Gift brightens life of Indiana teen battling brain cancer
LYONS, Ind. (AP) - Billy Camden could have named his dream, just about anything, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation would have made it come true.
When his grandma asked the Greene County 15-year-old to imagine something that would enrich his life, he gave it some thought. "Billy likes to be outdoors, and I told him he could go on a hunting or fishing trip somewhere, that we could even hunt a bear," Mary Camden recalled.
Billy had his own idea, something less costly. A bedroom makeover would be just the thing, he said, a fresh coat of paint and new furniture, perhaps. And could there be a bunk bed, he asked, so his 16-year-old brother Jackie Lee could share in the gift.
Recently it all arrived, via a giant white delivery truck: sleek metal bunk beds with a full-sized mattress on the bottom, soft white sheets and camouflage comforters, a long dresser and a nightstand made from gray-brown distressed-looking wood. A cool metal lamp, and a furry gray rug.
Billy is too old to believe in Santa Claus. But he does believe in the magic of the holiday season and in the kindness of people he will never meet who donate to a charity fund that grants sick kids' wishes.
"I like it," the soft-spoken White River Valley Middle School student said when he saw his new room. "I like it a lot."
Finding joy isn't easy for a teenager fighting for his life.
Billy has medulloblastoma, cancerous tumors that form in the brain and spread to the spinal cord.
Billy got sick more than two years ago, losing weight and strength, and vomiting a lot. Doctors at two hospital emergency rooms diagnosed a virus, but medications didn't help and Billy got sicker. He was holding his head titled to one side, and his frustrated grandmother took him back to the hospital and demanded further tests.
"He couldn't hardly walk, and I told the doctor right then I was not bringing Billy home to die, and that doctor talked to me and promised they would not send him home until they knew what was wrong."
The bad news came after two CAT scans. "He had tumors in his brain, and they said he had to go to Riley Hospital that night," Camden said. "They did surgery and took out the tumors they could."
They lived at the Ronald McDonald House in Chicago for six weeks during the summer of 2016 while Billy got proton radiation therapy and chemotherapy. He now is taking low-dose chemotherapy pills and feeling better, eating and gaining some weight, his grandmother said. He goes to school most days, and to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health in Indianapolis twice a month for blood tests and scans to track the course of his disease.
"He had an MRI on Tuesday, and two tumors are the same and one has grown just slightly," Camden said. "We are hoping these pills will work. He gets tired, and can't be outdoors a lot to do the things he likes to do. But Billy is a fighter. And a very good kid."
"To enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy" is the goal of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which since 1983 has granted 4,365 wishes to Indiana children facing life-threatening illnesses. Billy is among about 350 kids in the Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky region to have wishes granted during 2017.
Make-A-Wish sent a 17-year-old with a seizure disorder to cooking school in Italy, a 16-year-old with bone cancer to Colorado to train with Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps and a 4-year-old horse lover with cancer to a Montana dude ranch with her family for a week.
Todd Reigle, marketing director for the Make-A-Wish region that includes Indiana, said the average cost of a wish is between $6,000 and $7,000. Ashley Furniture would not say how much it cost to furnish Billy's room. "We get all kinds of requests," Reigle said, with a wide range of costs.
Four days before Christmas, an Ashley Furniture Homestore delivery van pulled up at the house near Lyons where Billy lives with his grandparents. Furniture emerged and was assembled, then situated in Billy's 11-by-12-foot bedroom.
A large flat-screen television donated by Sears went the length of the dresser.
A painting crew from Color Theory in Bloomington already had transformed Billy's bedroom walls. Sherwin-Williams donated the paint, three 1-gallon cans of satin finish valued at $67 per gallon: Ivory Lace for the trim, Downing Stone for three walls and a forest-green shade called Laurel Woods as an accent color on the fourth wall.
"They sent me pictures of the furniture going in his room, and they gave me the layout," said Imaijha McWilliams, the color expert at Sherwin-Williams in Bloomington. "Billy really didn't have a color spectrum or anything for me to work from. He was just excited about getting his room painted. He did pick out a camouflage bedspread, so I used that to choose the wall colors."
Billy sat quietly by himself in another room, uncomfortable with all of the attention focused on him, as the furniture was arranged. But seeing the transformation brought a smile to his face.
Why would a boy who could have chosen anything at all wish for a simple makeover of the small bedroom he shares with his brother?
He didn't want something fleeting that would be reduced to a memory.
"I wanted something I could always keep," he said, "that will always be here."
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Source: The (Bloomington) Herald-Times
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Information from: The Herald Times, http://www.heraldtimesonline.com