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This kid has his heart in the right place.
Injured QB’s idea gives game tickets to sick kids
By Vince Devlin, Missoulian - 10/04/2006
MISSOULA — If only for a short time, Montana football player Jason Washington offers a family some respite as their young daughter slowly slips away It was one of the best afternoons they’ve spent in a long, long time.
Brady Reimann and Vicki Pocha took their daughter, Abby, and Vicki’s sons, Lyle and Ty Pocha, to the Grizzlies’ home football opener two weeks ago.
Usually Brady — a die-hard University of Montana fan with two season tickets — has to alternate his extra ticket between the boys.
But when South Dakota State came to town, the whole family not only had seats in Washington-Grizzly Stadium, but passes that got them onto the playing field before and after the game.
They got to meet UM players and, Brady says, ‘‘The boys’ heads were so swelled up I didn’t think they’d make it back up the tunnel.’’
Even Abby, just 3 years old, got to take some of it in before Vicki’s sister arrived during the first quarter to take her niece away and watch the little girl the rest of the afternoon.
For Brady and Vicki, it was more than just a football game. It was three hours to give their minds a slight distraction from the gut-wrenching horror that otherwise occupies them 24 hours a day.
Their daughter, you see, is dying.
That Sept. 9 football game was one of the best afternoons they’ve had in a while, but nowhere close to the best.
Those times come when they’re able to coax a smile out of Abby, who suffers from metachromatic leukodystrophy.
When she was finally diagnosed with the rare disease, doctors gave Abby between five months and a year to live, ‘‘give or take a month or two,’’ her father says.
Abby just passed the one-year anniversary of her diagnosis.
Grizzly redshirt quarterback Jason Washington was heading into Wal-Mart a few days before the home-opener, his mind on his own problems.
Montana’s starter for the first four games of 2005, his season was cut short by a dislocated shoulder. Nearly a year later, following offseason surgery, he’s still a month or two away from being able to start throwing a football again.
‘‘Jason Washington,’’ said the voice in Wal-Mart, and Washington turned to see a stranger holding a little girl.
Brady Reimann knows his Grizzlies — Vicki Pocha calls the UM media guide Brady’s ‘‘Bible’’ — and he wasn’t about to pass up the chance to introduce himself to the quarterback.
At first, Washington thought the little girl in Brady’s arms was sleeping, but it turned out she wasn’t. She just wasn’t responsive.
Brady explained, about the metachromatic leukodystrophy, about how it has robbed Abby of the ability to walk, talk or eat, about how it impairs the growth of the myelin sheath (the fatty covering that acts as an insulator around nerve fibers), about how it is caused by a gene both he and Vicki carry, about how Abby stays alive via a feeding tube.
Brady explained that there is no cure, about how a bone marrow transplant could only buy her a little more time.
He explained that Abby will die.
‘‘I have a cousin who is terminally ill,’’ says Washington, who is from Oakland, Calif. ‘‘His disease (Hurler’s syndrome) is caused by two chromosomes from his parents. He’s had a bone marrow transplant, he’s got the feeding tube — there were so many similarities.’’
Kian Jordan Rose, Washington’s cousin, was diagnosed when he was about 10 months old, and given two years to live.
‘‘He’s 5 years old now,’’ Washington says. ‘‘He’s had two steel rods placed in his spine, both his hips have been replaced — he’s been to hell and back four or five times now. He’s practically a resident of Stanford Medical Center.’’
Washington thought about his young cousin, and this cute little girl in her father’s arms.
‘‘And I think I have problems,’’ he says.
The next day he was in the office of the marketing and promotions director for UM athletics, Christie Anderson.
‘‘He was just adamant that we do something for this family,’’ Anderson says.
So they did.
This fall, families with ill children will be in the stands, and on the sidelines, of Grizzly home football games. Montana’s one-time starting quarterback formed the Griz Make-A-Wish Foundation, a miniature version of the national Make-A-Wish Foundation.
The caveat is that the wish has to be attending a UM football game, but sellout crowds in Missoula suggest there are plenty of people — kids included — who’d like nothing better.
Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane, Wash., which has cared for Abby and sees many ill children from western Montana, is helping to line up families.
Jason Washington’s primary concern is that the entire family be able to attend, whether it’s four people or 10, and has donated his player tickets to the cause.
‘‘It’s not a big deal,’’ Washington says, but Brady Reimann begs to differ.
‘‘For us it was huge,’’ he says. ‘‘It took our minds off the disease for a couple hours.’’
Brady and Vicki’s days are devoted to Abby. She is in their arms from the time they get up to the time they go to bed.
Brady hauls heavy equipment for a living, and Vicki is a custodian at Loyola Sacred Heart High School. Brady goes to work early in the morning, while Vicki is home until the early afternoon. Brady’s mother takes care of Abby for the hour or two between the time Vicki leaves for work and Brady gets home.
They treasure every second they have with Abby.
‘‘She’s been a joy,’’ Vicki says.
‘‘A bundle of joy,’’ Brady adds. ‘‘It’s been a lot more work the last few months since she quit eating, but we still get smiles out of her. That’s the highlight of our day.’’
When she dies, it won’t be the metachromatic leukodystrophy that takes her life, doctors have told Brady and Vicki.
‘‘It’ll be pneumonia that does her in,’’ Brady says. ‘‘The doctors told us the question we had to answer was how many times did we want them to fight off the pneumonia? We cried a lot over that one.’’
Once Abby contracts pneumonia, they can knock it down, the doctors said. But it will return, worse each time.
‘‘We figured one time,’’ Brady says. ‘‘Her quality of life is not real good right now.’’
They live in fear of the gurgling sounds from her chest that will signal the onset of the pneumonia.
Abby’s back arches, her arms flail, and she starts to cry.
She has good days and bad ones, and they’re getting more predictable: If today’s good, tomorrow will be bad.
But on the good days, they can still get her to smile. A fluffy white unicorn given to Abby by former Grizzly running back Bob McCauley (1981-84), or a purple Barney doll Abby loved to play with before she got sick, can elicit them.
‘‘She likes new voices and old subjects,’’ Vicki says. ‘‘I took her on a horseback ride once, and the horse we rode was named Breezy. Sometimes if I ask her, ‘Where’s Breezy at?’ she’ll get this little cockeyed smile.’’
Before she got ill, Abby was a fun-loving little girl who adored her older brothers and loved being outdoors.
Now, ‘‘that’s all we get any more, is that little smile,’’ Brady says.
There are three forms of metachromatic leukodystrophy: late infantile, juvenile and adult.
Late infantile, Abby’s type, is the most aggressive and most children with it die by the age of 5.
As they held their daughter recently, Brady and Vicki happened to catch a TV news program that contained a segment about parents who donated their child’s heart after the child died.
They’re talking to doctors about doing the same when Abby’s time comes. They like the idea that part of their daughter would live on. That her organs might give other families a reprieve from the grief they live with every day.
Jason Washington gave them a couple of hours away from that grief on a Saturday afternoon in September. Imagine, they say, being able to give other families years away from it.
All they ask for is as much time between now and then as is possible. That’s all. Just a little more time with their Abby.
