By TYANN ROUW - Lee News Service

Politicians are talking about change. It is a concept that causes considerable anxiety for children with autism. The only change my kids enjoy is the kind they put in their piggy banks.

My sons occasionally discuss the presidential candidates. Henry, nearly 4, often says, “Let’s talk about John McCain,” with the same enthusiasm reserved for McCain’s PR staffers. “McCain has a girlfriend. It’s a girl, not a wife,” he says, referring to Sarah Palin. He believes McCain and “Orock Ovama” are friends. As Henry says, “They play together and pretend they’re presidents. Then they approve messages.”

My boys have been interested in the election since that wintery January night when my husband returned from the caucus. When he explained he had helped select the next president, 6-year-old Noah became distraught.

“I don’t want you to be president, Dad!” he sobbed. “You would never be home, and you wouldn’t be able to tackle me for a whole entire year. That would be horrible!”  

I pictured our family of five on the campaign trail, with several changes occurring daily. My kids would suffer without the structure home and school provide. It would be a recipe for disaster.

My husband has no political experience, although he was elected president of the Computer Club during college. We are a typical family, and we’re becoming more typical every year. (Currently one in 94 boys is diagnosed with autism.) Our foreign diplomacy experience consists of me speaking French during a trip to Paris eight years ago so we could order a chocolate croissant and find our way to the toilet.

I could wear my lilac spaghetti-strapped bridesmaid gown from a 2006 wedding to the inauguration, along with my running shoes, since I would spend my entire time chasing the boys. I’m not sure the camera crews could follow quickly enough. My son Isaac would use his speech generating device to say, “Let’s go for a walk.” Noah, our scientist, would interrupt the oath to say, “The sun’s in my eyes, Dad. Did you know the sun is 93 million miles away?” And Henry would probably say, “Dad, let’s talk about John McCain.”

Our new administration would mandate insurance companies to cover autism therapies, such as speech, occupational therapy, applied behavior analysis and biomedical treatments. We would demand a safer vaccination schedule, “greener” vaccines, more teacher training and research monies to explore environmental causes of this disorder.

Our “First Family” could offer the country the opportunity to see what life is like with two children on the autism spectrum. We might finally be heard. And that’s a change even my boys could accept.

My five-year-old daughter Danni has turned her creative hand toward creating signs. She seem to enjoy mixing some of her new writing skills with illustrations.

I love the signs, I think they are wonderfully creative. I think the best part of them is that she cuts the signs to match the shape of the illustration.

I shot a few photos of her recent creations this morning, as usual she was completely willing to pose for the photos.

	Some people might write think this sign is a little obvious, but keep in mind how different the world is to a child. This sign says “No Fireworks.” She expanded when she told me, “that means in the house Dad.” Good idea, I can’t argue with her.
	This sign is so common we hardly notice it anymore. It’s the classic “No Smoking.” Since neither my wife or I smoke it might not be necessary, but I love the clown-looking smoke.
	I needed a little more help deciphering this one. It simply says “yes” The black thing is a fly and the green thing is her own invention – some type of automated fly swatter. The idea is to encourage folks to swat flies. Again, five-year-old logic at work.
	Although the most simple of the bunch, this sign is my favorite. It has a heart and the word “yes” meaning it is good to love.

After creating each of these signs she asked me where she should hang them. She was primarily checking out the living room and the kitchen, I steered her toward her bulletin board that has clothes pins on it to hang pictures.

The important thing is that she really feels that she is doing a service to her family by making signs to let our guests know how we feel. Maybe I can get her to make one that says “Welcome” on one side and “it’s time for you to go” on the other.

If you are interested in blogging about being a parent or parenting issues, just send me an email – jason.lueder@bismarcktribune.com and I can help you get started.

By the Associated Press

FLORENCE, Ala. (AP) _ Michael and Renae Holland spend almost $1,200 on groceries each month.

Renae wakes up at 6 a.m. to begin getting the kids ready for school, while Michael heads to work by 5 a.m. For the toddlers, Renae prepares breakfast and sometimes starts a cartoon movie. She barely has a chance to sit down and take a breather and, before she knows it, it’s 4 p.m. and dinner has to be prepared by 6 p.m.

Besides the seemingly unreal grocery tab, these tasks may appear to some parents as typical. Except nothing is ever typical in the Hollands’ Tuscumbia home, especially when raising 14 children under one roof.

“I grew up in a big family, and I love babies,” Renae said.

But Renae did not birth all of these children. Michael, 49, and Renae, 48, have three adult children of their own, while the other 14 are adopted or fostered.

According to the state Department of Human Resources, about 6,000 children are in the state’s foster care system. Currently, 668 children are classified by the government as “legally free” for adoption. This means the children became available for adoption after revocation of the birth parents’ rights. This number decreased from 2007’s 713 children who were waiting to be adopted.

Of the 668 available children, 250 do not have adoption arrangements while the remaining 418 will likely be adopted by the end of the year.

Marie Youngpeter, program manager for DHR’s office of permanency, said the number of finalized adoptions has increased as more children are successfully being placed in homes.

She said the reasons for children being turned over to the state vary from case to case.

“Basically, it’s when the family has so many of their own needs that they’re not able to meet the child’s needs,” Youngpeter said.

Many of the children, she said, are given up for adoption because of behavioral issues.

According to Youngpeter, a child can be moved from their home into foster care for reasons that include neglect, abuse and drug use in the home. A child can sometimes remain in foster care up to a year before they are adopted.

Almost 37 percent of all children in the system are older than 14. But teenagers are being adopted more now than ever.

Before, Youngpeter said, potential adopters were wary of the behavioral and social issues associated with pubescence.

“We really are seeing the numbers rise in adopting the older youth,” she said. “What they really want is someone who gives them respect.”

The Hollands have three teenagers.

They said adopting teens was never an issue.

“A lot of people don’t want teenagers because of their reputation,” Renae said.

The Hollands began adopting in 1999, working closely with Agape of North Alabama, an adoption service. Two of the children had been in nine homes within six months before joining the Hollands. While six of the children are fully adopted, the others are fostered with one child under temporary care.

Each month, the Hollands receive a $400 federal board payment to care for the fostered children.

Michael Holland said clothing for all of the children often comes from donors and their church members at Tuscumbia Church of Christ.

He said when they do have to shop, buying in bulk curbs expensive shopping.

“The kids that come to us are good kids,” Michael said. “We just try to get them out of the bad situations they’re in.”

Michael works as an electrician while Renae works in real estate.

But Michael said his children are his main duty.

“It’s the job the Lord laid out for us,” he said.

Lauderdale County Probate Judge Dewey Mitchell predicts the court will litigate about 40 adoption cases by the end of this year. In 2007, there were 41 cases; it was 35 cases in 2006. Mitchell said the numbers have remained consistent through the years.

An adoption case is sent to a probate court after a petition is filed by a potential adopter.

“You have to make sure the home settings of petitioning parties are a good environment,” he said.

Chris Capps, of Capps and Associates in Dothan, provides legal services for child adoption cases.

“A lot of the parents we deal with are in drugs, unfortunately, and they’re not willing to change their lifestyle,” he said.

Capps said that in most cases, once a parent’s rights are revoked, the parent has a slim to none chance of getting the child back. Often, parents will voluntarily relinquish rights to a child rather than have the courts take away their rights.

“They realize their circumstance prevents them from caring for the children,” he said. “The first goal is to return the child to the family; if that fails, we have to start looking for long-range goals.”

As for Michael and Renae Holland, more adoptions, possibly five children, may soon be in the works. Some of the Hollands’ adopted children began under foster care, but after the fostering term had ended, the Hollands couldn’t help but to adopt them.

“After they’ve been with you for a while, they’re family,” he said. “You can’t give your family up.”

By the Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – Your 9-year-old’s eyes hurt during homework? Your teen’s a slow reader plagued with headaches? They may have a common yet often missed vision problem: Eyes that don’t turn together properly to read.

As many as one of every 20 students have some degree of what eye doctors call “convergence insufficiency,” or CI, where eye muscles must work harder to focus up-close. And those standard vision screenings administered by schools and pediatricians won’t catch it ‚Äî they stress distance vision.

When symptoms such as eye strain, headaches, double vision or reading problems trigger the right diagnosis, doctors prescribe any of a hodgepodge of exercises designed to strengthen eye coordination. Now a major government study finally offers evidence for the best approach: Eye training performed in a doctor’s office for 12 weeks.

The right treatment can make a profound difference, says Adele Andrews of Rydal, Pa., whose son Thomas participated in the study when he was 10 — and improved enough to at last start reading for fun.

His mother knew something wasn’t right early on: Reading seemed to require a physical struggle of Thomas that his three older siblings never experienced.

“He always wanted to buy books but he wouldn’t read them. He wanted to but it was too hard for him,” she recalls.

Then homework began and “I don’t even want to tell you how bad it was,” Andrews adds. “He would get frustrated. He wouldn’t do it. … I tried bribery, I tried everything. It got to the point where it was just a battle.”

Why? To bring print or other close-in work into focus, both eyes must turn slightly inward, or converge. As its name implies, convergence insufficiency means the eyes aren’t doing that properly. Words may appear blurry or double, or disappear as readers lose their place. How much extra effort eye muscles must exert to compensate and bring that image into focus determines whether someone has obvious symptoms and how bad they are.

Complaints are rare in very young children because pictures and large type don’t require as much convergence. Parents tend to start noticing a problem once homework and deeper reading begins. Some people complain only in the teen or college years, perhaps when their workload outpaces their ability to compensate. Others find they can read with one eye closed and do fine.

Nor does everyone experience obvious symptoms. How many compensate enough that CI truly doesn’t matter —  and how many quietly try to avoid reading? No one knows.

Dr. Mitchell Scheiman of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University is suspicious when a child’s “behavior is, ‘I don’t want to read, I don’t like reading, I can’t concentrate.” His advice then: “Just rule it out.”

Diagnosis requires seeing an ophthalmologist or optometrist trained to treat children who can measure convergence with some simple tests such as moving a pencil steadily closer to the nose until the person sees double.

But which treatment works best: The most commonly prescribed “pencil push-ups,” practicing that pencil-to-nose test at home? At-home computer eye games? Or more varied eye exercises, including computer-based ones, performed in a doctor’s office with at-home techniques for reinforcement?

A study funded by the National Eye Institute aimed to find out, by randomly assigning 221 9- to 17-year-olds to one of those approaches or to a control group given “dummy” exercises at the doctor’s office.

Three months later, nearly three-quarters of the office-treated patients had greatly improved ‚Äî compared with no more than 43 percent of home-treated patients, Scheiman and colleagues report in this month’s Archives of Ophthalmology. The study will continue tracking patients for a year, to ensure the benefit lasts.

At roughly $75 a visit, office treatment is clearly more expensive. Why would it work better? First, they got more intense treatment. The NEI’s Dr. Brian Brooks says a combination of more varied in-office exercises may hold a child’s attention better ‚Äî along with a doctor acting like a personal trainer, ensuring the youngster does each technique properly and doesn’t slack off.

What’s not clear is the more intricate in-office techniques could be adapted for home use and work just as well, he cautions.

But Andrews witnessed the difference between the two techniques as they’re practiced today. Thomas was originally assigned to pencil push-ups but improved only slightly. After his 12 study weeks were over, researchers switched him to office-based treatment ‚Äî and his mother saw a rapid lessening of the homework battles.

Today at 13, Thomas has “become pretty serious about his schoolwork,” says a relieved Andrews. “He’s going to do OK.”

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) _ It was almost expected.

MOUNT SIDNEY, Va. (AP) _ They start school by 6:30 a.m., and they usually don’t go home until dinnertime.

By the age of 5, most of them already have been attending classes for two years. They even come in on Saturdays, because for these Kenyan children, school is a luxury, a privilege and a safe haven.

Volunteer Toni Sheets, who recently returned from a two-week trip to Kenya, recalls the bright grins on the students’ faces, their ingenuity and their hunger for knowledge.

“The kids take their education very seriously because they know they’re lucky to get an education at all,” Sheets said.

Their education comes from Mercy Care Centre, a free school for children living in the Mathare Valley, an impoverished area of Nairobi, Kenya. Founded in 1995 by a Kenyan woman named Dorna Amimo, the school is one of the few in Kenya that does not charge students or their families to attend.

Mercy Care Centre, sponsored by the Virginia-based Mercy Care Centre Foundation, provides more than just an education. For many students, the small bowl of porridge and plate of beans and rice are the only food they’ll eat all day. The school even began meeting on Saturdays so students wouldn’t go two whole days without food.

“They come from a 10- by 10-feet house, and so in most cases, the house is congested, and it is safer for them to be in school,” said Patrick Lumumba, the school’s headmaster.

With only the most basic septic and sewer systems, the city’s streets are usually lined with garbage, much of it burning because of a lack of landfills. Sheets said it’s common to see makeshift ditches where rivers of waste run downhill through the city.

“I thought I had an idea what poverty was,” Sheets said. “But actually seeing it, smelling it, experiencing it was a whole different thing.”

Complicating the city’s lack of education and extreme poverty further is the intertribal violence that accompanies almost every political election.

Gangs made up of the city’s two main tribes, Kikuyu and Luo, have made life in the city difficult for families since the controversial presidential election in December.

Since the first election in 1992, tensions between the tribes have made the political process a dangerous one, with riots, arson and beatings throughout much of the village.

“They think it’s amazing that we can elect someone here and not have bloodshed,” Sheets said.

But at Lumumba’s school, there is no distinction between the two tribes. Lumumba requires that students maintain respect for one another regardless of which tribe they come from.

Required choir practice and sports teams also force both Kikuyu and Luo students to work together for a common goal, Lumumba said. When they’re on the field, Lumumba said it’s about the talent, not the tribe.

“We want each child in the school to appreciate each other as human beings,” Lumumba said.

Volunteers with the school, which currently ends at 10th grade, are working to add a seventh school day to the week and to also include an 11th and 12th grade. Lumumba also wants to create a vocational school for those students who cannot afford to go to college.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

GRAIN VALLEY, Mo. (AP) _ One day … one moment … one step at a time.

Ever since she got the news, sitting dumbfounded in that little office, every clich? about how to live life when it crumbles beneath your feet, when every dream you have for your children turns to vapor, has coursed through Jennifer Stults’ mind.

“Just the facts, Mom,” she keeps telling her mother. “Mom, I’m just going to deal with the facts and do what I need to do.”

Because the facts are that Jennifer, 23, is a 4-foot-11 ball of manic energy from Grain Valley with the alert, determined eyes of a mother under siege. She has a husband, Mike, 26, an Internet ad salesman, and three sons: Brisan, 4; Parker, 2; and Duncan, 8 months old.

While the planet watched recently as the developed world headed toward economic collapse, Jennifer Stults’ family was shaken by two words few have ever heard spoken together:

Childhood Alzheimer’s.

It was August. The Stultses sat in an office at Children’s Mercy Hospital to finally hear exactly why Brisan had never quite developed right in mind or body.

They had wondered for a long time. Plucky, 3 feet tall, with hazel eyes and an impish spirit, Brisan had been born early and ill, with an enlarged liver and spleen. They knew, as he grew, that he wasn’t talking. When he was 2 1/2 , his verbal abilities were that of a 9-month-old. They tried cutting his hair, and he screamed as if in pain.

His developmental delays were obvious. Autism, the Stultses figured. They would manage.

But now, at 4, Brisan had gone beyond not learning.

He was forgetting: his colors, his numbers, his words. And he fell down a lot. He would run, then collapse, as if his legs were rubber.

A battery of tests finally confirmed the diagnosis as a disease that, because of its slow and devastating effects, has been nicknamed “childhood Alzheimer’s.” Technically, it is Niemann-Pick Type C, or NPC, an astoundingly rare genetic disorder known to exist in about 100 living people in North America and only 500 worldwide.

It is always fatal. Just weeks ago, the Stultses learned one more fact: Parker, age 2, has it also.

The Stultses now know that by age 9, 10, or, if they are lucky, 20, their two sons will die.

Like Alzheimer’s, this disease will do it gradually. There’s no cure.

With NPC disease, structures inside the body’s cells don’t metabolize cholesterol and other fatty lipids. The result is toxic, a progressive accumulation that will choke the neurological cells of the boys’ brains.

It will send them into seizures. It will cause dementia. It will rob them of their muscles and minds and memories, even their ability to swallow.

Jennifer nearly collapsed the day she heard.

“We have prayed more than we have ever prayed,” said Mike.

Jennifer weeps, thinking of what won’t be.

“They’ll never have a slumber party. They’ll never have dates. They’ll never go to prom.”

Every day, she worries about Brisan and Parker falling down the stairs. She sees Brisan’s memory slipping. He twists his tongue like a baby. His eyes wander with a lost look.

“Someday,” she said, “he won’t even know who I am.”

The Stultses also knew that they had to do more than just pray. They knew they couldn’t save their boys’ lives. But as Jennifer’s 69-year-old grandmother, Celia Carnes, said:

“You have two options. You can either fall apart and do them no good, or you can keep going.”

Said Jennifer: “If there is something I can do that will give me one extra day with my kids, I’ll do it.”

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Mike and Jennifer mingled at the center of Heritage Hall in downtown Liberty. The Stultses, their family and their friends wore white T-shirts printed with the black-and-white images of the brothers on the lawn of their suburban home along with the words, “help give them a better life”

It was a fundraiser, a silent auction, that Jennifer had rushed to organize.

The boys ran, tottering, around the large and largely empty room, 50 or so people dotting a hall that holds 2,500.

“Brisan, pull up your pants,” Jennifer called to her son at times.

Jennifer didn’t know what to expect. If enough people came, maybe they’d get tens of thousands of dollars. They could pay for future therapies or devices. Maybe they could offset the cost of miglustat, the one medication that has shown some promise in mildly slowing the disease.

But the drug costs $80,000 a year. For two patients, Brisan and Parker, that would be $160,000.

Most insurers don’t pay for miglustat for Niemann-Pick, because the drug is only FDA-approved to treat a different storage disorder. Because Niemann-Pick is so rare, however, a growing number of insurers are agreeing to pay for the drug, case by case.

That would be huge to the Stultses because they’re broke.

Mike’s job at Indigo Interactive Inc. pays about $40,000 a year. He has insurance now. But for a short time last year, after he got laid off by a bank, he did not. Brisan’s medical bills mounted, crushing them in so much debt that this year they declared bankruptcy.

“I’m thankful I have a job right now,” Mike said.

All afternoon, Jennifer peeked at the numbers on the silent auction sheets.

She and friends had gathered books and jewelry. They gathered baby toys and signed autograph pictures of “American Idol” star David Cook and of Miley Cyrus as “Hannah Montana,” of Kansas City Chiefs running back Larry Johnson, of Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame player George Brett and others.

Friends with home distributorships for Mary Kay cosmetics, for cookies, candles and other products, lined a back wall to sell their goods and donate the profits to the Stultses.

“As soon as this is over, we’re hitting the road,” Jennifer said.

Outside, a white van donated by the family’s church sat parked with its blunt nose facing the curb. The family planned to drive north though the night to Rochester, Minn., and the Mayo Clinic to meet with physician Marc Patterson, one of the nation’s leading experts on Niemann-Pick.

Exactly what they expected Patterson to do for them, not even the Stultses knew.

“Offer hope?” Jennifer said. “Obviously, I pray every night that they’re cured.”

To the Stultses, Patterson may have represented their last best chance.

If more tests could be done, Patterson could do them. If new studies or clinical trials or experimental drugs existed, he would know about them.

At some laboratories, Niemann-Pick is being studied aggressively.

Patterson conducted the studies on miglustat to show how it can help a bit against NPC.

At the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, researchers have been recruiting NPC patients for an ongoing observational study.

They bring in as many individuals as possible to study everything tissue, blood, urine, brain scans to identify “biological markers,” or commonalities among patients, to use as guideposts for future therapies to fight the disease.

At Washington University, physician and researcher Daniel S. Ory is working on new drugs and testing new combinations of known drugs in a species of mice that naturally has NPC.

“Some of these therapies are showing some promise,” Ory said. He predicts some could be tested in humans in the next 18 months.

Without doubt, scientists made a giant breakthrough with Niemann-Pick in 1997, when researchers mapped the specific gene mutation on chromosome 18 that causes the disease.

Genetically, Niemann-Pick Type C is what’s called an autosomal recessive disease. That means a child must inherit two copies of the mutated gene, one from each parent. Individuals with one copy of the gene are “carriers” but are unaffected.

In the astronomically rare instance that two carriers, such as Mike and Jennifer Stults, come together unaware that the disease exists or that they carry its gene the odds are 25 percent with each pregnancy that an affected child like Brisan or Parker will be born.

Duncan, 8 months old, does not have Niemann-Pick. He is a carrier.

“Being in the medical profession,” said Jennifer, who has an associate degree in medical billing and hopes to go to medical school, “I do know that, most likely, they will not be cured. But I still, personally, have to have faith in God that all things are possible.”

At close to 5 p.m. that Sunday, 20 minutes before the fundraiser ended, Jennifer eyed the silent auction sheets once again.

Earlier, her grandfather’s friends on the Liberty Horseshoe Club gave $500 to the family. Other people placed fives, tens and a few checks for more in shoeboxes placed around the hall.

At the silent auction, books went for $35, jewelry for $110. One woman bid $200 for Miley Cyrus pictures and her autograph. But many sheets remained blank.

When all ended, the Stultses locked the door to the empty hall.

“Come on, follow me,” Jennifer called to Brisan and Parker.

They toddled toward her. They fell as they walked.

In the van, Jennifer snapped them into their car seats. She later counted the $2,200 they collected, enough for some equipment. Maybe they could help turn the family’s basement into a safe room for therapy.

“This will help some,” Jennifer thought.

The family drove on into the night.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

Boo!

I’m a little nervous about Halloween.

My daughter Danni isn’t – she’s excited. She has three costumes to choose from – two are a year old, one brand new. She can be Batgirl, a skeleton or a pirate. All have advantages and disadvantages and she weighing them carefully with her five-year-old brain.

My fear isn’t about her, it’s about me. The family was invited to a Halloween party on Nov. 1. The party will be a great time, there will be several kids there for my daughter to play with and I really like the people having the party. 

Here’s the kicker – adults have to dress up to. I’m sure I haven’t dressed up since I was 12, maybe younger. I’m 36 now. I’m not a big fan of wearing costumes and my wife was quite surprised that I was will to dress up for the evening.

My only rules for a costume was that it couldn’t have big, clunky parts that would be difficult to manage.

I’m a little ashamed to say that my wife Laura  and daughter chose my costume for me – Batman. It’s a good choice, Laura is going to be Robin and Danni can wear her Batgirl costume. I did make a trip to the store and try it on.

My big concern is that my daughter is going to expect me to wear my costume when we go trick-or-treating. It would probably make the night even more fun her, but I really don’t want to. What if someone asks for help thinking I’m a real superhero, what kind of let down would that be for my five-year-old?

What happens if I bump into someone wearing a Joker outfit? This isn’t like the 1970s, the Joker in the new Batman movies is tough dude. I think I would have been better off if I hadn’t seen the movie.

Anyway, if you see a family of bat-people on the street, wave. Be gentle with us, we’re not really superheros.

If you are interested in blogging about being a parent or parenting issues, just send me an email – jason.lueder@bismarcktribune.com and I can help you get started.

The joy in a child’s smile can make fix a bad day and sometimes put the world in perspective for adults. If you have photos of your children or grandchildren you would like to share, email them to alice.ospovat@bismarcktribune.com. Please put “kid photos” in the subject line.

By Dave Bundy

In three-months of column writing, I’ve covered puke, poop and a playground melee. It might sound like fatherhood is taking years off my life. The opposite is quite true.

See, I’m not supposed to be here. Not in St. Louis. Not on this earth. Four years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. Stage IV colon cancer. Four years ago next month, as my wife was being admitted to the hospital to give birth to our twin sons, kids No. 3 and 4, I was in the same hospital two floors below the maternity ward in an operating room undergoing surgery before starting chemotherapy.

On the day the twins were one week old, I found out my cancer had spread to my liver in addition to my lymph nodes. On that day my doctor told me I had a 95 percent chance of dying in 5 years and a great likelihood of being dead in 18 to 24 months. I think he tried to make it sound nicer, but that’s the math behind what he was saying. I was 36 years old. I had a 6-year-old son, a 3-year-old daughter and twins I might not even see out diapers. On the upside, I might not have to help potty train them.

OK, I’m kidding. But that’s exactly my point. Those two little Pamper-wrapped, pablum-slurpers kept us sane, forced us to focus on things besides me being sick. My wife and I spent some of the finest moments of our married lives thus far sitting in twin rocking chairs, each holding a twin, talking about hopes, dreams, the life we had and the life we had left. I don’t wish cancer or chemotherapy on anyone, and I’d think twice before I’d wish twins on anyone, but the rest of 2004 was a magical time in our lives. Surrounded by family and friends, we felt love like we never had.

Between operations, chemotherapy and frequent trips from our home to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where I was being treated, we had a remarkably fun summer and fall. I worked as much as possible in my job as editor of our town’s daily newspaper. When I wasn’t working or knocked out by chemo, there was always a kid to hold or hug or read to or tickle.

Cancer got me out of our dreaded family campout, and I figured that in worst case scenario – I died – at least I wouldn’t have to go camping again.

After the initial diagnosis, the news kept getting worse until midway through that summer, when the chemo really kicked in. At some point I stopped talking about “if” I recovered and started talking about “when.” Doctors stopped talking about buying time and starting talking about being cured. The joking got easier, which was good because the chemo and surgery just got tougher. Shortly after Christmas I was declared cancer-free. Talk about a happy holiday. 

Next March I will have made it 5 years, a key milestone for cancer survivors. Statistically, 19 other patients died, and I got to live. I think a lot about why that would be. I’m a decent guy, but certainly nothing too special. Then I think about those kids of mine.

Those little guys who draw with Sharpies on our TV screen, who plug the toilet with an entire Pokemon book, who try clean the floor with a fine mist of non-stick cooking spray – those little guys are why I’m still here. 

I’m here to provide for them. I’m here to teach them. I’m here so there’s a witness to the mayhem. Or maybe I’m just here so my wife doesn’t have to go through this alone. 

Whatever the reason, I’m grateful to be a cancer survivor. I’m grateful for all the cancer patients I met who faced longer odds than I did with more dignity and humor than I could muster. I’m grateful for all the good we saw in people while navigating a bad situation. 

And I’m grateful that someday, in a quiet moment, if we ever have one, I’ll be able to tell our twins about how they saved my life.    

(Dave Bundy is editorial director of the Suburban Journals of Greater St. Louis. Reach him at  dbundy@yourjournal.com.)