Heart & Sole Cancer walk set for this evening at Mitchell Middle School

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of a two-part series on the honorary co-chairmen of the 2009 Heart & Sole Cancer Walk. The first part was published Thursday.

Today is the culmination of months of planning, and for some, months of fighting.

The annual Heart & Sole Cancer Walk begins at 6:30 p.m. today at the Mitchell Middle School, with the run beginning at 7 p.m.

Luminaries can still be purchased today at the walk for $10. T-Shirts will be available for $12, and hoodies are $18.

For more information, go to the Heart and Sole Web site at: www.mitchellheartandsole.com.

Each year, honorary co-chairmen are chosen to lead the walk. Ronda Vetch, Stacy Morgan, Lance Bruske and Tyler Easton were chosen this year.

Following are the stories for Bruske and Easton. Vetch and Morgan’s stories were printed in Thursday’s edition.

The Fighter

There’s a mix of invincibility and fear formed when hanging on to the back of a bucking bull.

Tyler Easton knows what it’s like. He’s spent a good deal of time as a bull rider and knows the risks involved. But it wasn’t until he broke a leg that he really came to know true danger.

In his case, the injury presented a challenge.

Easton was 19 when he broke his femur last August during a bull riding accident. Shortly after he turned 20, that broken bone would lead to a dangerous discovery — cancer.

“The reason my femur broke was because that cancer worked its way up there (from my knee) and had my bone so weak it just snapped,” he said.

He was diagnosed with compartment syndrome (excessive pressure within a muscle), osteomyleitis (bone infection) and osteosarcoma (bone cancer) and in December of 2008 he had his leg amputated from the hip joint.

“I didn’t want them to take my leg … but it got to the point when I couldn’t even move it,” he said. “When that cancer got into my muscles and went up my thigh, it was swollen up like a rock and black and blue, and down around my ankle it was starting to turn black. … I talked it over with God and my family for a little bit and it was time for it to go.”

Before the surgery, his mother, Brenda, wrote on his Caring Bridge Web site, “As he said this morning, ‘I have to think of this as I am losing my cancer, not that I am losing my leg.’ ”

Within a few days he was already up and trying to walk on crutches. His mother wrote: “The physical therapist called Tyler fearlessly independent and said Tyler already exceeded their expectations in the first day.”

He’s always been motivated, athletic and not too keen on standing still.

“I ride bulls for a living, and was in the best shape of my life, and being in as good shape as I was, I think that helped me out a lot,” he said about his ability to immediately get up and going only a few days after surgery.

He still has phantom pain, but nothing in comparison to what he used to feel. In the beginning, he said it felt just like it did before surgery with strong pain running from thigh to ankle. He said that the “heavy” pain has subsided, but he still feels his lost leg at times and yes, it still hurts.

On Feb. 16, his mother wrote about Tyler’s first day of therapy with his new prosthetic leg and how quickly he caught on to using it. By the next day, she wrote, “He was walking with the aid of one crutch only today. His therapists were very pleased. They say it takes most at least a week or sometimes two to accomplish what Tye has learned in two days. So he will start working with stairs, ramps, etc., soon.”

His first prosthetic was an older model, one that had limited mobility. That didn’t cut it for Easton, and he was the second person at Mayo Clinic to receive a new kind of prosthetic hip joint that works on hydraulics, he said.

“They started me out with an older leg and thought this was going to be too fancy for me since I’d never walked with a prosthetic before,” he said. “But I kind of pushed them to put it on me.”

This prosthetic allows for a greater range in mobility and contains a computer chip in the knee.

Easton still walks with a cane sometimes and when he’s working outside he often sets his leg aside and works on crutches because they’re faster, but he’s getting more comfortable with walking in public without help.

“I’m starting to trust myself a lot more and go out without a cane,” he said. “I go everywhere everyone else goes; it just takes me a little longer to get there.”

He has been undergoing chemotherapy and was doing well until May. That’s when a cold hit and led to a fever that landed him back in Rochester for most of the month. He had to have blood and antibiotics and after a few days a CT scan showed 11 spots on his lungs. He had spots show up before, but they turned out to be nothing. He said that these spots very well could just be residual spots from pneumonia or the cold. He won’t know for sure until Wednesday, when he goes back to Rochester to see a lung surgeon.

“So these spots could be nothing — cross my fingers and get a little help from the good Lord above,” he said.

His family has really played a large part in his recovery — as much as his positive attitude.

“If I wouldn’t have had a positive attitude on everything, you know … I would be a wreck right now,” he said.

“My girlfriend’s been a real big part of helping me out and keeping me going and pushing me,” he said about Karlie Springer, originally from Gregory.

They both live in Mitchell now, but he shuttles back and forth between Mitchell and Rochester and his family in Wessington Springs.

His mother goes with him everywhere, he said, “It’s huge, if she wasn’t there, I would probably go crazy in the hospital. She plays a big part in everything that goes on and if she wasn’t there I don’t know what I’d be doing right now.”

His father, Rick, and brothers Tanner, 19, Trevor, 14, and Tucker, 9, all help and push him, as well.

“My brothers, they’re all really athletic and keep pushing me to keep on going, too,” he said. “It’s been a huge part of everything.”

Faith is also something he has not only clung to, but grown in.

“The day they amputated my leg, I carried a rosary into the room with me. … It was just me and God on that table and when I woke up and my leg was gone He was the only one with me … kept pushing me and telling me everything would be all right.

“I’ve gotten a lot closer to Him … every day he tells me to keep going.”

Part of Easton’s plan to keep going not only includes finishing chemo this fall, but staying in the sport he loves — rodeo.

He’s already purchased a few bucking bulls and plans to start contracting them out to the rodeo circuit.

“(I’ll) stick around the rodeo business, that’s what I love to do, it’s my life,” he said. “I can’t ride bulls no more, so I guess I’ll raise them.”

Scar to prove

where he’s been

On the back of his head exists a scar that proves just how lucky he is.

Lance Bruske, 11, of Ethan, has no memory of the battle he fought with cancer when he was 15 months old. He doesn’t really remember checkups or scans, either.

He knew little of his own story — until now.

On a recent evening, Bob and Connie Bruske sat down in their living room with their son and recounted the entire story. Lance sat patiently while watching his parents and never interrupted or asked questions. He knew bits and pieces but said this was the first time his parents told him the whole story.

“Right before he turned 15 months, there was a little lag in his walking,” Connie said.

“He was just getting to when he was running through the house, and was leaning a bit,” Bob added.

The Bruskes have four older children and recognized immediately that this behavior wasn’t normal.

Lance’s eyes also weren’t tracking things correctly. The doctor thought at first it was a virus but then one evening his eyes rolled into the back of his head and a CT scan showed a golf-ball sized tumor by his brain stem.

Lance’s story has a happy ending, but getting there took extreme patience and struggles on the part of his parents.

The road to recovery began with some serious bumps.

On Feb. 15, 1999, he received his first surgery to remove the tumor.

“That surgery was absolutely awful, the neurosurgeon we had was one I didn’t want,” Connie said.

The surgeon interrupted a blood sinus that hemorrhaged, which resulted in three transfusions and caused Lance to leak spinal fluid for a week until the surgeon went back in to patch it.

Lance then had to wear a helmet to protect his incision for six months. His eyesight didn’t improve and so an ophthalmologist suggested an eye patch.

The surgeon said that scans showed “probable complete removal of tumor,” Connie said.

That wasn’t good enough for Lance’s parents.

Connie, who works at Peds Plus in Mitchell, asked their pediatrician for a referral for a second surgical opinion and got eight to choose from. They went to Rochester and on Oct. 2, 1999, Lance went in for his third surgery to remove “a substantial amount of remaining tumor.”

When they arrived in Rochester, both parents were skeptical and protective of their baby who had already been through so much.

The surgeon in Rochester “looks at us and we were real concerned,” Bob said. “He said, ‘Bob, I do a lot of these surgeries’ … and he said, ‘I promise you, I will not cut a blood sinus and I will not hurt him and I will get all of the tumor.’ ”

He made good on his promise.

“We came out of Rochester in five days, smiling and happy,” Connie said.

After trying glasses to correct Lance’s vision, a fourth surgery was set in February 2000 to correct the eye muscles.

Connie and Bob have bittersweet feelings about how things went — they will never forget how much Lance went through, but in the end, he’s completely cancer free and healthy.

They were told he may never have full motor skills and Lance was riding a bicycle by the age of 4 and is currently a straight-A student involved in sports and music and is constantly building things around the house.

“It’s kind of cool,” he said about having his story in the newspaper.

Bob and Connie both believe that if a parent doesn’t feel comfortable with a procedure or certain doctor, it’s worth stepping on some feet. They both wish they would have insisted on a different doctor, but at the time, as parents, they were desperate for their baby’s tumor to be gone.

They said it also helped that Connie’s employer at the time, pediatrician Dr. Maroun (who is now in Sioux Falls) and her husband, a pathologist, were friends and willing to take phone calls at all hours and set up appointments for Lance. They also found surgeons for second opinions.

Their support system was also extraordinary. Lance’s older sisters — Andrea and Althea, now 23; Amelia, 18; and Lewis, 14 — each took the diagnosis their own ways; Lewis not remembering any of it, but his sisters were old enough to understand the full weight of the situation.

Their extended family came in and stayed with the kids while Bob and Connie had to shuttle back and forth.

“You’ve got to have family and faith,” Connie said.

As far as Lance not remembering anything, his parents count him lucky for it.

For the Bruskes, they really haven’t talked too much about it since, which is why Lance had never heard the whole story before. Just recounting it nine years later, the memory seemed raw for both of them.

“The worst thing,” Bob said, “is when they come to take your baby away from you for surgery.”

“And he’s clinging to you and they have to peel him off,” Connie added.

The Bruskes say cancer is among the worst possible news a parent can get but they got the best possible outcome.

Lance is happy and healthy and has a wicked scar to show all the girls.

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