This Christmas, light at the end of the tunnel
Shane Bryant has a new aluminum tibia and, one suspects while talking with him, a couple other parts made of brass.
The 2008 Glenbard West graduate, a forward on a sectional basketball champion and part of the Hilltoppers' 2006 eighth-place Class AA golf team, on Monday was in the eighth day of a marathon nine-day chemotherapy treatment session on the pediatric floor at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Persistent hiccups, a side effect of one of several drugs prescribed to bolster 18 treatments Bryant has endured since he was first diagnosed with osteosarcoma, couldn't obscure the strength of his spirit.
"To be quite frank, I've been on a pretty even keel," he said. "I haven't asked 'Why?' once. It just got thrown at me and I had to make a life adjustment.
"It's going to continue to be that way. I've kind of just accepted it. There's really nothing I can do about it other than beat it.
"It could be very easy to be angry and have those thoughts, but I just don't think it's fair."
Tony Shurna, father of former teammate John Shurna, one of Bryant's closest friends, told his mother, "he's the bravest person he knows."
During Bryant's first semester at Indiana University he felt pain in his right leg while playing basketball. Shortly thereafter, about this time last year, he noticed an abnormal bump protruding below the knee.
When a winter break orthopaedic exam led to an MRI, which led to a visit with an oncologist, Bryant instinctively needed no flashing neon sign to indicate the severity of his condition.
"I kind of knew it was cancer," he said. "I had a gut feeling."
Osteosarcoma, a bone cancer that most commonly affects teens, can be life threatening if not discovered early. Bryant was wise to act when he did.
"They caught me in Stage II (of four stages)," he said. "I got pretty lucky that they caught it when they did, when I saw it. But they took out 10 inches of my tibia and replaced it with an aluminum rod."
The April 24 surgery included a knee replacement and plastic surgery to cover the rod, plus a skin graft followed a week later by another graft. Bryant, 20 and using a walker while undergoing physical therapy, won't be able to compete in heavy-impact sports like basketball but will be able to golf.
"Which is good," he said.
Of course, this is only half the story.
"This has just been a lesson in the greatness of people," said Ursula Bryant, Shane's mother. Ursula and Mike Bryant also have a daughter, Gretchen, a medical student in residency at Resurrection Medical Center in Chicago who provided calm and all-night reassurance.
Grassroots advocacy broke out. Proceeds from "Sugar Shane" wristband sales at St. Petronille Catholic School were donated to the St. Baldrick's Foundation.
Family friend Mike Cullen worked with Glen Oak Country Club pro Danny Mulhearn - Shane Bryant caddied at Glen Oak - to raise $13,000 in pledge money stemming from Mulhearn's play in the 2009 Illinois Open Championships. Cullen donated the funds to the V Foundation, then secured Bryant an invitation to the 2010 Jimmy V Celebrity Golf Classic in North Carolina.
Glenbard West coach Tim Hoder and assistant Jim Pecilunas recently brought Bryant a game DVD to assess. Sarah Boockford, mother of former Hilltopper Billy Boockford, delivers him to treatments.
John Shurna, center on those great Glenbard West basketball teams and now at Northwestern, takes two trains to visit his old teammate at Rush.
"I think if anybody was cynical about the goodness of human nature, things like this make you change your mind," Ursula said. "People have been outstanding, he just has wonderful friends."
Over the past 19 months feelings in this family were already rubbed raw by the accidental deaths of Shane's 21-year-old cousins Kevin Bryant, of Batavia, and Sean Heiss, of Big Rock.
"It keeps the cancer thing in perspective," Ursula Bryant said. "I have my son."
The last three chemotherapy treatments should conclude by late January, and Bryant plans to return to Indiana University for the 2010-11 academic year. Scans will be required every three months thereafter to make sure there's no return of the cancer, but this chapter is about to end.
"There's a light at the end of the tunnel that I can see," Shane said. "It's been a long one. It's almost remarkable that it's almost done after a whole year."
The ordeal has taken courage, strength and growth.
"My new motto," Ursula Bryant said, "is faith, family and friends."
doberhelman@dailyherald.com