On March 25, John had his routine chest and abdomen scans. Dr. Graves passed along the bad news: John’s cancer had grown in both his liver and lungs. He was very direct with John, Scott, and Gina when he told them that the growth “was not a good thing. The cancer is not going to go away.”
John asked him a lot of questions. “Why can’t we just cut some of my bad liver out and give it a chance to grow?”
Dr. Graves said that the reason John kept throwing up was that there was no space in his belly due to the cancer spreading. In the four weeks between scans, the cancer hadn’t doubled in size, but it had grown a lot, spreading to John’s pelvis.
Gina recalled the appointment: “[Dr. Graves] told John the cancer was winning. John asked him, ‘How long do I have?’ Dr. Graves told him that time was short. . . . I wanted to hug John, but I knew I still had to show John that I believed that there was still a lot of time left. I had to leave the room to schedule another appointment. John started to cry after I left.”
“This was the second time I saw the emotion really come out of John,” Scott said. The first time was the day he found out he had cancer. “Dr. Graves was sitting in front of him and was holding on to each side of John’s face so gently. Tears were running down John’s cheeks, and he turned to me and said, ‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m letting down all those people who have been praying for me.’ That was John—more worried about everyone else than himself.”
At this time, twenty-two months after his diagnosis, John was slowing down little by little each day. Gina described how John needed to rest more and more. “As a family, we tried to keep things going and keep our family life as normal as possible, not only for John, but for Lexie too,” she said. “We went to work each day. Most of the time we ate together as a family. There was always a lot of tension. We tried to include Lexie in a lot of things, but we also tried to protect her so she didn’t see the hurt and sadness in us. She was now only fourteen.”
PART 7
FAMILY TRIPS
The Challises took a vacation every year. Scott recalled, “I can’t remember exactly which interview it was, but John talked about how proud he was for all the family vacations we had together—from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Myrtle Beach to going through Hurricane Emily in Cancun.”
In 2006, John was getting a blood transfusion at Children’s Hospital. His doctors told Scott and Gina that John’s blood counts were very low, and that if he was going to take a Make-A-Wish trip, he had better do it now. This news sent Scott and Gina into scramble mode. They were very scared about the blood counts, but they put that fear aside and quickly pulled together a trip that they had not planned to take. Fortunately the hospital was able to get in touch with the Make-A-Wish people, and together they planned an Alaskan cruise in a matter of two hours.
That night, John, Lexie, and Scott had to be at the Freedom High School football game; John was being interviewed at half time. Meanwhile, Gina prepared for the trip. She recalled the pride she felt when she heard John being interviewed on WBVP-WMBA radio: “In the midst of all of the craziness preparing for the trip, I’m driving around the Walmart parking lot, listening to John do his radio interview, and I remember saying, ‘That’s my son’ as tears were coming down my face.”
The next day, the family flew into Phoenix. As they landed, a huge downpour started. They were to go from Phoenix to Seattle, where they would board the ship. At that time there were twenty planes set for takeoff; they were on plane number nineteen. Because the Challises were worried they might miss the boat, the airline allowed Gina to call Make-A-Wish from the plane to help her touch base with the ship’s personnel. Norwegian Cruise Lines met John and the family at the Seattle airport and rushed them to the dock, where they boarded the ship thirty-five minutes late. The ship had remained docked just for them.
John’s illness did not slow him down, according to Gina. “We had to be the ones to keep up with him! As soon as it was over, he was down and out until the next one.” Eating dinner was less pleasant; he got sick just from the smell of things. There was a lot of running back to the room. Gina recalled, “He didn’t come out for two days on the trip until the next excursion, and then he was up and at ’em until the excursion was over. It was like those were the things that were keeping him going.”
At the end of the cruise, Norwegian Cruise Lines paid for every excursion the family had gone on and presented them with over one hundred eight-by-ten-inch photos of John and the rest of the family at no cost. Unknown to the family, the cruise line had had the ship’s photographer follow them around on their stay.
They did not take their next trip until the following summer. John, ever the foodie, got his garden in order and then prepared for a family trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, right after the Fourth of July. Scott recalled how he went into the trip with the mindset of treating it (like each trip they went on with John) as if it was going to be John’s last. Still, it turned out to be a great trip for the family. “John handled the trip good. . . . He looked and felt good while we were there,” Scott remembered.
A year later, one week after ESPN aired John’s story, the family left for a western Caribbean cruise with stops in Haiti, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and the Cozumel Islands, courtesy of the Walk For A Champion event that Steve Wetzel had organized.
After the Walk, the high school got a call from a gentleman in Pittsburgh. He wanted the Challises’ phone number. What Scott explained to me was that this gentleman had followed John’s story. Scott picked it up from there: “He told us that he knew about the trip John was having for us, and he thought our son would be more comfortable flying down to Port Canaveral, Florida, on his Learjet. My wife and I didn’t know what to think. We didn’t really know anything about him. So I spoke to him, and he gave me all the details. He just asked to be anonymous. What a guy he was.”
He had his jet fly them to the airport and arranged transportation to take them to the hotel where they stayed that night. He had a car pick them up when they got back from the cruise and had his pilot fly them back to Pittsburgh.
While they were flying to Port Canaveral, the copilot got out of his seat and came back to where they were sitting, and said to John, “Why don’t you go sit in the cockpit with the pilot?”
Scott recalled John’s eyes lighting up: “I remember we were over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and I could see the pilot from where I was sitting. We were changing direction a little, bearing right, and I could see the pilot pointing at something. We were still in a turn, and then he pointed with his other hand. I asked the copilot, was John flying the plane? And he put his finger up to his mouth and said, ‘Shh.’
“John came back about fifteen minutes later with the biggest smile on his face. When we landed, a car was waiting to take us to the hotel we were staying at that night. I thought that would be a lot easier on John. I think that was a good move, because John slept most of the time we were at the hotel. John watched the money close; he wanted everything to be just right.
“First stop was Labadee, Haiti. . . . John and I went down the largest zip line over water in the world. I was scared to death, but it never fazed him. He was enjoying every moment he could. He would go back to the cabin and sleep most of the time, but occasionally he would come out to walk the deck or eat, then back to the cabin.
“Then we went on to Falmouth, Jamaica. John wanted to take us on a real relaxing raft trip when there was a guide drifting the raft through the jungle. It was awesome, as John would say.
“He would have to shop at every island to get a souvenir. He loved to collect magnets. From there we went on to Georgetown, Grand Cayman. He liked going through the shops and going to different restaurants. It always seemed to relax him.
“Our last stop was Cozumel, Mexico, and he wanted to go snorkeling. So John, Lexie, and I went, and I was scared to death about John being in the sea snorkeling, due to his lung cancer. So before we went in, John and I had our own signals: if he struggled we were going back on
the boat. We all jumped in, and after about thirty minutes, Lexie said, ‘Dad, I’m going back to be with Mom.’ I figured that John would be ready by now too. He was just floating around, and at one point I remember going up to him because he wasn’t moving. He was in a dead man’s float, so I grabbed his arm. He looked up and said to me, ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘Just checking on you.’
“It had been about forty-five minutes now, and John raised his hand; that was our signal that he wanted to go back. He went up the ladder and I got behind him, and there was a lady with a French accent. The lady was huffing and puffing, going on and on, going, ‘I didn’t think I was going to make it.’ John just looked at her with that smile he had, and very politely said, ‘You should try to do it with stage IV liver and lung cancer.’ The lady just turned around and looked the other way. We all just looked at each other and grinned.
“At one point on the trip, I asked John to go to the casino with me. I had a hundred dollars with me. So he and I went down to the casino, and I like playing roulette. John sat down next to me and the pit boss asked him for ID. He was eighteen now; he had the right colored bracelet on to show his age. This is how they identify people on a cruise ship. They didn’t believe he was eighteen. John was five foot five and about 90 pounds at that time. I had to go get his passport, and they ended up apologizing and told him he could play.
“I gave him twenty dollars and I explained how to play. It was a minimum of three dollars a play. He hit on a four-corner number eleven for eight dollars. The next roll he hit an eleven straight up, which paid thirty-five dollars. He hit a two-sided number eleven, which paid seventeen dollars. I’m not hitting anything after the sixth play, and he had two dollars left. He asked me, ‘Can I borrow a dollar to play the last time?’ I said to him, ‘What do you mean? You have all those chips over there.’ He said, ‘I know—those are my winnings.’ I gave him a dollar chip and he played and won another eight dollars. He started to get up, and I asked him, ‘Where are you going?’ and he said, ‘I’m out of money.’ I said, ‘John, you have about seventy dollars there, so use that.’ He goes, ‘Why would I use that?’ I asked him to come on and stay and play with me. He then asked me, ‘Are you going to give me money to play?’ The pit boss told him how smart he was!
“He respected money and made comments to me about watching women at the slot machines just dumping money into the machines. Another long story short, I gave him twenty more. Those are the memories I cherish, and the ones I miss.”
PART 8
THE GREAT OUTDOORS: JOHN’S LOVE OF HUNTING AND FISHING
Though John’s athletic endeavors may have been slightly hampered by his lack of size, size played no role in his love for hunting and fishing. When it came to these two sports, he was a true all-star.
Hunting season started five months after John was diagnosed, and both John and Scott were determined to keep things as normal as possible, with a few minor adjustments and hurdles along the way. John’s friend Travis Bell and his dad invited John and Scott up to Marionville, Pennsylvania, to go deer hunting. They had hunted there three years prior to John being sick, and they were determined to make sure that this year wasn’t going to be any different. Scott got John a disabled motor vehicle permit from the Pennsylvania Game Commission, which allowed them to drive in to areas at the state game lands where most people had to walk.
Scott set John up outside the truck with a lawn chair, TV tray, and sandbags to help him brace his gun. He checked with John to make sure that he was okay and promised to try to drive deer to him. Scott roamed for about an hour, working his way around a few hills before he returned to John. As he came out of the woods, he walked toward the other side of the truck, where John was sound asleep. “I took a few pictures of [him], but he swore he was never sleeping,” Scott recalled with a laugh.
Much like during their first hunting season post-diagnosis, John was eager for fishing season too. His need to have everything in place and in order was ever present. He started to get ready before the season started. He even had a checklist, as Scott recalled: “God help me if I forgot anything! You would think we were going on a two-week trip. Actually it was less than twenty hours, and he made sure he used everything that he took with him at least once.”
On the trip, Scott parked the van near a picnic pavilion and ran an electric cord to the van. He put an electric heater inside so John could stay warm all night. “It was twenty-eight degrees outside, and it was around eighty in the van,” Scott recalled. “John was in his glory that he was still doing it.”
During the summer of 2007, John read in Field & Stream about the Hunt of a Lifetime Foundation, a nonprofit organization that grants hunting and fishing dreams for children under twenty-one with life-threatening illnesses. He mentioned it to Scott, who encouraged him to fill out the application. A few weeks later he heard back; he was going to Baker City, Oregon, for a Rocky Mountain elk hunt. The trip was scheduled for October.
In mid-September, John called Scott at work to tell him he had received a package from Cabela’s. As Scott recalled, “He was so excited! He told me that it had everything he would ever need for hunting.” Afterward he received a rifle from Savage Arms to shoot his elk.
While Scott was happy to be on the trip with John, he recalled that it wasn’t a good time for him and Gina. As he told me, “Taking our son across America to go hunting didn’t really sit well with Gina. It wasn’t the hunt itself; it was me taking him away from her and Lexie. Gina had these visions he would die there, and she wouldn’t be there with him. She would never forgive me if something would have happened so far from home. Still, to me it was a chance for a man to shoot something that big. It was a hunt of a lifetime. . . . I knew it was probably wrong, but I knew John wanted it. It was a gamble I had to take.”
The trip started in Atlanta, Georgia, with a four-hour layover before their flight into Portland, Oregon. Scott was worried about John’s back pain. He found a Delta gate that was under construction and made a place for John to sleep behind the desk. “I remember wrapping the straps of our carry-on around my legs so no one could take it. We both woke up about two and a half hours later—just enough time to eat and get on the plane.” John did not complain about any pain, and they didn’t get caught sleeping behind the desk.
They got into Portland around eight-thirty at night. Scott picked up the rental car, ordering the cheapest car available. When he asked the clerk if the seats folded, he explained John’s cancer and discomfort. The clerk looked at him, smiled, and said, “We have to take care of that back.” She gave them a loaded Chrysler 300 with heated leather seats. John had never sat in anything like that before.
They checked into a La Quinta hotel and were on the road by eight o’clock the next morning. Both Scott and John were awed by the breathtaking scenery along the Columbia River Gorge. Four hours later, they pulled into Baker City and met the guides and a camera crew from the Hunt of a Lifetime Foundation. John had lunch back at the hotel, and then the guides took John to a shooting range to make sure he could shoot and that his gun was in sight.
Everything checked out, and they were off and running. Within ninety minutes they spotted about thirty elk in a herd, all cows except three bulls—one was a five by five—and John was excited. However, the herd took off as it started to get dark, so they headed back to the hotel.
The next morning they met for breakfast and headed out. It was cold, and Scott worried about how John would handle the weather. As he recalled, his fears were allayed very quickly. “He hung with the big boys. Not one time did he complain about anything.”
John climbed a hill with his guides when they first got there; Scott was down over the hill with Clay McEnroe, another one of John’s guides, and as he remembered it, “All of a sudden, bam! It came over the radio: John dropped one at 274 yards away. When Clay and I got to him and his guides, John was just glowing.
“After field dressing the elk, we were on our way back to the butcher who was going to
process the elk. We were in Clay’s truck, and one of the guides called on his cell phone and asked John if he wanted to shoot a coyote. After John gave the okay, the truck pulled over, and he got his gun out of the case and saw this coyote in the middle of a field. John lined up and shot it with one shot through the neck. Looking back, I wish I was half the shot he was.”
They continued back to the meat processor, where John ordered what he wanted to send home. It was still early in the morning, so Clay made a call to the Tucker Creek Hunting Preserve to give John a crack at pheasant and quail hunting. He ended up shooting a nice male ringnecked pheasant. The following morning, Clay set up an interview with the Baker City Herald. They did an article on John, his journey with cancer, and his hunting trip.
Scott and John said their good-byes and headed back to Portland. They saw a double twister in the middle of a field way in the distance, and stopped at every sightseeing spot in Oregon, including Multnomah Falls on the Columbia River Gorge. On the Tuesday before they flew home, they were watching the third Die Hard movie (one of John’s favorites), when out of nowhere John said to Scott, “Dad, if you take me across the country on a train, I’ll pay for it.”
So Scott called Amtrak and found out it would cost $750 for both of them to ride across the country in a sleeper. They left Portland on Wednesday evening, scheduled to arrive back in Pittsburgh on Saturday at six-thirty in the morning. Scott wasn’t making any points with Gina on this adventure either, but it was something John wanted, and Scott wanted to give it to him.
John spent all his time in either his sleeper car or on the observation deck; he didn’t want to miss anything. One of the stewards knew John was sick and asked Scott if John was strong enough to climb up into the engine. John said he was good. She told them she had to get permission from Amtrak and the National Transportation Safety Board, and by the next morning, they had tracked them down. They went 130 miles through Glacier National Park. By the time John was done in the engine, he knew everything about it—speed limits and how to read signs, everything.
I Was Picked Page 7