Fighting A Double Crisis Family Calls On Collective Skills When Mother, Daughter Fall Ill

In some ways, Capt. Kelly Strong spent her life preparing for the worst.

As a cognitive behavioral therapist at Fairchild Air Force Base, she teaches people how to cope with personal catastrophe. As a captain, she understands the importance of setting goals and persevering. As the wife of a Navy SEAL, she knows the power of physical fitness and mental toughness.

But she never dreamed she’d need to summon all that knowledge when circumstances threatened her health, her daughter’s health and the jobs she and her husband, Matthew, loved.

And she never thought the crisis would begin with the birth of her baby.

“In some ways it helped me become a better therapist,” Strong said of recent ordeals. “I got a sense of how difficult it is to make changes in your life.”

From their arrival three years ago, the 31-year-old psychologist and her husband were thrilled to be in Spokane.

The couple had met at a miliary gym in San Diego in the mid-1990s when the fifth-generation military daughter was applying to complete her residency in psychology with the Air Force. Matt Strong was nearing the end of his enlistment in the elite Navy special forces, the SEALS.

They met on a Friday and by Sunday they’d decided they would spend their lives together. They held off marrying for a year, long enough for him to be deployed to Somalia and Kuwait. Long enough to make plans for him to pursue a college education and her to pursue her career.

Her job took them briefly to Texas before she took a position at Fairchild and he enrolled at Gonzaga University. His plans were to eventually go to medical school. They settled on the South Hill, joining road races such as the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot at Manito Park, making friends and planning a family. Strong became pregnant and had a safe, scheduled Caesarean section. Seeing Sarah born on Kelly’s 29th birthday was the highlight of their lives.

Then at the baby’s two-week checkup, the shape of the tiny girl’s head was so elongated and narrow that doctors immediately ordered more tests. A series of examinations here and in Seattle identified a probable cause.

Their diagnosis was craniosynostosis, the premature fusing of the sutures in the skull. Untreated, the condition would likely cause severe skull deformities and developmental delays as Sarah’s brain grew. Strong and her husband threw themselves at the problem, reading everything available and flying to Children’s Hospital in Seattle and eventually, Johns Hopkins University for expert help.

In the midst of the unfolding drama, Strong went in for her own checkup six weeks after the delivery. The doctor commented that her thyroid felt large.

Strong was 29, a health and wellness specialist who was so careful she ate all the fruits and vegetables and drank the 64 ounces of water recommended daily.

“Kelly was an avid runner, consummate nutritionist and the last person I thought would ever acquire any type of disease, especially cancer,” Matt said later.

But a test proved it was cancer.

During Christmastime in 1997 she underwent more than four hours of surgery in Spokane, where doctors removed a cancerous tumor and discovered the cells had spread to the muscle. She would need radiation. Strong was terrified, not for herself, but for the little child who had indirectly saved her life.

Doctors told Strong that if not for a pregnancy-related hormonal surge, they might not have detected the tumor before it reached her brain.

“I didn’t want to leave Sarah,” she said. “If I hadn’t had her, I’d have never known. She’s really my saving grace.”

Once Strong began taking radiation - a pill by mouth - she couldn’t hold her child for four weeks. She had to sleep in the basement and not bathe or hug the infant to avoid radiating her. She finally left town on training rather than bear any more separation.

“I felt like I wasn’t a mom.”

The normally energetic athlete was lethargic, depressed, angry and asking “why me?” Sarah was a joy, but her mother worried how the military could provide for a child with special needs. Strong couldn’t even sing her little girl to sleep. The surgery to remove the cancer had changed the tone of her voice, making it smoky and husky and preventing her from making the soothing high sounds.

Matt Strong, struggling through his junior year in biology at Gonzaga, started dropping classes. They lived day to day.

Even her job was in jeopardy. Kelly still needed to be fit for duty to continue in the Air Force and had to pass the intense scrutiny of a review board.

Then lessons from her own classes and work at Fairchild kicked in. She drew on the inspiration of Viktor Frankl, a German psychologist imprisoned at Auschwitz whose philosophy was that while humans cannot choose their circumstances, they can choose how they feel about them. Reframing problems and adjusting his attitude became the key to Frankl’s survival.

Kelly Strong began working on reframing her problems.

“I decided not to give up and I found people who did not give up.”

Colleagues and even clients began offering their survival stories. She and Matt sought professional counseling to ease the strain on their marriage. They began setting physical goals and meeting them to regain their sense of control and personal effectiveness. They started training for marathons and ran a triathlon in Medical Lake last summer. In May, Kelly completed the San Diego marathon. She ran a 1999 Medical Lake race and finished second in her age group.

Her health gradually improved with thyroid hormone replacement treatment. She began an exercise regimen. Doctors believe they removed all the cancer.

Meanwhile, doctors discovered that Sarah’s condition was most likely the result of her position in the uterus. Time and physical therapy has corrected it, leaving a happy, talking 2-year-old.

Strong has resumed life with a vengeance. She runs with a group of women shortly after dawn every morning and gets home by 4:30 p.m. to concentrate on her daughter.

In May, Matt Strong graduated cum laude from Gonzaga University. He was one of two students awarded the Jerome Nadal, S.J., Award for the outstanding nontraditional student along with Barbara D. Rogers, whose husband, Don, was also battling cancer.

But Matt Strong gave up his dream to become a doctor.

“I concluded that medical school followed by residency would not only place a financial burden and undue stress on my family, but would jeopardize the love and integrity we have developed over the last four years,” he said.

Instead, he re-enlisted in the SEALS and is currently in officer training school in Florida. In October the Strongs will leave Spokane for Hawaii, where they will be stationed at adjoining naval and Air Force bases. They hope to return to Spokane someday but say they leave forever changed for the better, despite the trials they endured here.

“I would not consider trading these experiences for a moment,” Matt Strong said. “These past years have provided me the opportunity to grow psychologically and tap hidden resources to cope.”

“We leave with good memories,” Kelly Strong said. “We stood as a family and we came through.”