The good fight

Siera Hisey sits in the middle of a child-sized hospital bed, a thin white blanket tucked around her legs.

She glows, rosy cheeked, from the attention of her doting family.

Tanner, 11, and Tyler, 16, hug their little sister and tell her everything will be OK.

They've been in this all-too-familiar setting before -- the hospital admitting unit with its privacy curtains, waxed floors, ticking instruments and sterile glare of fluorescent lighting.

Siera's having her adenoids -- tissue at the back of her nose -- removed. This is her first major medical procedure, having watched Tyler and Tanner both undergo treatment for leukemia.

On one hand she's a little afraid. But on the other, as part of a Green Springs family that's lived with illness for the past four years, she feels like she's finally part of the group.

Her parents, Dave and Donna, pray she's not.

Busy families, big bills

The Hisey family anticipates a busy, but not atypical day ahead. After Siera's rolled out of surgery,

Donna takes Tanner for his regular chemotherapy treatment at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center a few miles away.

She peels around Toledo in an old, gold minivan with faulty power windows and broken air conditioning.

Donna says she’d like to replace the van, but worries about spending the money while shouldering the burden of medical expenses.

She also worries what people in the community might think. How can the family replace their van while accepting money for medical bills raised by charity dinners, auctions and bake sales?

Their insurance company pays for the majority of the treatment after annual deductibles that amount to thousands of dollars.

Tyler is a $1 million kid. Tanner will be, too, by the end of his costly battle.

Tyler’s petite 4-foot-10-inch frame serves as a lasting reminder of intense chemical treatments that stunted her growth. She accompanies her mom to Tanner’s chemotherapy session because she likes to say hello to the many nurses and medical staff she considers friends.

Doctors diagnosed Tyler with leukemia in February 2006. The news horrified her parents, especially when doctors told them she had little more than a 50 percent chance of survival.

Tyler spent the next seven months in and out of Mercy Children’s Hospital in Toledo. While in treatment, she contracted an infection her body, embattled by the cancer and chemotherapy drugs, couldn’t fight off.

“I almost died,” she says, her gray-green eyes wide.

She came home for no more than a few days at a time. While at the hospital, she stayed in isolation because her body was highly susceptible to bacteria and viruses she’d encounter beyond her hospital room door.

“I couldn’t go out into the hall like the other kids,” Tyler said, remembering those long lonely months.

When a tornado warning sounded at the hospital, Tyler could not be taken from her sterile environment. Nurses covered the equipment in her room as best they could and the 13-year-old sat in her bed, terrified and alone, until the storm blew over.

Twice bitten

Donna and Dave said that first time was a nightmare.

More than a dozen other families in the Clyde-Green Springs area also found themselves in a surreal fight to save their children.

The majority of the cancer cluster children got sick in 2005 and 2006. Their illnesses included brain and neurological cancers, lymphomas, leukemia and melanoma.

Shortly after Tyler’s diagnosis, the Ohio Department of Health confirmed she was part of the unusual spike in childhood cancer cases in the area. Nobody knows why the deadly disease afflicted children and the cause remains a mystery.

Tyler finished her treatment by September 2006 and the family felt relieved to be done with the ordeal.

The peace was short-lived.

Around the time of his 10th birthday in July 2008, Tanner started feeling lethargic. He tired quickly at baseball practice and suffered a sinus infection he couldn’t kick.

Dave took Tanner and some of his friends to a Toledo Mud Hens game to celebrate Tanner’s birthday, but the boy felt so ill he couldn’t enjoy the ballgame.

Shortly thereafter, Tanner felt a lump on his neck.

“That’s when I knew it was something serious,” Dave said.

The worried parents immediately scheduled a doctor’s appointment.

Doctors at the Toledo hospital removed Tanner’s adenoids and found them inflamed. Test results verified the family’s worst fears.

Tanner had leukemia, though a different kind than his sister. Tanner’s villain came by the name of acute lymphocytic leukemia, a cancer that causes bone marrow to over-produce white blood cells.

Unlike Tyler’s short, intensive treatment at the hospital, Tanner will undergo three and a half years of treatments to keep the cancer at bay.

He will finish his drug regimen in December 2011.

Living in fear

Having watched two of their children fall critically ill, Donna and Dave’s fear spiked when their healthy 8-year-old complained of an upset stomach.

“She feels sick almost every morning,” Donna said. “She’ll just sit in the bathroom.”

They took her to a doctor who suggested her adenoids might be dripping fluid down her throat, causing an upset stomach. Perhaps removing them would help, doctors said.

On the day of the operation, the family watched nurses take Siera to the operating room and then retreated to the lobby to wait.

Families of cancer patients become experts at waiting. They endure hours in hospitals, waiting for chemotherapy drugs to be delivered to the room. Then they wait as the chemicals drip slowly down the tubes into a port imbedded in their child’s chest.

Despite the practice, Dave fidgeted. Only a year ago that same procedure revealed cancer in his son.

Dave and Donna talked distractedly about rescheduling missed dentist appointments. Their teeth, like so many other things, take a back seat to their children’s needs.

Then Dave, unable to sit any longer, visited the hospital gift shop.

When Siera returned from surgery she’d lost the gloss of maturity she usually totes around like a designer purse.

She sobbed so hard she could barely catch her breath.

Her family crowded around trying to comfort her. Dave handed her a new teddy bear from the shop. Tanner held her hand.

Boys will be boys

Tanner is the kind of big brother who valiantly slays spiders in Siera’s room. He’s popular with his friends for his sense of humor.

He’s easy going, quick with a joke or a smile.

His thin frame — all of 57 pounds when he’s wearing clunky sneakers — is tan from playing outside.

The 11-year-old loves baseball, hunting, action movies and roughhousing with friends.

But little reminders of the boy’s underlying disease surface.

While waiting to go to his chemotherapy treatment, he picks at a temporary tattoo he stuck over a bruise on his leg.

Tanner doesn’t want his doctor to see the black and blue skin, lest she reprimand or order him to stay inside.

He hopes the tattoo, a grinning skull wearing a sombrero, hides signs he’s been playing too hard.

Although Tanner’s illness often wears him out, he handles the treatments in stride.

He jaunts into this hospital room with familiarity and crawls up into the bed to receive treatment. He and Tyler review a menu, order lunch and flip through channels on the overheard television like they’re in their own living room.

Considering the hours they’ve spent there, the hospital is an extension of their home.

A nurse hooks IV bags to a metal pole. A large clear bag contains saline. A smaller bag is filled with yellow chemotherapy fluid. The drugs trickle down the tubes into Tanner’s chest port as he chats excitedly about the new Transformers movie.

Donna uses her cell phone to call Dave, who is driving Siera home after her surgery.

Hanging up, she tells Tyler and Tanner their little sister is doing OK.

Doctors sent Siera’s adenoids for testing and they revealed no signs of illness. They suggested the

Hiseys take her to a gastroenterologist, who might be able to find a reason for her tummy aches.

Meanwhile, health and environmental officials still search for clues that might reveal reasons behind the cancer cluster. It’s all too possible they may never know.

“It makes you paranoid,” Dave said.

More than once he’s told Ohio Department of Health and local health officials an anecdote about tucking Siera into bed last winter.

“She asked me, ‘Dad, am I going to get cancer?’” he recalled. “I didn’t know what to tell her.”