In a spring punctuated by grim COVID-19 news of sickness, death, and mounting job loss, there is the occasional piece of hope to latch onto, even from a faraway small city in New Hampshire where a remarkably resilient young boy resides.
His name is Colt Verbeck, a 7-year-old boy who I've never met and yet is someone who touched my heart when I first heard of his medical plight more than two years ago.
His story was first relayed by my sister Nancy, a retired elementary school teacher who spent the bulk of her career in overseas assignments, working at Department of Defense schools in Korea and Germany. It was in Germany, at a U.S. Army base near Frankfurt some 17 years ago, that she met Colt's future mom, Emily, then a student teacher.
Emily, a native of the Granite State, was a basketball player of note during high school and college, displaying a gift for the game at an early age.
"It was my passion," she says of the sport that traces its roots to the neighboring state of Massachusetts.
Now, as a mother of three elementary age boys, she has a decidedly different focus.
"My boys are my life," she says of Nash, Colt, and Clark, siblings ranging in age from 4 to 9 who have developed a special bond over the past 25 months.
Their kinship has been cemented during Colt's perilous medical journey that has been played out at the renowned Boston Children's Hospital and adjoining Dana Farber Cancer Institute since February 2018 when the words "Lymphoblastic Lymphoma" paid an unwelcome visit to the Verbeck family.
"Colt hadn't been sick, but we noticed a persistent swollen gland on his neck that we eventually had looked at," Emily says.
Following several routine medical exams over the course of three months, a doctor decided to order a biopsy of the gland "just to be safe," according to Emily.
Suddenly, their world was turned upside down.
"Cancer. As a parent, that word stops your world," Emily says. "The breath is knocked out of you. There are absolutely no words that can summarize the terror, fear, and pain.
"Fortunately, we live 1.5 hours from one of the best medical centers in the world. We met with doctors at Dana Farber Cancer Institute and we were soon embarking on our 25-month journey towards a cure."
It would be ridden along a rocky road that began with an intensive 45-day treatment "blast" that was designed to "knock the life out of the cancer," seemingly without regard to unintended casualties.
"It was brutal to see him experience something like that, especially at his age," says Emily. "None of us were fully prepared for what he had to go through. It was devastating."
And yet, somehow he survived, setting the stage for more cancer aftershocks to come.
Each Friday for the following two years, a medically fragile young boy with a compromised immune system would undergo chemotherapy treatments, intravenous sessions in which a mix of cancer-beating cocktails were pumped into his bloodstream, one time with nearly fatal consequences.
"In July of 2018, Colt had a severe allergic reaction to one of the chemo mixtures and ended up in the ICU with pancreatitis and had to be placed in a medically induced coma," says Emily. "It was an incredibly scary time. We didn't know if he was going to make it."
But after an extended hospital stay, make it he did, although with another medical hurdle to overcome.
Diabetes.
"That poor kid just couldn't catch a break," says his mom. "To go through all that and then to develop diabetes because of the chemo was just too much to bear."
In the meantime, cancer-causing agents were still hovering around, declining to take a back seat to a disease called diabetes.
"The diabetes certainly complicated matters with the blood checks and insulin injections, but Colt still had to go to weekly chemo treatments," Emily explains. "The schedule was unrelenting."
Chemo forced Colt and his family to live in three-week cycles, tied to the potency of the treatments.
"The first week after one of those treatments he would feel miserable, then he would have a week of recovery, and then he would have a week where he would feel fairly normal before starting the cycle all over again," she says.
His medical travails were a constant worry for family and friends, as they tried to make sense of how one boy could endure so much.
"He's taken literally thousands of pills, had more than a 100 chemo treatments, and undergone 20-plus surgeries during this ordeal," his mother recounts. "The numbers are mind-boggling."
But through it all, he has become "Colt Strong," the term that is now attached to a boy battling the ravaging effects of Lymphoblastic Lymphoma. It's a moniker he can share with his two brothers.
"We have 'Nash Strong' and 'Clark Strong' too, because they have been a huge part of the support network for Colt," says Emily. "He couldn't have done it without the love and support of his brothers."
Countless others deserve kudos too, says Emily, who has shouldered much of the load with the boys' father, Chad.
"People came out of the woodwork to help our family," she says. "Prayers, meals, childcare, pet sitting, house cleaning, care packages, donations . . . you name it, people did it. It was so humbling to see the power of a community coming together to support us."
As millions around the world recently observed "Good Friday" as part of Easter week, the Verbeck family could rejoice in news that has been a long time coming.
"Colt was officially proclaimed to be in remission," Emily reports. "It was a word we wondered if we would ever hear."
In anticipation of such a day, Colt for months dreamed of holding an "I Kicked Cancer" party, festivities to be attended by scores of friends, family, and a legion of well-wishers. But the spread of the coronavirus put the kibosh on that, prompting neighbors and an ever-growing list of admirers to opt for Plan B.
"Last Saturday, they held a parade in his honor," says Emily.
And it wasn't your garden-variety type of parade either. Instead, it was of the homespun, tightknit neighborhood type, featuring some 80 cars, assorted fire trucks and police vehicles, a bicycle pedaling school principal, the Easter Bunny, perhaps even a partridge in a pear tree.
Colt had a front row seat for the one-of-a-kind event, watching from the front yard of the family home in Exeter, a New Hampshire city of 15,000 that was a patriot stronghold during the American Revolution.
"It was the best," says Emily. "The show of love and support was simply overwhelming. It meant the world to us."
Among the attendees were some of her friends from Marsh & McLennan Agency, an insurance brokerage company where Emily works as director of marketing.
"I cannot say enough good things about MMA and how they have treated our family during this time," says Emily. "They told us to put our family first, and they lived by that. I am so grateful for their leadership and commitment to treating their colleagues with such compassion and dignity."
The same can be said for "all the nurses, doctors, technicians, and volunteers" at the hospital, says Emily.
"They are all family now," she says. "Always will be."
(Photos courtesy of Emily Verbeck)
