West Branch health class helps teen find cancer

IOWA CITY — It's an awkward topic, especially for a group of 13- to 14-year-old middle schoolers.

Testicular cancer.

But Lynnette Poula decided to teach it anyway in her first-ever wellness class at West Branch Middle School last year. And one West Branch teenager and his family are forever grateful.

'I can't even express — because I'm really bad at expressing things like this — but I can't express how much I am thankful for being here right now,' Wyatt O'Neil, 14, told The Gazette, last week.

He credits doctors and nurses at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, his family and friends, and Poula. But they say Wyatt saved his own life by taking health class seriously and acting on his teacher's advice.

'We are very proud of him,' his mom, Kathy O'Neil, said. 'I would have never thought about talking to Wyatt about checking at the age of 14.'

Fortunately, she didn't have to.

Last spring, after Poula talked through self-examinations for testicular cancer with her eighth-graders, Wyatt went home and found a bump. Before telling his parents, Wyatt consulted the Internet.

'Every time I find something I don't know about, I look it up, just to be sure,' he said. 'That's just something I always do, so my parents know they can never lie to me.'

Then he called in his mom.

'He tells me, 'Before I say anything, I just want to let you know I already did the research on it, and it's very curable,'' O'Neil said. 'I was like, 'OK, where are we going with this?''

She already had scheduled her son an annual physical, so they first checked with Wyatt's pediatrician — hoping it was simply hormone-related. But an ultrasound produced 'concerning' results, and further tests confirmed the cancer.

It was active. It was spreading.

'This is how fast it moved for us,' O'Neil said.

An initial May 15 appointment led to a May 19 oncologist appointment.

'And then on the 20th, Dr. Storm removed the right testicle,' O'Neil said.

A CT scan May 29 confirmed the cancer had spread to a nearby lymph node, but doctors didn't know how aggressive it was. They put Wyatt on hold for two months.

When they checked again in July, the 'concerning' spot had doubled in size. Surgically removing it would have required doctors to navigate through his aorta artery and a kidney, making it 'very dangerous,' Wyatt said. They also didn't know if the cancer was elsewhere in the body.

'That's when they began preparing for chemo,' he said.

Wyatt began his first of three rounds of chemotherapy on July 21. Each round, every four weeks, required him to stay four days in the hospital. And it was a drag. He vomited. He lost his appetite. He reacted to one of the medications with severe acne.

But he left the hospital after his final round of chemo Sept. 18, and an Oct. 5 scan showed it worked. The chemotherapy had done its job, although the lymph node in question was still larger than normal. That could just be scar tissue, Wyatt said.

'So, once again, they put us on hold for two months,' he said. 'And that's what we're going through right now.'

Regardless of upcoming test results, Wyatt will have surgery in December — either to remove his chemotherapy port or to take out the concerning lymph node. And Wyatt said he's managed to suppress the pull to obsess about it — at least when he's awake.

'While my conscious mind has been doing fine, I think my subconscious has been going slightly insane through all this,' he said. 'I have weird dreams and nightmares about it every night.'

'This cancer won't kill me'

But the prognosis is good. In fact, his mom said, it's great.

'There is no reason or indication that he's not going to be cured,' O'Neil said. 'It's just if we have to take it a little bit further yet.'

His parents said Wyatt's strength and courage through the ups and downs of testing and waiting and treatment has been remarkable.

Wyatt is more humble.

'If it spreads again, I'm going to go insane,' he said.

But, no matter what next month's tests show, Wyatt has been forever changed.

First, in practical and physical ways. He has years of frequent checks in his future — CT scans every two months for the first two years and then every five or six months in the years that follow. The chemotherapy has left him sensitive to the sun, anemic, and incapable of eating most Mexican food.

'Except for tacos,' he said. 'I like tacos for some reason.'

But Wyatt also has been changed in emotional and relational ways.

'I don't care about myself,' he said. 'I am just saying that I'm going to stay alive because I know that even in death I'm going to feel bad that I left my parents.'

'He came to me in the kitchen,' his mom said. 'I was cooking supper, and that's when he said, 'Don't worry mom, this cancer won't kill me because I'll feel too bad if I die before you.''

What Wyatt's parents want most now is for him to be a freshman. A typical high schooler. To play baseball. To read. To dream. To hang out with his friends, who — by the way — held fundraisers, made T-shirts, and designed bracelets that read, 'Win with Wyatt.'

'I just want him to experience his high school years in the best way possible,' his mom said.

'It will save your life'

They also want to get the word out.

'If you get anything from this, it's that it's important to self-check,' Wyatt said. 'It will save our life. It certainly saved mine.'

Wyatt and his parents partnered with the UI Hospitals to create a video about self-checking. His health teacher is sharing his story — with his permission. And his mom is looking to spread the message nationally.

'We are going to try to even get it to Ellen DeGeneres,' O'Neil said.

'That is her big goal,' Wyatt joked. 'She is like her role model.'

If more students could take health class seriously, and if more teachers added cancer checks to their curriculum, children could be saved, O'Neil said.

'I don't want any parents to have to go through something that may not have had the same outcome just because they didn't teach it in health,' she said.

Poula told The Gazette she had been teaching health at West Branch High School for 22 years and moved to the middle school last year. She had to re-evaluate her curriculum, and part of that involved deciding whether testicular cancer was an age-appropriate topic.

'That was the toughest decision,' she said. 'Were they emotionally mature enough to handle it and take it seriously?'

Wyatt was.

'I am never glad to hear that outcome,' she said. 'But when I did hear that Wyatt had followed through with something I had discussed and taught, I was very thankful.'

And testicular cancer now has a solid place in her middle school curriculum — with a reference to the reality check leveled to Wyatt and his family.

'Students don't get it until it's relevant to them,' she said.

Which is what makes Wyatt's story so special, his mom said.

'What he did amazes me,' O'Neil said. 'I am so very very proud of him. I just don't think he gets that. But why would he? He's 14.'