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By Erika Anderson, Staff Writer
ATLANTA—When Hayes Burrow went in for his monthly
chemotherapy treatments, he spent his days in the hospital wrapped in the
prayers of his Our Lady of the Assumption classmates, literally.
For Ken and Nancy Burrow, October 1998 was every parent’s
nightmare. Their son, Hayes, a third-grader at OLA, had a growth on his back.
After removing it, the doctors told them not to worry about it.
“I never expected the call,” Nancy said.
That call was the one telling her that her son had cancer.
Though it took a month to diagnose, it was determined that the
growth on Hayes’ back was a very rare form of cancer, known as a primitive
neuroectodermal tumor.
“Our first reaction was devastation,” Nancy said.
Ken said that he just felt disbelief.
“Upon hearing about it, it was hard to believe that no one
was playing a game,” he said. “I think I was in denial.”
But that denial would soon make way for the reality. Their
8-year-old son would soon need to undergo chemotherapy.
“I struggled immensely with that decision,” Ken said.
“I thought, ‘Do I really want to do this to my kid?’”
But the Burrows chose to proceed with the chemotherapy. Nancy
recalled the first time she told her son that he had cancer.
“He was sitting on my lap,” she said. “I remember
when I told him he just whipped around and looked at me so hard. I’ll
never forget that.”
But Nancy said that she never doubted her son’s recovery.
“I didn’t question,” she said. “I leaned on my
faith, I drew from it and I prayed a lot. I didn’t do the ‘why me,
why Hayes,’ but I can’t imagine not having a faith and doing
this.”
Ken, who is not Catholic, and Nancy, who is a convert, said that
OLA was essential in helping Hayes through months of chemotherapy treatments.
“OLA was such a huge factor in keeping him normal and
happy,” Nancy said.
“We really made a point of conscientiously trying to keep
Hayes’ life as normal as possible,” Ken added.
The OLA community rallied around young Hayes and his family,
including older sister Allie, then a sixth-grader, in an effort spearheaded by
his teacher, Marion Gunn.
“Hayes is a very strong, very bright boy,” Gunn said.
“He always had a smile on his face. He had a positive attitude in his work
and was never frustrated with trying to catch up.”
For a year, Hayes had to undergo monthly chemotherapy treatments.
His fellow third-grade students were filled with questions. Gunn used those
questions as a chance to learn.
“We would have question and answer time with Hayes,”
Gunn said. “The only way to learn is to talk and it just became something
we needed in order to be a part of it, in order to understand what Hayes was
going through.”
The side effects, fatigue and hair loss, were tough on Hayes at
first.
“When he lost his hair, that was something that he had to get
over,” Ken said. “At first he wore a hat to school every day, but
eventually he felt so comfortable that he just stopped wearing it.”
The class had a “Hayes Hat Day,” where all the students
wore hats to school in honor of their classmate.
“We just felt that we were supporting him,” Gunn said.
“We were thinking, ‘How can we make him more comfortable; how can we
help Hayes go through this?’”
Ken said that the support of Hayes’ classmates helped him
through the tough times.
“It focused on the positive of all this and kept him more in
the focal point,” he said. “It meant so much to him. It was as much a
part of his treatment as the drugs and the hospital.”
The school community also provided meals for the Burrow family
every week for a year.
“It was helpful to me, but it was also a helpful expression
for them,” Nancy said. “It was as much a part of their healing as it
was for me.”
In May 1999, OLA presented Hayes with another gift, a quilt, with
a square representing each classroom at OLA.
“It was like having 500 prayers,” Nancy said. “We
couldn’t have done all this without them. It’s meant so much to us.
It’s hard to describe. OLA is truly a caring family.”
Hayes, who loves school and golf and dreams of being a comic strip
writer, said that he is grateful to his OLA peers.
“They were really supportive and they talked to me,” he
said. “They made me feel a lot better.”
Hayes’ sister said she was appreciative of the support her
brother received.
“It was hard for him, so I was really glad that people were
so nice to him,” Allie said. “People were always coming up to me
asking how Hayes was.”
Hayes’ cancer is now in remission. The doctors are hoping
that it is gone for good, though Hayes will have to have regular scans and
tests to make sure.
“He’s recovered well,” Nancy said. “He’s
healthy—running, jumping, playing. I forgot how much energy he wasn’t
using while he was going through chemo.”
And Hayes still keeps the quilt on his bed as a reminder of the
love and friendships that helped him through the hard times. |
