Cancer Unable To Sap Chana’s Charitable Spirit
A sobering definition of trouble might begin with this: cancer at age 10.
Chana Martinez knows such trouble.
She knows the fear of having her white blood cells explode out of control until her lungs can no longer replenish oxygen, stopping her breath, leaving her gasping and in pain while other fifth-graders at St. Mary’s School were learning to read, write and grow up.
She has felt the chilling loneliness of lying in a hospital ward and listening as one child after another quietly is sent home with no hope.
Her troubles could have killed her before the petals of life had even begun to unfold. Her troubles could have destroyed her family. Her troubles could have left Chana Martinez weak and fearful about who she is.
They didn’t.
Near the end of fifth grade three springs ago, Chana Martinez seemed to have a cold. She couldn’t get her breath.
Her mother twice went to the doctor for antibiotics. “But she wasn’t improving,” Laura Martinez recalled. “I went in one Monday morning and noticed her neck was bulging out nearly to her chin.”
X-rays revealed two tumors. Blood analysis would show Chana Martinez suffered from an acute form of leukemia.
Surgery followed, then intense chemotherapy. The hospital and drugs were painful, frightening and overwhelming to a child.
“And the doctors kept saying that I needed to keep a positive attitude,” Chana recalled a few nights ago from her Spokane Valley home.
But how? How does a child stay upbeat with cancer, daily injections into her legs, the loss of all her beautiful black hair?
“When Chana’s hair fell out, her brother came to visit,” Laura Martinez remembered. “He and some friends decided that because of what Chana was going through they would shave their hair off, too. She liked that.”
Chana’s sister Monica, now a student at Eastern Washington University, learned that Chana was afraid in the hospital at night and of dying alone. Monica went there to stay with Chana in the same bed.
They slept together and prayed together. Twice a nurse almost gave Monica shots. “When Disney World chose Monica from about 800 applications for a job,” Laura Martinez recalled, “Monica said she couldn’t go because her sister needed her more.”
Laura and Gonzalo Martinez celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary during Chana’s illness. They took the party to Chana’s hospital room.
They danced. They laughed. The nurses cried. That’s the way the Martinez family dealt with troubles.
They pulled together. They prayed. They wouldn’t let Chana drop through the cracks of despair.
Chana is 14 now. Her leukemia has been in remission since August.
While her medical troubles have subsided, her struggle with seventh- and eighth- graders at St Mary’s School are just beginning.
“Everyone has changed at my school,” she said a few days ago. Her sixth-grade teacher, Jody Dunn, has a theory on why.
“The kids Chana’s age have all gone into the teenage mode,” Dunn said. “Chana has almost skipped over that and become a young adult because of her struggle to stay alive. At the same time, she is still very young in some ways.”
Older than her years because she has fought against a life-threatening disease, she is also younger than her years because she hasn’t been part of the early adolescent scene.
Chana now struggles with a new kind of trouble - how to be a teenager.
“She is caught in a pheonenal clash of cultures,” said her counselor at Group Health Northwest, Rick Cote. “From her family and her experience with life and death she feels a genuine compassion with the less privileged,” the counselor said. “Her classmates, meanwhile, are into what I might call the vulture culture. They are insecure. They are very judgmental. They put each other down.”
As a statement of who she is, Chana has started a club. She calls it the Giving Club.
The Giving Club’s purpose is to raise money for people with troubles, people who are worse off than the kids in the seventh and eighth grades at St. Mary’s School, kids who have gone through more than Chana.
Not many of her classmates are members. Some have put it down.
“She formed the Giving Club but she can’t get the seventh- and eighth-graders to join it,” said counselor Cote. “The other kids wouldn’t stand apart from the vulture culture and this hurts.”
Chana is not giving up on her club. She asked her counselor to join, and he did. She invites other kids to join, and they will.
This makes her story all the more remarkable.
Individual troubles, family troubles, troubles within our community and our world will always be there. If we triumph over one set, another awaits us.
As Chana Martinez continues to demonstrate, it isn’t troubles that distinguish one person from another. It’s how each of us deals with them. This is what sets us apart, leaving some crushed, others rising above.
Those wishing to know more about Chana’s Giving Club may contact her at 509-244-6705.
, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review.