THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
4A NEWS DARREN (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2008
knew Darren. He had run against him in high school, knew Darren was as intense as anyone. He thought something was wrong, maybe an iron deficiency, something physical. It would never be anything mental with Darren.
"I'd talk to him every day," Hefferon said, "and he'd be like, 'Man, I'm trying.'"
The disappointments piled up. By late October, Redwine told Darren to come back the next year.
But Darren kept running by himself. He still couldn't break out of his funk and started questioning his health. A large bump had swollen on his neck. Hives appeared on his arms at random times. He broke into sweats at night.
Friends on his floor at Templin Hall assured him the bump on his neck was nothing, that it would go down. That was enough for Darren. He knew he didn't feel right, but he didn't do anything about it. He wanted to run.
When he ran, the dream was alive. Somehow he could still be a college runner. If he stopped, $ \textcircled{4} $ was giving up. The dream would end.
Then, one November day Darren was walking uphill to class He panted and struggled to make it to the top. Three months earlier he been running 60 miles a week. Around him, out-of-shape kids didn't breathe heavily at all.
Darren gave in. He threw his running shoes in the closet and called his father, Keith, who was living with Fe near Boston, telling him about all his health problems.
His Dancing
Darren has won several competitions for popping and locking. He enjoys dancing around friends, family and nurses. Popping and locking can be best defined as a dance in which you contract the muscles of your body in rhythm with a song. As Darren says, you want to use your best moves when the beat of the music reaches its highest points. To see Darren dance go to vids.myspace.com and search "Rhythm Kingz Mix."
Before then, Keith had had no idea. He told Darren to see the family doctor in Kansas City.
So Darren went. The doctor felt the bump on Darren's neck and found several smaller ones. He told him they were lymph nodes, and he found more swollen ones around his groin and armpits. Darren felt as if he was in a bad movie. Alien parasites were inside his body, trying to burst out.
The doctor ordered a biopsy for the lymph node on his groin, and Darren limped around Lawrence for a few days waiting for the result.
Back in the same doctor's office on Nov. 22 about to hear the results, he played the dream scenario in his head while he waited. His doctor would rush in with a grin on his face and say he had mono. Hed have to take a couple weeks off and then start running again.
Then his world collapsed.
The doctor walked in slowly and scratched his head. No smile. He told Darren his bone marrow was creating abnormal leukemia cells that were crowding out his normal red and white blood cells. It was serious, something called acute lymphoblastic leukemia
He sat there, shocked. He muttered one word, a question.
"Yeah?"
"We have to get you in right away."
Then silence. Just thoughts of losing his running career. His routine at KU. His life.
Alone, Darren wanted familiarity, comfort. He left the hospital and drove toward his family's old home in Johnson County. He stopped at a Burger King and then pulled up to a neighborhood park. He'd done running workouts there before.
In that car, visions of himself from a few months earlier crept into his mind. He was running, killing himself to improve his times. He was healthy. He was normal.
In the coming weeks and months, the vision of that runner dissipated as his body underwent punishing amounts of chemotherapy in Boston. When he left the hospital after a week of chemo and got back to his parents' house, he looked at his scrawny figure in the mirror. He didn't see a youthful, 6-foot-2, half-black, half-Filipino athlete. He thought he saw a Holocaust victim.
Darren had always lived an independent life, rarely asking for
The cord blood cells from the transplant work their way into Darren Kennedy's body. Darren received the transplant on Oct. 31.
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia
WHAT — A disease that occurs when the body's bone marrow produces abnormal red and white blood cells and platelets. The abnormal cells crowd out the good red and white blood cells, weakening the body's ability to fight infections.
HOW MANY About 4,000 people get diagnosed in the United States each year.
TREATMENT — Almost all patients receive chemotherapy to treat the disease. In the case of a relapse, the next option is usually a bone marrow or cord blood transplant.
from the National Marrow Donor Program
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
favors and letting nurses find out if something hurt rather than telling them. He never wanted to bother anyone. For the first two months of chemotherapy, his body was so weak that his mother had to help him bathe and even then, he shook uncontrollably from the activity.
Darren Kennedy smiles during his stay at the University of Kansas in August. He relapsed on Aug. 7, when he was two months away from being considered cured of his leukemia.
Darren kennedy rests in his isolation room at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He has been in isolation since Oct 31 and will remain there for at least another three weeks. Except for a rare quest, the only people allowed around Darren are his parents and the medical staff.
The news surprised him but only for a second. He didn't think about how the doctors would surely overwhelm him with chemo for the next month. He didn't sense a loss of invincibility. He didn't wander to his old neighborhood for comfort. At that moment, one thought crossed his mind — fight.
Darren was almost a free man. Two months of maintenance chemo separated him from the end. But on Aug. 7, Darren was back at the doctor. The leukemic blasts in his bone marrow had gotten used to his medication. Relapse.
His dependence on others would have torn him apart inside, but for a while, Darren could hardly piece together thoughts. The chemo messed with his mind. He spent the bad days lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling.
"He'd tell me that for his projects he could easily do enough to get 100 percent on them," said his friend and Overland Park senior Jim Schweiker, "but he'd always force himself to work harder to become the best of anybody."
But in that car, all he thought about was the runner. The tears came.
And instead of pushing himself with his runs, Darren did that at the industrial design building. He would go there in the early evenings and sometimes would work on art projects until the next morning.
--to his friends and parents.
He wouldn't be himself.
Darren didn't talk about leukemia unless someone asked. And none of his friends asked. They say they forgot he had it. The laughing, dancing bundle of energy was back.
Then came the harsh reminder in August.
He wanted to dance. That's how he felt after six months of chemo. There was no day they told him he was cured, just a step-by-step process that made him stronger and put him in remission by May 2006, when normalcy started again.
Darren had plans when he moved back to Lawrence. He took up dancing again with the Rhythm Kingz and won several popping and locking competitions. His running dreams were over, but he filled the void by becoming a manager for the track and cross country teams. When Darren saw Colby Wissel win the 2006 Big 12 Championship, he felt the fire, as though he was the one running.
And that attitude hasn't changed. Keith Kennedy got a phone call from Darren a few weeks ago. His son started talking about parallel universes.
This was out of character. Keith had never heard anything like this. Darren talked about an alternate version of himself who was running track, doing art projects at school and living like everyone else.
Then, Keith asked him a simple question. Would he change into that Darren, if he could?
No, Darren said.
He wouldn't. If he did, he wouldn't have met all the doctors, nurses and patients he's befriended on the way. He wouldn't be as close
"I will tell you," his father, Keith, said, "he is the strongest person I know. His resolve, his focus, his sense of humor. He approaches this thing with such courage.
"He is my hero."
of the toughest part for num yeday 20 of 40 in isolation at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Doctors say the stem cells are adjusting to his body according to schedule, but the process has been difficult. Since the transplant, Darren has experienced several normal side effects. His weight has ballooned from 172 to 208 pounds because of a liver complication. Every time he coughs, his organs throb. He's fed through a tube.
Darren finds himself apologizing often, to the medical staff for having to baby him, and to his family for having to see him like this.
They're calling it his new birthday. If everything goes to plan, Darren, his family and his friends will forever recognize Oct. 31, 2008, as a new beginning, the day tiny cells from two umbilical cords gave him life.
But on the better days he walks around. He checks his computer. He's even showed off a few dance
"I will tell you. He is the strongest person I know. His resolve, his focus, his sense of humor. He approaches this thing with such courage."
The procedure was a cord blood stem cell transplant. Stem cells from the cord blood worked their way into his bone marrow through an IV line for about an hour. Ideally, those cells will settle and start forming healthy red and white blood cells and platelets.
KEITH KENNEDY Darren's father
Now Darren is in the midst
moves to the nurses. Darren passes time in isolation, where he's around only his parents and the medical staff, with phone calls from friends and Redwine and a steady stream of cheese. moe
ies on the Sci-Fi Channel. A banner signed by tons of his friends and flowers sent from Lew Perkins decorate his room.
Although he is about halfway through the isolation period, the risks remain. Darren's body is brand new. He has no immunity. No way to fight infections. A common cold would be a major complication. The flu could kill him.
Aside from infection, the new stem cells could attack his body and cause severe trauna. It's called graft-versus-host disease.
Best-case scenario is this: Darren builds immunity, suffers minor complications with the new cells and leaves the hospital shortly after the 40 days. After about 100
Helping the Cause
Darren recommended these organizations for anyone wanting to help leukemia patients like himself.
-The Kansas City Hope Lodge
-The University of Kansas Medical Center
-The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society
days, he'll have enough strength to exercise briefly, and he'll make routine visits to the hospital, probably weekly. He'll take lots of medication. In one year, he'll be able to eat at restaurants again. For the next few years, he'll have to take antibiotics or antiviral meds. Long-term, he'll probably have to take some form of medication routinely to live a healthy life, but always with a chance that complications with the stem cells could arise at any time.
Worst case; Darren dies. About 60 percent of cord blood transplant patients at Dana-Farber live until the next year. That means 40 percent don't. Of course, Darren has heard all about the 10 percent long-term survival rate for a relapse patient his age.
But Darren dismissed that right after he heard it.
"I'm not some statistic," he said.
"I'm me. Why can't I be in the 10 percent?"
That's what he tells his friends and family. Darren knows he could die, and he knows life won't be easy in the coming weeks. But he pushes the complications to the back of his mind. All he thinks about regarding the leukemia is how he'll spend the rest of these 40 days in isolation.
His life is like one of his favorite poems, Langston Hughes "A Dream Deferred." This disease, this setback, as Darren calls it, deferred his old dreams of running and living at KU like a normal student, but he's got plenty of new ones.
He's going to do art projects he wouldn't have time for in school and try to learn Filipino while he's in the hospital. That way, he can talk to his mother, Fe, in her native language so he can truly understand her. Long term, when it's all over, he's not sure yet. But he never says "if" regarding the future. It's when.
"One day I'm going to get that ultimate goal..." Darren says on that September afternoon, not quite finishing the thought.
The U.S. State Department's Ngwang Choepal Fellowship Program made the project possible
He explodes with laughter. The white mask can hide the smile, but not the sound.
Sooa Im, a Seoul, South Korea, graduate student who will go on the trip, said the most challenging part of learning the Tibetan language was spelling because many Tibetan words are spelled differently, even though they have the same pronunciation.
TIBET (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
culture at monthly meetings and will learn to speak the Tibetan language. Rath said Champa Unhpun, lecturer in East Asian languages who teaches a Tibetan language course at the University had been helping the other team members learn to speak it.
Edited by Tara Smith
Rath said Marsha Haufler, director of the Center for East Asian Studies, approached him about applying for a grant from the program. He served as principal investigator and located a Tibetan charity to work with.
with a $215,000 grant.
Hungkar Dorje, abbot of Thubten Chokorling Monastery in Golok China and director of the Mayul Multi-Disciplinary Technical School, will speak at the University about Tibetan education tonight at 7 at the conference hall in the Hall Center for the Humanities. The event is free and open to the public.
Edited by Becka Cremer
team members traveling to China this summer
Eric Rath, associate professor of history
Rath worked as principal investigator for a grant that will fund the project. He said he hoped to develop a service-learning program for students at the University of Kansas in the future. The program would allow KU students to volunteer at the Tibetan school in areas such as English education.
"I think there's great opportunity for all of us to learn about each other," Rath said. Rath worked as principal investigator for a grant that will fund the project. He said he hoped
4
to develop a service-learning program for students at the University of Kansas in the future. The program would allow KU students to volunteer at the Tibetan school in areas such as English education.
Yoonmi Nam, associate professor of art
professor of art Nam specializes in print making techniques of East Asian countries. She said the main focus of the first trip would be to discover what skills the population needed most to be incorporated in the school's curriculum.
Next summer's trip will be Lhunpo's second since he left
Champa Lhunpo, lecturer in East Asian languages
Lhunpo was born in Tibet, but fled to India with his family when he was 4 years old in 1959 when China took over the country.
"As an artist, most of the time, you're just in your studio working on your artwork," Nam said. "And to have this opportunity that you can somehow use your skill and your background to help somebody is really exciting." Nam said.
in 1959.
Lhunpo has a background in Buddhism and is familiar with the symbolism of Tibetan art. He is also familiar with the traditional sand paintings, or Mandala, of monks.
Sooa Im, Seoul, South Korea, graduate student
im began studying Tibetan two years ago as part of her research on the relationship between Chinese and Tibetan painting. Her native language is Korean, but she has studied Chinese, Japanese, Spanish and English. "I always wanted to go to Tibet."