Fight Of Their Lives Riverside Hish School Students Coping Daily With Reality Of Cancer

When Veronica Toner and Jessica Hall pass each other in the halls of Riverside High School, they connect with a quick smile.

The cancerous lumps both girls have in their brains and the painful ordeal of chemotherapy bond these two like sisters.

“I think she understands how I feel,” said Toner, a shy, lanky 15-year-old. “We understand each other.”

Toner, a freshman, and Hall, a senior, are part of a surprisingly large family of Riverside High School students who have battled cancer in the past year.

Sixteen-year-old Jeremy Michaels lost his fight with Hodgkin’s disease Dec. 19 in Deaconess Medical Center’s youth cancer ward, just a few days after Toner was released from the same ward.

Hall, whose father also has cancer, was teammates with Catrena Denning on the Riverside track team. Denning graduated in June after beating a case of ovarian cancer.

Toner and Hall say they don’t want to be treated differently and have done their best to be normal, average students. Toner is almost finished making up school work missed during a month in the hospital in November and December. Hall is lifting weights and running to strengthen the right side of her body so she can go skiing.

But Michaels’ death brought the realities of the disease down on Toner, who has approached her sickness with a quiet pragmatism and cast-iron will.

“I’ve never seen her cry as hard as at the funeral,” said Lylia Toner, Veronica’s mother. “You see him in the hospital, and three weeks later you are at his funeral. It doesn’t get any more real than that.”

Michaels’ death was a punctuation mark in the efforts of the school and the small Riverside community to grapple with the cancer cases.

When Hall, a popular student and star athlete - was diagnosed with a cancerous lump on her brain stem last spring, the community responded with a benefit that raised more than $20,000. Hall received at least 300 cards in the hospital.

Although Michaels was a sophomore who had not attended school since last spring, the day his death was announced, a counselor’s office filled with students who wanted to tell stories about him.

The school’s reader board was quickly changed to, “We will miss you, Jeremy.”

“When Jeremy died, there was a cloud over the school that day,” said Kathy Hansen, a school counselor who is Toner’s aunt.

Toner also received support. Friends made the half-hour trip from Elk to Deaconess, on Spokane’s South Hill, to play Nintendo.

When Toner was released from the hospital, Hall dropped by her house to chat about teen stuff - school, people, TV.

While the community has publicly rallied to help the girls and their families, the girls have had to deal with Michaels’ death alone.

Both knew him and his family. Hall’s family went to the same church as the Michaels family. And the three teens shared the traumatic experience of having their hair fall out.

Hall has a brain scan every three months to check for new growth, and Toner must go in for weekly checkups.

“It has kind of made me realize what I have and made me thankful for it,” said Hall, 18. “Having somebody you know die, you kind of feel a closeness to him because you know what he has gone through.

“Seeing what he went through and he made it as long as he did has helped me.”

Toner doesn’t let Michael’s death slip into the shadows of introspection.

“I don’t want to think about being sick,” said Toner, rubbing the soles of her white tennis shoes together. “I’d rather have it happen to me and take it than have some other kid who couldn’t take it as well.”

But when asked how it effected her, Toner offers memories of seeing Michaels’ last month in the hospital - a shared smile when they passed in the hallway of the Deaconess pediatric oncology ward, his happiness when she brought him a bouquet of balloons, her daily prayers for him.

The cancer can be as hard on the parents as their children.

“You lose the year that happens; you don’t remember what happened in the lives of your other kids,” said Lylia Toner.

One source of comfort is each other, particularly for parents of youths in the pediatric oncology ward at Deaconess. The fifth-floor ward is filled with tangible hope.

“You will always say, ‘Why me? Why us?”’ said Lylia Toner, who took a year off from her job at J.C. Penney to care for Veronica. “Then you go up to the fifth floor.”

But the four cancer cases in the 650-student school in such a short time have raised questions. According to Tim Herrington of the American Cancer Society’s Spokane office, about 200 cases of cancer in youths between 7 and 17 will be diagnosed next year in Washington state.

“I would say that looks unusual, especially since they all came from the same area,” said Herrington. “It’s nothing to be alarmed about, but it does raise some questions.”

Riverside teacher Cory NeVille said some are concerned.

“Are we asking ourselves what’s in the water out here? There are some people who are wondering,” said NeVille, who was also Hall’s track coach. “People are very concerned about the safety of our kids.”

Veronica Toner knows she is a statistic anomaly but also understands the good that has come out of her sickness.

She knows her family will always be there to support her. She knows she has friends who will stick by her. And she says she has found her profession:

“I want to be a nurse - but only if I get to work with kids.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo