JJStrong

Family overcomes nightmare diagnosis with community support

By Mallory Arnold

JJ Thomas is in 10th grade at Dublin Jerome High School. He’s a mildmannered, upbeat student with an aptitude for cross country, basketball and guitar. He plans on running track one day – the ever-daunting 400-meter race is his favorite. We joke about how he must be crazy to run such a treacherous event.

But for JJ, 400 meters is nothing compared to the journey he’s been on these past three years.

When JJ was a seventh-grader at Grizzell Middle School, he was diagnosed with mixed phenotype acute leukemia. This normal, smart, healthy boy’s world came to an alarming halt.

“I couldn’t believe it at first,” JJ says. “I thought, ‘There’s no way this can happen to me.’ Cancer just didn’t seem like it would ever be a part of my life.”

Michelle and Luke Thomas, JJ’s parents, were in complete shock as well.

“He got strep throat and we just thought it was mono, because he didn’t seem that sick,” Michelle recalls. “But then we got a call and it wasn’t, ‘Hey, come in because we want to talk to you about this possibility,’ it was, ‘We think he has leukemia. Pack your bags and go to children’s hospital now.’”

First comes the diagnosis – but then what? Do you tell people? Do you try to keep quiet until uncertainties settle?

“Not at all,” Michelle says. “We told people right away. We have two other children, Larkin and Zach, so we had to call our close friends and make sure they were taken care of. We also sought out the church so that everyone could begin praying.” Luke agrees. “The first piece of advice we received upon the diagnosis was to not be afraid to accept help,” he says. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and fear, initially. We had to be willing to ask for and receive help.”

In one of the most chilling moments of their lives, the family was met with overwhelming warm support from the community. When JJ had to shave his head for treatment, the barber etched in “JJ Strong,” a phrase that soon popped up all over Dublin. To show JJ they had his back, some of his best friends shaved their heads, too.

www.dublinlifemagazine.com continued on page 27 Help Has No Boundaries

With illness comes boundaries and rules from doctors. JJ was pretty much quarantined inside his house because his immune system was compromised from the intense cancer treatment. While his mom initially worried he wouldn’t have enough space to hang out, a team of neighbors, friends and family came to the rescue and tackled their basement, which was mainly used for storage at the time. It was cleaned out, sanitized, painted and restored.

With three children in three separate Dublin schools (now 19-year-old Larkin at Dublin Jerome, JJ at Grizzell Middle School and 14-year-old Zach at Deer Run Elementary), the amount of support tripled. Larkin’s basketball team wore orange shoelaces representing lukemia, sold JJ Strong wristbands at lunch and held a Hoops for a Cure event.

Principal of Deer Run Elementary, Susann Wittig, organized a donation jar that helped buy games and activities for JJ to entertain. All around, there were always cards, videos and gifts being sent to show that people cared.

One thing you don’t want to think about tackling while going through such a strenuous battle: homework. But Grizzell social studies teacher, Jim Hull, made school as painless as possible for JJ, always going the extra mile to make sure he was not only staying caught up, but being included in everyday life back in the classroom.