chinese restaurant.
“He’s growing like a weed and starting to eat like a teenager,” his father, Travis Patterson, said.
Last week, Turner spoke on the phone with Tanya Beck, 32, of North Carolina, who gave him a second chance at life.
Of the 11 million people on the bone marrow donor list, her tissue type was a perfect match.
“I cried when I got the first e-mail,” Beck said. “I talked with Travis, the father, and he was so nice. My heart went out to them for the troubles they’ve gone through. It melted my heart to hear he was doing so well in school.”
The boy who has battled the rare blood disease since he was 4 has come a long way in the past year.
In the days leading up to Turner’s transplant in February 2007, doctors at Children’s Hospital in Seattle gave him a potent combination of radiation therapy and chemotherapy treatments.
The step essentially destroyed his old leukemia-producing marrow and prepared his body for the healthy new marrow.
Twice a day for five consecutive days, Turner put on a leaded mask to protect his face and battled fatigue as he underwent full-body radiation.
After the transplant, he would spend another five weeks in the hospital and four months at the Pete Gross House, an apartment in Seattle for patient undergoing cancer treatment and their families.
He suffered from nausea and diarrhea and developed painful sores in his mouth that made breathing difficult.
He fought graft-versus-host disease, a common bone marrow transplant complication, and wasn’t able to eat solid food for two weeks.
In time, though, his health improved. Before long, he was able to walk the three blocks from the Pete Gross House to his medical checkups. His appetite picked up.
He also began thinking of others.
“He never had a pity party and he never complained,” Travis Patterson said. “He’s a pretty amazing kid.”
By fall, Turner told his father that he wanted to do something nice for sick kids who would have to spend Christmas fighting cancer at Children’s Hospital.
Travis Patterson and the union that he works for, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 191 in Everett, organized a toy drive for children at the hospital’s hematology-oncology clinic.
Among the goodies they gave out were a Nintendo Wii video game system and two laptop computers for parents from out-of-state to keep in touch with their families back home.
People in Monroe and other communities across Snohomish County showed similar compassion for Turner and his family. More than 700 people, including politicians, sheriff’s deputies and Local 191 union members, turned out at bone marrow donor drives.
They also gave to a medical fund to pay for charges that were not covered by insurance. Travis Patterson said he has no doubt that his family would have lost their home otherwise.
One elderly woman in Darrington kept a newspaper clipping about the boy’s struggle in her family Bible and prayed every night for his health.
Standing next to his desk in Patricia. VanHemelryck’s frog-themed fourth-grade class at Chain Lake Elementary School earlier this week, Turner said he is enjoying multiplication lessons.
“It was real exciting and a little scary, too,” he said on returning to school after nearly two years of being home-schooled.
Turner sits next to his best friend, Jeremy Molina, 9, a dark-haired boy with glasses whom he met in the second grade.
“It was awesome,” Molina exclaimed of his friend’s return, before lowering his voice to a whisper to ask Turner about borrowing an eraser.
Beck, a mother of two daughters, lives in Mount Airy, N.C., Andy Griffith’s hometown and the inspiration for Mayberry. Confidentiality rules require at least a year before recipients can reach out to donors who are willing to be contacted.
Beck regularly donated blood in her early 20s. She doesn’t remember signing up for the bone marrow donor list, but she’s glad she did. When she got a call in January 2007, she thought they had the wrong number.
She agreed to go through a number of tests and a minor surgery, which required making two incisions in her back and extracting the marrow in her pelvic bone with a needle.
A courier then took the marrow from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., and boarded a plane to Seattle, where Turner received it the same day. The surgery left Beck sore for about a week, but that was nothing knowing that she helped ease the pain of a little boy.
“I can’t imagine what he’s been through, bless his heart,” Beck said. “This is the best thing that I have done in all of my life.”
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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