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A Boy's Life: Battle with cancer finally slows for 18-month-old

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ST. IGNATIUS — If you could calculate how much of Braylin Coville’s young life has been spent in a hospital, it would equal close to half of his 18 months. But you’d never guess Braylin was a cancer patient, watching the blue-eyed little troublemaker run around the shop where his dad works as a mechanic. In fact, his favorite activity these days is to “be ornery,” 17-year-old sister Shayna joked.

His family doesn’t mind the toddler’s mischievous personality; in fact, having to chase Braylin around is a welcome change for them. It was only too recently that after a month in the hospital, bouncing between floors for radiation and chemotherapy treatments, the child seemed to have given up.

“He just wouldn’t wake up,” mom Heather said.

Every day after treatment, Braylin would ask for his animal crackers and juice after waking up from the anesthesia. But this time, the listless little boy lay motionless, not responding to his mother’s pleas for a smile. Sick with worry, Heather picked up the phone to let the rest of the family — dad Dan, sister Shayna and 11-year-old brother Brindan — know that Braylin, who’d toughed out a year of radiation and chemo already, seemed worse than ever. They piled in the family Suburban and headed to Spokane, Wash., to see Heather and Braylin.

“It was so scary,” Heather remembered.

She cradled her son in her arms and waited. When Dan, Shayna and Brindan pulled into the parking lot, Heather tried to rouse Braylin to show him the Suburban outside. When the sleepy boy caught a glimpse of the vehicle, he came alive.

“He was running in circles and squealing; he was just fine,” Heather said. “He just needed his family, I think.”

If the last year has shown the family anything through their trials, it’s that they need Braylin, too. The little boy’s constant bravery in the face of countless hospital visits, needles and cancer treatments keeps everyone else going, Heather explained. Braylin was only a month and a half old when doctors confirmed his parents’ fears that Braylin has retinoblastoma, a rapidly growing cancer in the retina, the light-detecting tissue of the eye.

As children, both Heather and her daughter Shayna, now 17, battled the same disease as Braylin. But when Heather and her husband Dan found out she was pregnant again, they hoped their youngest son would be healthy like his 10-year-old brother Brindan.

That wasn’t to be. Like his mother and sister, Braylin was diagnosed with the bilateral version of the disease, meaning he had tumors behind both eyes, at times as many as six or seven on one eye. After spending his whole life in and out of hospitals in Missoula, Portland, Ore., and Spokane, Wash., doctors hope that Braylin is finally beating the cancer. On Feb. 8, the Covilles were told that the tumor in Braylin’s right eye had “melted away” — wonderful news, Heather said, but as she knows all too well, “it’s just a constant battle.”

“Every time you think it’s under control, there’s another one that pops up,” she said.

There’s still one tumor on Braylin’s left eye, a stubborn one that will likely need more treatment, Heather said. His right eye, which was completely swollen shut when he returned home from Spokane in January, has improved quite a bit and is expected to heal fully.

Doctors believe Braylin’s eyes haven’t suffered significant permanent damage, but it’s difficult to tell exactly how well he can see. Sometimes Heather’s not sure if he’s just an unsteady toddler or if he bumps into things because he can’t see well.

“We really don’t know at this point how much it’s affected his vision,” she said.

Heather knows firsthand how devastating retinoblastoma can be. She was diagnosed at age 2, and after six years of chemotherapy, radiation and cryotherapy, a treatment that freezes tumors, doctors had to remove her right eye since a tumor growing behind it was beginning to press on her brain. With Shayna, who was diagnosed with the cancer at only 1 month old, the damage wasn’t as extensive. She underwent treatment until doctors removed her chemo port just before her third birthday, and while she lost central vision in her right eye, her peripheral vision is fine, and her left eye is almost normal.

Everyone hopes Braylin will be as fortunate. For the Covilles, the past year has been one trial after another, from scares with Braylin’s health, financial woes worsened by a plague of car troubles and moving to a new home in a below-zero snowstorm, to most recently, Heather suffering a miscarriage. She’d had an IUD — an intrauterine birth control device — implanted after Braylin was born, so she wasn’t supposed to be pregnant. Finding out that they’d had a baby on the way who was now stillborn sent Dan and Heather reeling.

“It was just like a bad dream,” Heather said of the ordeal.

Weeks later, Heather is on the mend and hoping the family’s troubles are over for a while.

“I still hold out hope; things are gonna get better,” Heather said with a smile. “There’s still a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”

The Covilles are one family that’s learned to count their blessings, and Braylin’s at the top of that list. He’s growing every day, along with his mischief-making abilities, Heather says, and just became the proud owner of his first calf. Going to the livestock auction with his grandparents and exploring the outdoors are some of Braylin’s favorite pastimes, and with spring here, he’ll have more opportunities to do both. And of course, he’ll be wearing the tiny cowboy boots a neighbor brought over last year after learning that Heather was in the market for a pair — a gesture that touched Heather deeply.

“I just cried,” she said.

 

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