A WELL-DESERVED GIFT: Mothers get treated

Candlelighters, salon team up to ease moms' stress

Parents with kids who have cancer hardly ever get the chance to have a day to themselves. Panic, worry, and anxiety plague their lives daily from the time their child is diagnosed, sometimes indefinitely.

But on May 6, 10 moms had the chance to take the day off from stress, thanks to the J.C. Penney Salon inside the Boulevard Mall and Candlelighters for Childhood Cancer of Southern Nevada.

For several hours that day, the ladies were pampered with massages, facials, haircuts, pedicures and other treats designed to help them relax, if only for that day.

"We wanted to do something nice for the moms who sometimes pay the ultimate price," said Landa York, director of operations for Candlelighters of Southern Nevada. "They deal with a sick child and often have other children they have to take care of too. The very last person they think of is themselves."

Some of the mothers had children who lost the battle with cancer in the last year, while others have children who are still undergoing treatment.

Ellen Bolt's son Dylan McDaniel is in remission, and the recent outing was a way for her to celebrate his fortunate recovery so far. She said although he's only recently been declared cancer free at a follow-up visit after several months of chemotherapy, she's not through being fearful.

"It was the best day I've had in so long, I can't even remember," she said. "I haven't been able to relax since June of last year."

Dylan, 16, was diagnosed at the end of May 2003 with osteosarcoma in his upper left arm, a type of bone cancer that is associated with bone growth spurts in children between the ages of 9 and 16.

"He has had extensive chemotherapy and major surgery," Bolt said. "They did two months of chemotherapy, took out a tumor in his upper arm by the shoulder, and replaced a bone. They sent the tumor off to a lab to see how much was killed by chemotherapy and results came back that it was 100 percent killed, which is the best you can hope for."

Bolt still recalled the panic that swept over her when she found out her son had cancer.

"I was in shock, disbelief, a total meltdown," she said. "The fear was so overwhelming. The thought of losing your child is unbearable. At first you can't believe your child has cancer, you think right away your child is going to die. The doctors give you the odds of overcoming this, and you go with the odds, you could be the good one or the bad one, you just don't know. We had such wonderful doctors. I don't think we could have gotten through it without them and Candlelighters."

As difficult as it was for Bolt to deal with the fact that her son had cancer, she also had to suffer financial strain and the effects of the treatment on Dylan's ability to function as a normal teen.

"Chemotherapy kills off fast-growing cells, but it also kills white blood cells, so their immune system drops to practically nothing and they become extremely susceptible to illness," she said. "That was a really big concern. I had a tendency to keep him more isolated than I needed to because I wanted to be safe. Each session of chemotherapy is harder and harder on kids. Their body is beaten down, and each time, it takes their strength away."

Dylan is back in school with other kids. He recently underwent another surgery to fine-tune some of the screws in his upper arm. Bolt said the level of her concern has subsided just enough for her to accept the recent day of beauty without feeling apprehensive about taking it. Being with other moms who have had similar experiences made it even better.

"He's not cured until he's been cancer free for five years, but so far so good," she said. "I'm going to worry for the next five years, but it won't be the intense worrying that I have been doing. It was good to be with some other moms who are going through or did go through the same thing. It's a whole different world than having a kid with cancer. You can't understand what it is until you go through it, and we all have that common bond. We sat together and thought we can have one day and feel good without feeling guilty."


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