NOTICE
WARRING LYMPHOMA
How Jay Warring, Paola junior, overcame non- Hodgkin's lymphoma
by Bart Vandever
At the age of 13, just as eighth grade was scheduled to begin and most kids were worrying about how baggy their pants should be and what backpack to buy, Jay Warring, Paola junior, was worrying about his diagnosis.
The doctors had told him he had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) a potentially deadly disease. This is when his battle began.
The new beginning
NHL is more likely to be life-threatening if the patient is young and can lead to death within a year, says Ronald L. Stephens, medical director of the Oncology Center at Lawrence Memorial Hospital. Luckily, Warring's lymphoma had not advanced severely, and he was diagnosed as a stage-two level out of a possible four.
The doctors at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., informed Warrring's family that he had an 80-percent chance of survival. He immediately began chemotherapy by way of injection every two weeks.
When the therapy began, fever, night sweats and weight loss followed, and Warring was in and out of the hospital on a regular basis. But someone was always by his side — Warring's mother, Catherine, spent every day with him in the hospital and his grandparents moved into the Warring house for support.
"What was important before you found out he had cancer isn't important anymore. Everything then focused on that within our family. We spent all our energy trying to get him well," Catherine Warring says.
While his treatment was
"YOUR MIND IS THE MOST RESILIENT THING IN THE WORLD. IT CAN KEEP YOU SANE THROUGH FINALS, THROUGH FAMILY, TRAGEDY, THROUGH ANYTHING." — JAY WARRING, PAOLA JUNIOR
been accepted into actor Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a retreat in Connecticut for terminally ill children. Soon after, he was on a flight to to enroll in the camp that changed his life.
Camp A full staff of volunteers and
Jay Warring, Paola junior, with two of his friends from The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in Connecticut. Warring reclines on a hammock with a camp counselor.
nurses awaited Warring as he entered the arched gates of the camp. Located off of main roads and nestled in the serene forests of the countryside, the camp was like a miniature village with cabins dotting the landscape. There, Warring spent much of his time with kids far younger than himself.
"I think seeing and meeting all those people was more traumatizing than actually being sick. A lot of them didn't make it too much longer. Some didn't make it out of a two-week session at camp." Warring says.
One incident in particular has remained in Warring's mind. A young camper with AIDS, who was both missing a leg and often in a wheelchair, decided to scale the majority of a 40-foot climbing wall with no hesitation and no help. "He never let his physical state stop him. It's just one of those moments that really sticks with you forever," Warring says.
Warring returned from the camp newly charged and
inspired to fight and conquer his disease. And eventually he did.
The radiation was deemed a success, but in its wake the disease left Warring exhausted and often sick. He slept around 18 hours a night and, as his freshman year of high school went along, bouts of mono took
PHOTOS COURTESY OF JAY WARRING
NHL EPIDEMIC
The rate of NHL diagnoses has skyrocketed in the last 40 years and is now being called an epidemic. As of 2001, the lifetime risk for being diagnosed with the disease was 2.08 percent.
Source: Vincent T. DeVita,
author of Cancer: Principles
and Practices on Oncology
their toll. As Warring missed more school, the pressure to catch up dug at him each day until he made the hard choice to drop out during his sophomore year.
"He had just missed so much of the high school things like prom. At that point he just couldn't relate to his classmates as much," Catherine Warring says.
The battle continues...
After dropping out, Warring concentrated on eating well and working out. In time he completed his GED and enrolled in classes at Johnson County Community College. There, he found that getting back into the school routine was easier said than done.
"For a while I had no idea how to study, nor did I have any idea what I wanted to do or how to go about doing it," he says. Then, turning to the strength he had built up over the years, Warring worked hard, passed his classes and decided to enroll at KU as a nursing major, a decision inspired by the help he had received at camp.
Now,Warring is succeeding in classes at the University. He switched his major as he developed an interest in anthropology and he is conducting research on undocumented workers under Bartholomew C. Dean, associate professor of anthropology.
"Your mind is the most resilient thing in the world," Warring says. "It can keep you sane through finals, through family tragedy, through anything."
01.25.2007 JAYPLAY < 07