Ties That Bind : With Her Parents in Jail, Young Cancer Patient Found Friends Helped Fill Gap in Family

When Tanya Wells was told that she had cancer, she felt sure she was going to die. She was a bright, shy 14-year-old with an inner toughness her doctors would soon discover. But at first, the terrified and very alone young girl kept telling them, “I want my mom. I want my mom.”

Her mom was in prison, and so was the father she had seen only as a little girl and no longer remembered. Both had been in and out of jail all her life, always as a result of drug-related offenses. Tanya had been raised by her grandparents--along with her two sisters and three cousins whose mother was also a drug addict--but her grandmother had died recently, leaving the six children with an alcoholic stepgrandfather. The few times he visited Tanya in the hospital, he had booze on his breath.

Her mother finally came after authorities arranged for her release at the urging of Tanya’s doctors. But it was clear her mother had been taking drugs when she visited Tanya, and within two weeks, she was back behind bars.

Tanya was left to confront inoperable cancer alone. But she faced her illness with such courage that she won the affection of those who cared for her in the hospital and those who helped her get through high school when her cancer went into remission.

She just turned 18, a birthday she found scary rather than joyful because she’s more on her own than most young people her age.

But she’s not alone.

She’s learning that family isn’t necessarily defined by blood ties. Although the way she’s been hurt by her parents makes it difficult for her to believe that friends can be so giving, there are many caring adults in her life who have become the family she never had.

Tanya had been sick for two months when she was taken to a doctor, tired, thin and suffering from a gnawing pain in the left side of her face.

The diagnosis was a rare form of cancer--a large tumor in the nasopharynx (the area in back of her nose and throat) that had spread to the lymph glands in the left side of her neck, according to Dr. Felicity Hodder, a cancer specialist who treated Tanya at Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

She went through a year of chemotherapy and radiotherapy that caused a number of painful side effects, some of which will plague her the rest of her life.

For about six months, she had to be fed intravenously because ulcers had formed in her mouth and throat. Permanent damage to her neck and jaw muscles left her unable to move her neck freely or open her mouth normally, resulting in a speech impairment. Damage to her salivary glands made both talking and eating difficult. And a severe ear disease caused chronic ear infections and made it necessary for her to wear a hearing aid.

Hodder was impressed immediately by the very sick but “stoic” girl she met in July 1987.

“She’s a plucky young lady. She’s survived all the odds to be where she is today,” said the doctor and friend who helps fill the gap in Tanya’s family life by having her over for dinner and taking her to plays.

Hodder, who helped arrange for Tanya’s mother to see her in the hospital, recalled that Tanya was “very isolated” and would go for days without receiving any visitors.

“You could see her reaching out for her mother, but she was never there. It hurt her so much when her mother kept failing her,” Hodder said.

She could also see that Tanya was being neglected in her stepgrandfather’s home. When he became drunk and verbally abusive during one respite from the hospital, Tanya called Hodder and begged to be readmitted.

“I was scared if I stayed there I’d take all my pain medication,” Tanya recalled recently.

Hodder got her out of the house, and Tanya was soon placed in one of three foster homes in which she has lived since she was 15.

She lost her first foster family when the parents divorced. Then she went to an “emergency shelter” where she stayed for three months with five other foster children waiting for a new home. She lived with her third foster family for nearly two years while attending Laguna Hills High School. (Meanwhile, her two sisters were placed in a foster home in San Bernardino. She also has an older brother who is struggling to make it on his own and a 4-year-old brother who has been adopted.)

When Tanya’s cancer went into remission, she became determined to graduate from high school with her class. She had missed a lot of school, but she took on a heavy schedule in her senior year to catch up. The schedule proved too strenuous for her, however, and she became ill again, this time with pneumonia.

That’s when Virginia Thiele came into her life. The special education teacher who has become a close friend tutored Tanya at home for the last five weeks of high school, making it possible for her to graduate with her class last June.

Thiele, Hodder and Tanya’s sisters were among those at the graduation ceremony. It was especially important to Tanya to have her sisters there because, she said in a recent interview at Thiele’s Laguna Hills home, she sees herself as a role model for them.

Hodder explained how important graduating from high school was to Tanya: “She’s always had this will to be a success, to become something in her life and not follow the course of her mother.”

Some of that drive comes from the encouragement Tanya receives in weekly letters from her mother.

“She expects me to be good,” Tanya said. “Sometimes I feel if I don’t do good I’ll be letting everybody down.”

After she graduated, Tanya had to face the question of what to do when she turned 18. Her foster family was not able to continue supporting her, so she knew she had to work. But she wanted to go to college and study computer science.

Because she didn’t have the stamina to work full time and go to school--she still has severe headaches and bouts of dizziness--she decided to accept a clerical job at Kids Cancer Connection in Irvine and try to set aside enough money to cut back her work schedule in January and enroll at a local community college.

Meanwhile, Thiele decided to help by establishing a trust fund for Tanya through the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, which has awarded her a $500 scholarship. Thiele also encouraged Tanya to self-publish the poems she started writing after she became ill. They have put together a book that includes a poem she wrote to her mother and had published in the 1989 “American Poetry Anthology.” (The book is available for a $5 donation, which can be sent along with other donations to the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, Tanya Wells Fund, 2 City Blvd. East, Suite 250, Orange, Calif. 92668.)

Once the fund was established, Thiele turned to the task of finding a new home for Tanya. It didn’t take long.

Sally and Clark Westcott of Newport Beach met Tanya when they volunteered several years ago to help grant wishes for terminally ill children through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. They helped arrange Tanya’s wish--a shopping spree during which she chose some necessities for herself (including a wig because she had lost her hair after chemotherapy), but mostly ended up with Christmas presents for her sisters.

After that, Sally said, “we were so overwhelmed by her situation that we kept in touch.”

They visited her in the hospital, and when she was feeling better, they took her on outings every couple of months. When they learned Tanya needed a place to live, they invited her to move in with them and told her she could stay as long as she wanted.

“We saw how bright she was--she was developing into a lovely young woman with no advantages,” Sally explained.

The Westcotts, who have two grown children of their own, treat Tanya as part of the family, and they’re helping her become self-sufficient by teaching her everyday tasks such as how to manage a checking account.

Tanya, who can’t afford to buy a car yet but gets around by bus and is often driven to work or medical appointments by the Westcotts, is making her way toward independence with a lot of gratitude for those who are helping her reach that goal. But she’s not completely at ease being the recipient of their generosity.

“I appreciate it a lot, but I don’t know if I like it,” she said. “I need help, but I’d rather not ask for it.”

She said she’s scared her health problems will keep her from becoming self-supporting. “Maybe if I had my mom and dad there like most people do it would help, but I don’t.”

In spite of their many broken promises and failure to be there for her, she remains loyal to both her mother and father. (He visited her about a year ago for the first time since she was a young child, then disappeared again and, according to her last report, is back in prison.)

“They’re my mom and dad no matter what,” she declared. “I love them both very much. They have a problem, but I know they love me. They just can’t take care of me.”

Feelings

It’s not that I don’t love you.

It’s not that I don’t care.

It’s a simple fact of needing someone there.

I know you’ve tried your best.

And I thank you for that.

But it doesn’t seem to be good enough

when facts come to facts.

They say it’s OK to love you

and it’s OK to care

But it’s time for me to let go

and start on my life

I realize they’re right, yet it feels so wrong.

This is where I need to be strong

I’m hoping you will understand that this is

how I feel.

So please believe me when I say,

It’s not that I don’t love you

And not that I don’t care

It’s just that simple fact of needing

Someone there. -- Tanya Wells’ poem to her mother, the American Poetry Anthology, 1989