Lincoln Times-News article ….by Michelle Bernard
On September 27, 2017 by Michelle LoveI spent an hour of Michelle Bernard’s time on the phone on Monday, Sept. 25. I told her most of our story, crying through most of the hour’s discussion. I felt like she understood the hell that we went through, that BJ went through – at least some of it. She really did a great job on re-telling the story.
Here’s the link: http://www.lincolntimesnews.com/2017/09/27/sons-cancer-battle-inspired-mother-create-foundation/
Here’s the article:
MICHELLE T. BERNARD
Staff Writer
BJ Correll was a warrior and he fought for his life against a form of childhood cancer – Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). He died from the disease after more than three years of treatments. After his death, his mother, Michelle Love, formed the Stand Firm Warrior Foundation as a means to support pediatric cancer research focused on alternative treatments to chemotherapy and radiation.
The Stand Firm Warrior Foundation has partnered with North Lincoln High School to sponsor a home “Gold” football game Oct. 6 at North Lincoln, where the Knights will take on the East Lincoln Mustangs. Gold is the color for childhood cancer awareness. The foundation purchased gold socks for the football players and gold pompoms for the cheerleaders.
“Before it touched my life I didn’t know anything about ALL,” Love said. “Even though it is supposed to be the most curable form of leukemia kids die from it every day. People don’t get passionate about it. I knew kids got cancer but more and more kids are getting cancer. We’ve got kids diagnosed in our own community. One girl right down the street from us has the same type of leukemia that BJ had and is going through the same treatments. That’s why we do what we do with this foundation.”
BJ’s love for sports started young and it was while he was playing football with the Boger City Panthers that Love started to notice that he was straggling behind some of his teammates, even though he was training hard. He had a lot bruises but Love rationalized that it was a tackle football league and so did the other players. In addition, though, he was pale, had extreme headaches and was tired all the time.
“Football brought it out but it also covered up some of the severity of the symptoms,” Love said. “BJ was 11 and had just started sixth grade. Kids are tired and he was growing like a weed.”
At first, Love thought that he had anemia but blood tests revealed the more serious diagnosis of ALL.
“That morning, the doctors told me that they were 99 percent sure that he had leukemia but that there was a 98 percent remission rate after the first month of daily, oral chemo and other medications,” she said. “Boys are treated longer than girls because leukemia likes to hide out in testicles. His original treatment was scheduled for three and a half years, which would have been January 2017.”
Because of his treatment the first year, BJ wasn’t able to finish sixth grade at North Lincoln Middle School even though he desperately wanted to be in school and playing basketball and football. Even though he was in the worst stages of treatment, he continued to condition to get back into sports.
“He was bald, yet he was out there on the field,” Love said. “Let’s be clear, his physical shape wasn’t up to par but he was out there and he was trying. Just being out there made him so happy.”
The Boger City Panthers didn’t have a big team so Love said that BJ had to play – even though he had the port in his chest to receive chemo infusions. She made a pocket that fit really tight against his chest and then put a hard shell protective cup over the port to keep it from getting damaged.
By the time he got into eighth grade, BJ was starting to look more normal, his hair had grown back and he was feeling better. He played both basketball and football that year. When there was just two weeks of school left, he went to his oncologist for a scheduled treatment and it was discovered that his leukemia was back.
“It showed up in his bloodstream which meant that there was a whole lot more in his bone marrow,” Love said. “It was a shock because he had just seven more chemo treatments left and we were able to see the light. We thought it would all be behind us soon.”
BJ immediately started back with more aggressive treatments of chemo but it was unsuccessful in getting him to the point of being eligible for a bone marrow transplant. Love was going to be his donor – they were going to do a haploidentical transplant because she wasn’t a full match.
“After all the chemo over the summer they weren’t able to kill the leukemia enough,” she said. “In the meantime the chemo was killing his immune system. There are things you and I can be exposed to that we just fight off but BJ couldn’t.”
A spore of fungus that entered his lungs caused an infection that BJ almost died from that summer and it was at that point that he could no longer take chemo treatments. He qualified for what was then an experimental trial, CAR T-cell therapy, at Duke Children’s Hospital in Durham. It was a very difficult treatment for BJ and his family to go through.
“He’d already been through hell but this process was a specific kind of hell that you can’t even imagine,” Love said. “He suffered with breathing problems, 106-degree fevers for days, hallucinations, delusions and he couldn’t eat on his own. Because of the delusions he was put on medication that prevented him from speaking and he knew it. He had a white board where he’d write ‘how much longer will this last until I can talk?’”
At first it looked like the treatment was working, which had everyone elated because this was BJ’s last hope, but the improvement was short-lived. BJ was transplanted back to Levine Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, where he received additional treatments, but nothing worked. On Feb. 20, 2016, his oncologist said that there was really nothing else they could do except palliative treatment. BJ was discharged and went into hospice. The family explored alternative treatments but by this time it was too late for them to be effective.
BJ celebrated his birthday at home with “more cakes than you could eat.” He died two days after his 15th birthday.
“I had to walk out of that hospital without my son,” Love said. “In the summer after he died we were struggling with what our mission would be. You’ve got to focus your grief on something. I made this foundation happen for BJ.”
The foundation’s mission is to help fund pediatric research that is focused on finding an alternative to chemotherapy and radiation, to raise awareness to what these children go through and what people can do to help and to provide assistance to families with children battling cancer. Love believes that even though it was too late for alternative treatment to work for BJ, it may not be not too late for other children.
Remission from cancer isn’t necessarily the light at the end of the tunnel. In addition to the side effects that occur during treatment, if the child survives cancer, the prognosis of severe health problems including another occurrence of cancer is common, according to Love.
With the Stand Firm Warrior Foundation, Love hopes to gain more awareness for childhood cancer and also hopes that Lincoln County will proclaim September as Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
“We want a gold football game in all of our schools in our county during the month of September,” she said. “We hope to pave the way to make gold as big as pink here in the county. My son was a warrior and he did stand firm. He didn’t let cancer take away who he was as a person.”
T-Shirts for the gold football game on Oct. 6 at North Lincoln are on sale through the Stand Firm Warrior website at http://standfirmwarrior.org. Donations can also be made via the website.
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