Battle with bone cancer inspires
community
Editor’s note: The article ran
July 9 in the Post and Courier and is reprinted with permission.by Jeff Hartsell
Of The Post and Courier Staff
Jeff Quinn walked toward the van parked outside the doctor’s office, trying to think of the words, the right words to say. The words to tell his 13-year-old son that the boy had cancer. “I didn’t want to tell him, but I couldn’t hide it from him,” Quinn says now, recalling that morning last April. “I was all torn up inside.”
The boy’s mother, a manager at Wendy’s, collapsed sobbing to the restaurant’s floor when she heard the news. The boy’s older brother, also in the van that day, said, “It’s a dream. It’s just a dream.”
But Josh Quinn, who thought his sore knee was just a baseball injury, found the right words to say. After the shock and the tears, he looked at his father.
“This ain’t getting me,” Josh said. “This ain’t getting me.”
“I knew something was wrong”
Josh Quinn celebrated his 14th birthday last weekend. No big deal, just a couple of friends sitting on the couch with Josh as he played a new video game. But the quiet afternoon in Woodside Manor, a working-class neighborhood near the Coastal Carolina Fairgrounds in Ladson, was an important milestone in a story that has inspired three baseball teams and a community.
The story started last spring, when a slender, soft-spoken eighth-grader at Alice Birney Middle School made a bold decision. Josh decided to try out for varsity baseball at Stall High School, where he’d be competing with athletes much bigger, stronger and older.
“I’ll take anybody that comes out,” said Stall coach Keith Loman, Josh’s physical education teacher at Birney. “And I figured as young as he was, it’d be good to get him in the program and bring him along. But he actually turned out to be pretty good.”
“I was a little nervous. But I figured I could keep up with them, because I had been playing baseball for a while,” Josh said.
Josh did more than that. He made the varsity squad, beating out an upperclassman for the starting job at second base.
“That player wasn’t happy, and none of the seniors were,” Jeff Quinn said. “They didn’t know what to expect from this kid.”
A crucial moment came in the very first game of the season, when Josh came up to bat with the bases loaded against Academic Magnet.
“I was like, ‘This is going to determine how the whole team looks at him,’” Quinn said.
Josh stroked a two-run single to ignite a 15-4 victory. Stall, which had gone 1-16 the year before, won three of its first four games and a new confidence swept through the team. Josh fit in quickly, as his teammates began calling him “Osama Quinn Laden.”
But as Stall prepared to play in the Hanahan Invitational Tournament in March, Josh was having trouble with his right knee. It was sore after games, and sometimes he couldn’t complete the foul pole-to-foul pole run the team made after practices.
“We were at first just thinking it was a baseball thing, a sore muscle,” said Josh’s mom, Julie. “So we iced it a couple of days and thought it would be fine.”
But after pitching against Bishop England in the HIT Tournament, Josh could not walk the next day. Or the next.
“That’s when I knew something was wrong,” said Jeff.
At the emergency room at Bon Secours St. Francis Hospital, the doctor took X-rays, then pulled Jeff into another room.
“His knee is fine,” the doctor said. “But there’s a lesion on his bone that shouldn’t be there.”
That news kicked off a whirlwind of doctor’s offices, blood tests, bone scans, X-rays and treatments that hasn’t stopped yet. The orthopedic pediatrician in Mount Pleasant told the Quinns that Josh had a malignant tumor; the clinic in Columbia confirmed that it was osteosarcoma, a rare bone cancer that usually inflicts youths ages 10 to 25, and occurs in about two children out of every one million.
“If Josh had not been playing baseball, to this day we would not know about the cancer,” Jeff said. “It’d be going through his system, and we’d never know.”
Josh has been undergoing chemotherapy since April — “three kinds,” Jeff says, “orange, blue and white.” Josh shaved his head after most of his hair fell out (dad followed suit in a show of solidarity) and has a port for the chemo embedded in his chest. On Monday he will undergo major surgery — a 4-1/2-hour procedure during which the bones around his knee will be removed and replaced with a metal rod. Then will come more months of painful rehabilitation and chemo — at the same time.
“It’s been a roller-coaster ride,” Jeff Quinn said. “And it’s not over yet.”
“Why am I crying?”
It’s a roller-coaster that Julie Quinn thought her family would have to endure by themselves.
“When we first found out about it, we felt like we were all alone,” said Julie, who learned that her father had terminal lung cancer just three weeks before Josh’s cancer was diagnosed.
She soon found out they weren’t alone at all.
Josh’s baseball team at Stall didn’t forget about him. They wrote his No. 5 on their ball caps and dedicated the season to him. A turning point came when Josh came out to practice on crutches, just after his cancer was confirmed in Columbia.
“It was great to see him again, because we didn’t really know what was going on,” Stall senior Logan Burnett said. “Seeing him come back out, to have that kind of dedication, we knew that was what we needed to finish off the season.”
The Warriors rallied to make the state playoffs for the first time in years, “a huge step for our program,” Loman said.
Josh’s recreation league team also dedicated its season to him. Josh threw out the first pitch to start the season, and the team went 15-0 to win the title. The league’s all-star team also played for Josh.
But the community support has reached far beyond the baseball field. Bob Shipley, managing partner at The Plex in North Charleston, watched Josh play on the same rec league teams as his son, Ryan. Shipley organized a golf outing that raised about $4,500 for the Quinns. And at a recent boxing night at The Plex, he raised an additional $1,600 toward his goal of $10,000 for the family.
“It puts things in perspective,” Shipley said. “That could be my son going through what Josh is going through. No family expects that to happen, and when it does, it’s our responsibility to help out. I’ve been amazed at the way people want to help.”
As have the Quinns. Julie had to take a leave of absence from her job at Wendy’s to care for Josh. Jeff’s boss at Sherwin-Williams has been giving him extra hours to help out with the bills. So when Jeff gave his wife the $1,600, Julie wept and asked, “Why am I crying?”
Jeff answered, “Because there are good people in the world.”
And a lot of those good people can be found at the baseball field.
“Who’d have thought that after moving down here from Massachusetts eight years ago that it would turn out the way it has?” Jeff Quinn said. “We’ve met great people, great kids, all through baseball.”
Josh’s story has changed his family, too. His older brother, 17-year-old Jeffrey, had a teenager’s penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when Josh got sick, Jeffrey spent hours on the computer, looking up osteosarcoma and how to treat it. He told his mom he wanted to take over a household bill and started working the second shift at Wendy’s.
“He grew up overnight,” Jeff said. “He’s fixing his life, working a job. This has really changed him, and I thought he would never change.”
On the right wrist of each of the Quinns, including 10-year-old Jessica, is a yellow Live Strong bracelet.
“It's not going to stop him”
When the Make-A-Wish Foundation people come calling, Josh has his wish all set—a cruise to Disney World with the Boston Red Sox. His favorite player is Sox star Johnny Damon, and his uniform No. 5 is a tribute to former Boston shortstop Nomar Garciaparra.
But the day Josh longs for is the day next spring when he can rejoin his Stall teammates on the baseball field.
“I plan to have the chemo done and the rehab done and be playing ball for Stall next February,” Josh said.
Coach Keith Loman doesn’t doubt it.
“I think he will,” Loman said. “When I talked to his dad, I told him that I didn’t mean this in a bad way, but it couldn’t happen to a better kid than Josh. He’s not going to fold up and quit. He’s not going to let it beat him. He’s got that drive, and that shows on the ball field. He’s very competitive and wants to succeed, and he’s going to beat it.”
Jeff and Julie will settle for a healthy Josh with a head full of hair.
“I see him now, how happy he is, still with the same personality, the same friends,” Jeff said. “It makes me believe it’s not going to stop him. It’s not going to stop him.”
The Hospital Patient Accounting Department
in Harborview Office Tower is holding a fundraiser to help raise money
to help Josh O’Quinn’s family with their medical bills. The goal of the
fundraiser is to collect at least $2,500. As an incentive for the
fundraiser, Wayne Skeeter, left, and Morey Lent will have their heads
shaved by coworkers in Patient Accounting if the $2,500 goal is
reached. The fundraiser will continue until the end of August. If you would like to contribute, or if your department would like to have a collection, contact: Wayne Skeeter, skeetejw@musc.edu; Morey Lent, lentmj@musc.edu; and Stephanie Miller, millers@musc.edu.
If your department has a collection, we can arrange to have someone come to your department to pick up your collection. Lent can also be reached at 270-0942.
Friday, Aug. 5, 2005
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