Fighting Nathan’s cancer

In picture after picture, Nathan Couch flashes a beaming smile and bright, blue eyes to the camera. Whether caught on film or in person, the 3-year-old has a reputation for almost always displaying his spirited side.

It’s only when he’s sleeping or lying in bed that the tubes running from Nathan’s nose and around the side of his bald head become each picture’s centerpiece, underscoring the serious condition attacking his young body. Nathan was diagnosed in April with neuroblastoma, a rare childhood cancer in which malignant cancer cells form in nerve tissue, after doctors found an eggplant-sized tumor in his stomach.

“He’s always got a smile on his face,” said his mom, Debbie Couch, in a telephone interview from Tucson, Ariz., where she and sons Brayden, 10, Conor, 2, and Nathan have temporarily moved for the middle brother’s treatment.

Nathan’s grandparents, Coeur d’Alene residents Jim and Judy Werre, recently organized a spaghetti feed and silent auction fundraiser at the Lake City Community Church, which, through items donated from more than 70 local businesses, raised almost $20,000 for Couch and her three sons.

The family’s journey over the last seven months is one marked by hardships, uncertainty, perseverance, countless prayers and people coming together for a cause, despite more than a thousand miles separation. As Nathan recovers from the first round of a tandem stem cell transplant at University Medical Center in Arizona, with the second procedure set to take place next month, there remains a long road to a full recovery.

It all started last April while the family was still living in Mesa, Ariz. “He was complaining of belly pains and leg aches,” Couch said. “He was hunched over in pain.”

CT scans at the hospital confirmed the worst: a large tumor had grown in Nathan’s stomach and attached to the kidney. After three months of chemotherapy, which shrunk the growth considerably, doctors were able to remove most of the cancer in a 10-hour surgery in August. However, since the cancer had spread throughout his body, surgeons also had to remove an infected kidney.

Despite that, he was fortunate because the cancer had not spread to his bones, said Nathan’s doctor, Michael Graham, director of pediatric bone marrow transplant at University Medical Center. Neuroblastoma is detected in two primary ways, Graham said: sometimes as a large abdominal mass, such as with Nathan, and, in later stages, all over the body and in the bones.

Except for Nathan’s kidney removal, his treatment is typical of neuroblastoma patients, the vast majority of which are children under the age of 5, Graham explained. “The idea with Nathan’s treatment is to give him very high doses of radiation throughout his whole body to eliminate the cancer cells, and then you give him his blood cells back” in the stem cell transplants. The procedures drastically drop his blood counts and wipe out his normally boundless energy, but the doctor said, “Most of the time he’s pretty happy and he bounces back pretty quickly.”

When asked about Nathan’s long-term prognosis and ability to live a healthy life, Graham added, “He’ll need a little bit of monitoring (for the rest of his life), but that would be the idea.”

The total cost of the surgery, chemotherapy sessions and aggressive stem cell transplants is expected to exceed $1 million, which has so far been covered by insurance, Couch said.

However, fighting the disease has taken a toll on the entire family. Couch had to quit her job to travel with Nathan, and with little money to help fight the disease, the family’s home was foreclosed and their car was repossessed. The family was even separated over the summer, as Couch and Nathan stayed in Arizona while Brayden moved in with an aunt in California and Conor stayed with his grandparents in North Idaho.

With so much to deal with, Couch said she finds strength in prayers, and in her son. “He is extremely brave and acts like ‘If this is what I have to do, then this is what I have to do.’ He actually wants to be a doctor for Halloween because he’s seen so many doctors in the past few months.”

And although there is still a ways to go in ridding Nathan’s body of all residual cancer cells, including several more months of treatment at the hospital, the caring and support from people more than 1,400 miles away has provided an unexpected boost to the family’s spirits.

“The people in Coeur d’Alene have been absolutely astounding, especially in this economy. I went to about 70 businesses in town, and for almost 95 percent of them to help out, it’s astounding,” Werre said.

But they can still use help, both for remaining treatment costs as well as a future cross-country haul. The family plans on moving here next year following Nathan’s last round of high-dosage chemotherapy and monthlong recovery in the hospital.

About the kindness of strangers in North Idaho, Couch said the fundraiser hosted by the Werres “was just a huge blessing. It’s been like a miracle. I can’t believe that so many people have stepped up for a family they don’t know, and a child they don’t know – it’s just amazing. It’s hard to even put into words … It’s been a long, hard road, but we’re getting through it day by day.”