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Ryder Marshall, 11, tries to relax as he prepares for a PET/CT scan at LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City. Marshall is battling Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer characterized by the progressive enlargement of lymph nodes, spleen and liver and by progressive anemia. NEWS&GUIDE PHOTO / PRICE CHAMBERS

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A year ago, Ryder Marshall’s summer days started early in the morning when he got up to care for his 4-H steer. He fed it and washed it. And between chores he spent his days outside, playing baseball and lazing with friends.

That was before.

Before an April night brought an unusual itching in the 11-year-old’s feet. A tingle so irritating, Ryder’s socks tore from the frantic rubbing on the floor in attempts to alleviate it. His feet were hot and nothing helped.

A doctor detected swelling in Ryder’s neck. A lump was found. And the word that changes everything was spoken: cancer.

Ryder has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer that attacks the lymph system, which protects the body from disease.

Ryder was dazed when he heard. Looking back, the symptoms of something serious had been there. Ryder’s breathing was labored at night. He tired faster in gym class. But no one had realized it was serious.

The outlook of the diagnosis was good. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is treatable. Every three weeks the family would travel from Jackson to Salt Lake City, where Ryder received three days of chemotherapy. The first time, he had dry heaves that lasted a day, said Tammy Hunt, Ryder’s dad’s girlfriend, whom they live with.

The second time, Ryder couldn’t stop throwing up. As a parent, not being able to do anything and watch a child suffer is horrible, Hunt said. It’s made even worse with cancer because a child who might be feeling fine is given drugs that make him sick.

“It’s like you’ve allowed them to make your kid sick,” she said.

Ryder was switched to anti-nausea medication, which made the treatments bearable. It was the days after at home that he dreaded.

Chemotherapy weakens the immune system. Days after it is completed, his white blood cells drop so low it is dangerous for him to be outside where he could be exposed to germs. During the time when his count is at its lowest, he is confined to “the bubble.”

“The bubble” is a term his family uses to describe the week in which Ryder can’t have visitors or contact with the public. He takes up residence in a brown stuffed chair in the living room to settle down for a week of television and video games.

“It sucks,” Ryder said.

Ryder usually enters the bubble on a Monday. He will sleep in until about 11 a.m. and play the video game “Halo” in his room. By 1 p.m. he’ll have washed his hands at least six times, after constant reminders.

He talks to his friends on the phone and enjoys some down time. Mondays in the bubble aren’t bad.

“It’s the last day [that] I’m like, ‘I’m going to kill somebody,’” he said.

By Wednesday, his eyes hurt from the strain of watching television and playing hours of “Grand Theft Auto” and “Halo.” He begins to lose track of the days.

He schedules out his next week with things as mundane as making Hunt’s daughter, Briana Beich, take him to lunch.

There is tension in the house. Ryder is irritable. He starts missing things like petting the dogs.

Others are on edge. If someone gets sick, they can’t stay at the house. When Briana developed a sneeze, most likely from allergies, she was put on antibiotics as a precaution.

Hunt, who works at Teton County Public Health, draws Ryder’s blood on Thursdays to take to the lab. If the white blood cell count is 1,000 or more, he is free, she said as she snapped on gloves. If it’s lower, he has to stay isolated. The family gathered in the kitchen to watch an irritable Ryder submit to a now-routine process that he still doesn’t like.

“Sucking my blood? Yeah that’s the greatest feeling,” he said as the vial filled with dark red blood.

“I really want to be out of here,” Ryder said, his eyes staring at the tube as though to will white blood cells up from the 300 count he received on Monday.

He then received his daily shot in the thigh.

“Ahhhh,” he said. “Ow! It burns.”

It isn’t the needle, but the medication that hurts. He can feel it enter his vein and course through his leg.

“Ryder, you’re my hero,” Briana said.

Even when confined to the bubble, he is mischievous, grabbing an air horn to rouse his brother Chance in the morning.

The family tries to keep some semblance of normalcy. Ryder will wait in the parking lot at the rodeo because it is too risky for him to spend the whole night in the stands. He’ll come in just to see Briana barrel race or breakaway rope.

Sometimes it is easy to forget he is sick at all, said his dad, Kevin Marshall. But then there will be moments, such as when Marshall is on the phone fighting with the insurance company.

Or when the only pill that fights nausea of the five Ryder takes daily doesn’t arrive. Then Marshall is slammed with the reality that there is something wrong with his son he can’t control.

For Ryder it is always hanging over him. He remembers each time he passes a mirror or scratches his head.

Ryder has always known he will get better. He has never been scared of his disease.

But the hardest thing for him was losing the thick brown hair he used to wear down to his eyes.

A wall in Ryder’s bedroom is dedicated to hats. He wears one constantly to cover the thin, fair hair struggling to grow in. The hat shields his pale eyebrows and his swollen cheeks.

Steroids have caused Ryder to gain about 10 pounds, Hunt said. When Ryder’s cancer was first diagnosed, he didn’t want people to know. But the hair loss and swelling wouldn’t let him keep it a secret.

The hardest part was realizing people could tell just by looking at him, Hunt said. It was humiliating for him at first because he felt like he didn’t even look like himself, she said.

Ryder has gotten used to the looks and being thrust into the spotlight, especially as different people have raised money to help him. It always seems surreal each time he sees a poster with his face or is thrust onto a stage.

But he still doesn’t like to talk about it. Neither does Briana. It’s too hard, she said. And while Ryder might be optimistic, she feels a constant terror she might lose him.

On Aug. 2, Ryder, Hunt and Marshall made his most recent trip to Salt Lake. Ryder curled up in the back of the truck to sleep. He knew it would be a long day of tests.

What he didn’t know was he had already been given a treatment that changes the lungs. A nurse mentioned in passing that he would never be able to go to go scuba diving. It wasn’t that Ryder was planning to go scuba diving, it was hard that he would never have the choice. At 11, that door was closed.

It was the fourth time he would be going through the routine. When his cancer was first diagnosed, he was told he would need six chemotherapy treatments.

After being scanned, poked and sent to wait, Ryder was told he would need another eight more treatments. His jaw dropped. He couldn’t understand.

Hunt panicked. The last time he was in Salt Lake the only thing that had gotten him through the treatment was a pep talk about being halfway done. She worried Ryder’s trust in her and his father would be shattered.

But it turned out to be a mistake. The doctor came back with good news. Ryder was in partial response. His chemotherapy can be finished in Jackson during the next two months and then followed by radiation.

“It was an incredible relief,” Hunt said.

But the family knows it’s not over.

“It’s always hopeful, but there is always that ... cross your fingers, you don’t want to hex it,” she said.

“[We’ve learned] to enjoy what you can, when you can. You just don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.”