Apr 30, 2007 - 04:11:16 CDT
If the parents of Ethan Earl, 6, buy him something at a store, he's stubborn. He simply can't and won't leave the store until he can get something for his sister - and sometimes for a classmate, too.And if he gets a gift of money in the mail, he wants to keep half and share the other half with his sister, Payton Koenig, 12, of Underwood.
"He's very, very, very considerate of his sister," said Glenda Earl, 28, of Underwood, on Sunday.
Now there's a community that wants to give a major gift to him.
On Sunday, a concert and soup-and-sandwich meal featuring Minot's Heritage Singers will raise money to help defray expenses of Ethan Earl's cancer treatments. The event will be held at 4 p.m. at Underwood School's gymnasium, 123 Summit St.
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans will match funds raised, up to $400.
About three weeks ago - after a year of Bismarck doctors misdiagnosing his leg pain as growing pains or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis - his parents insisted more tests be done. And the resulting X-rays showed he had advanced bone cancer. He'll make his second trip to Mayo Clinic soon for more chemotherapy, and in June it's expected he'll have surgery - a partial amputation of his right leg.
Glenda Earl said the Bismarck doctor, after getting the X-ray results, told her it was advanced stage bone cancer and there was nothing they could do.
She started crying. Ethan, who was in the room at the time, started patting his mom's back and telling her not to cry. Another doctor later told the family it was treatable, but they had to get to the Mayo Clinic immediately - no time to waste.
His sister cried herself to sleep that night.
"That first week was the hardest,"said Glenn Earl, 34, Glenda's husband, a Navy recruiter based out of Minot.
"(Glenn) had a hard time talking about it," Glenda Earl said.
Despite Ethan Earl's current situation, he still does what he has done every morning for more than a year.
Glenda Earl said first thing, when he wakes up in the morning, and is getting out of bed, he'll grin and say, "Oh Mom, it's my lucky day." She doesn't know why he started saying it, or where he picked it up from.
He got even luckier Thursday when his hair starting to fall out because of the chemotherapy.
Glenda Earl, a hair stylist who now works as a full-time mom, said he has been obsessed since age 3 with bald people and wanting to be bald. He became even more frustrated when, during his Minnesota hospital stay, he saw a bald girl and couldn't understand why even a girl was bald and he wasn't.
Thursday, when he realized the hair was falling out, he started laughing and pulling it out in clumps. That prompted his mom to take him to the makeshift hairstyling salon downstairs in their home where she cuts family members' hair. The reality of baldness, when he looked in the mirror, didn't go over well, but positive affirmation from neighbhorhood friends, that he looked "awesome," changed his assessment.
Glenda Earl said it was last year, in April 2006, when her son started having a lot of pain in his right knee and leg and they took him to a Bismarck clinic. A couple of tests didn't come up with anything and he was sent to an orthopedic specialist who, without doing any tests, determined it was growing pains and the onset of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. A visit to another clinic resulted in same diagnosis and the Earls did as directed, treating him with a painkiller, Motrin, and hot and cold packs for the swelling.
On April 2 of this year, a year into this, the Earls had had enough. The swelling was getting worse. Glenda Earl took Ethan to the walk-in clinic with comparative photos of his left and right legs and asked if this looked normal to them. He was immediately taken in for more tests, and then things got serious. There was a teary-eyed radiologist and a doctor with bad news.
Mayo doctors later told the Earls they had never seen, with this type of cancer, a tumor this large, 53/4 inches.
The plan is to strike first with chemotherapy. It's a fast-growing cancer, and it's common for it to spread to the lungs, where it can be hard to detect. So, doctors want to make sure they get rid of any possible cancer cells located there and elsewhere, and then the tentative plan is to do surgery in June.
It's a limb-salvage procedure called Rotationplasty. She explained that the surgeon will take out the "cancered portion" of the femur - starting two inches below the hip to just under the knee. The surgeon then will re-attach the shin and foot at a 180-degree angle, which will allow the ankle to act as the new knee.
The Earls are in close contact with Shanna Decker, 16, of Minnesota, who has had the surgery. She now plays touch football, rollerblades and is a figure skater.
Ethan Earl, even now, is no slug. The boy is high energy and can be seen sometimes practicing his wheelchair driving, including wheelies in the no-tip chair, which has left skid marks on the driveway.
He's a kindergartner, but is already reading chapter books - the first in his class to read. A trip to the library means getting more third and fourth-grade level books on things he loves to learn about - hunting and the U.S. Army.
He wants to be a cop, or an Army man, something that almost causes a physical twitch in his third-generation Navy dad. But a smiling Glenn Earl said he thinks he can learn to live with it.
This robotic leg that he's soon to get has resulted in the cop-aspirant starting to call himself "robocop."
He's also obsessed with Legos and amazes his mom and dad with his dexterity as he constructs planes, boats and bad guys with Legos. He knows which Legos aren't in his inventory and can list them. A future Make-A-Wish trip will take him to LegoLand in Carlsbad, Calif.
If he had one wish that could come true, what would it be, a leg?
Close, and yet not.
"I want a Lego,"Ethan Earl said Sunday.
But no matter, how few or how many Legos or legs.
Like he says every morning, "It's a lucky day."
Especially with him in it, some people have been known to say.
MinnesotaGirl wrote on May 3, 2007 4:50 PM:
a cancer survivor wrote on Apr 30, 2007 3:59 PM:
anothercancersurvivor wrote on Apr 30, 2007 3:55 PM:
MammaMia wrote on Apr 30, 2007 1:29 PM:
Hopefull for you wrote on Apr 30, 2007 10:48 AM:
Loving Parent wrote on Apr 30, 2007 10:37 AM:
concerned Medical service wrote on Apr 30, 2007 10:22 AM:
wow wrote on Apr 30, 2007 9:09 AM:
WOW wrote on Apr 30, 2007 9:09 AM:
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