Brady The Greatest Gift

Brady THE GREATEST GIFT A STORY OF HOPE, HAPPINESS, SERVICE AND FRIENDSHIP

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 2007

Daily Herald photo editor Ashley Franscell with 16-year-old Brady Thompson.

In February 2007, I met Brady.

He had been in hospice care for less than a month. His seizures had taken over his body, leaving him speechless and weak. In a few short hours after I met him for the first time, Brady taught me something about humanity.

Brady’s spirit never falters, no matter his troubles nor his condition. His happiness is contagious. His smile says everything he cannot.

This is a story about living life and defying death. This is a story about hope.

This is a story about Brady.

Ashley Franscell

âˆŤ Slide show and video interviews at heraldextra.com/brady CONTRIBUTORS: Story by Doug Fox. Photos by Ashley Franscell. Page design by Jessica Eyre. Online presentation, Rich Lewis, Craig Dilger, Jason Larson.

Brady Thompson laughs at a joke as his mother, Lori, feeds him crushed ice. The 5-foot-8-inch, 90-pound teen suffers from a disease that causes him between hundreds and thousands of seizures a day. “I used to say he’s dying a slow death,” said his father, Darrell, “but I didn’t like that. Now I say he’s having a quick life.”

Growing up Brady ‘H

i, Dad, this is Brady. Call me back. Bye.” That voicemail message is currently saved on Darrell Thompson’s cell phone. The 44-year-old Lindon plumbing contractor makes it a point to always store the latest clear message from his 16-yearold son — because he’s never sure when it will be the last one.

That Brady Thompson is still leaving messages in a stammering, halting voice past his 16th birthday — a milestone he reached on Thanksgiving Day — is a testament to his will to live. The frail 5-foot-8inch, 90-pound teen suffers from a debilitating illness that causes between hundreds and thousands of seizures per day.

There is no official diagnosis and, consequently, no cure.

After fighting the disease for more than 12 years — a time period that included numerous surgeries, a litany of trips to the emergency room and untold injuries from

falls caused by his seizures — Brady, tired of being poked and prodded like a guinea pig in a never-ending search for new treatment options, made the decision himself to enter hospice care on Jan. 9.

A person can enter hospice care when a doctor determines there is six months or less to live and there are no curative measures in place.

As Christmas arrives, Brady, having survived a couple of extremely close calls in the interim, has logged more than 11 months in hospice care and continues to defy expectations.

“A cat’s got nothing on him,” said his father before asking his son, only half-jokingly, “Who’s 10 feet tall and bulletproof?”

“Me,” Brady responded with a smile.

It would certainly seem so.

The thought of enrolling Brady in hospice care was met with some initial resistance by his parents, Darrell and Lori Thompson, who viewed acceptance of the program as

a sign of surrender. But when hospice representatives came over to discuss the benefits of the program with the family, it was Brady, himself, who forcefully expressed his opinion.

“He said, ‘Sign it. Sign it now!’ ” said Lori, 46.

“I said, ‘I can’t do this.’

“And he said, ‘Do it for me! Do it now!’ ” “Hospice for us was really Brady’s decision,” she said. “It’s kind of like if you had to put your child in psychiatric care. You’d go through a lot of crap before allowing it.

It would be like admitting you’d failed. So that’s what it was like for me. To me, it was like giving up. But for Brady it meant less shots, less hospital visits, more say in his treatment, more independence and more ability to have a say.”

The past 10 months have provided a roller coaster of emotion for the Thompsons.

One doctor said Brady came within 10 minutes of dying after a seizure caused a vio-

lent fall off a 7-foot ledge, cracking his skull open and requiring emergency brain surgery. His health was so bad several months later that a hospice worker predicted Brady would not make it through the night.

Brady, however, survived those scares, prompting his family to continue putting a positive spin on the most difficult of trials.

“I used to say he’s dying a slow death,” said Darrell of Brady’s travails, “but I didn’t like that. Now I say he’s having a quick life.”

The quick life of Brady Thompson offers many subplots: From his unexpected adoption into the Thompson clan to the family’s ongoing search for his birth mother; from Brady’s lifelong quest to fit in with his peers to the offbeat discovery of a best friend like no other; from his zest for life to the disease that’s taking it.

This is the story of one boy’s life while facing an impending death.

It’s the story of growing up Brady.

Like a bolt out of the blue T

o say that Brady’s entrance into the Thompsons’ life was completely unexpected is an understatement of epic proportions. Brady’s first miracle was that he even became a Thompson at all.

At the time in 1991, Darrell and Lori had one son, Jordan, who was then 4. The couple wanted more children, and had spent more than $8,000 on fertility tests and treatments.

Those attempts all proved fruitless.

At around 3 p.m. on the afternoon of Nov. 22, Lori received a call from her doctor, David Broadbent, asking if the couple would be interested in adopting a baby boy who had been born earlier that morning.

The couple had not even discussed the adoption option previously.

“We had never even contemplated it,” said Darrell, who was laid off from his job at Geneva Steel at the time. “It was like a bolt out of the blue.”

After receiving the initial phone call, Lori said she approached Darrell and asked him if he wanted a baby.

“I said, ‘I hope so ’cause I already told him yes!’ ” Lori recalled.

“I still make fun of her these days,” Darrell said, “because she could hardly speak at the time because of how excited she was.”

In reality, there was no real decision to be made — they both felt adopting Brady was the right thing to do.

The Thompsons were, however, completely unprepared for the arrival of a new baby into their home. They made a mad dash to purchase diapers and all the other supplies they would need. By 9 p.m. that night, just 12 hours after Brady’s birth, they were able to hold him for the first time.

“For me, it was the most natural high a person could ever have,” said Darrell. “I can only explain it, that when your wife is pregnant and a family is ‘expecting’ a baby, that is what it is, the expectation of a baby. Anything less at that point would be a terrible loss. We were not ‘expecting’ anything and when we were given Brady, it was just within 12 hours that we had before he was there.”

As the Thompsons left to take their new son home from the hospital that first night, they believe they shared the elevator ride with Brady’s birth mother — who had been on the floor above the Thompsons and had just said goodbye to her son a few minutes before.

“I was holding Brady,” Lori said. “When we got on the elevator, there was a girl about 22 and she was with her mom. She was in a wheelchair and I smiled at her and she smiled back. I could tell that she had been crying, but she still looked beautiful. She had long blond hair. I asked our lawyer what she looked like and she described the girl on the elevator to a T.” On Monday, before everything was finalized, Brady’s birth mother nearly changed her mind on the adoption.

“It was extremely hard for the birth mother to give him up,” Darrell said. “She nearly changed her mind at the last minute. Although I will never know how hard it had to be for her to give him up, I am kind of glad we went through the few hours of agony of thinking

Family photographs show a much-healthier Brady as a youngster. “The funny thing about Brady at birth,” said his father, Darrell, “is that he was absolutely perfect.” we might have to give him back. I think it gave us a very small idea of what she had to be going through.”

Holding that little infant in his arms, Darrell had no idea the health problems that would develop in his new son.

“The funny thing about Brady at birth

is that he was absolutely perfect,” he said.

“What I mean is that sometimes new babies might have weird-shaped heads or little blotchy red faces or something for a while.

Nothing that isn’t normal for a brand-new baby, but ... I thought he was perfect. Could it be that I was already a little biased?”

Brady with his older brother, Jordan [top], Brady with youngest brother, Austin, at age 2, [center], and Brady in his youth baseball uniform [bottom] in photos provided by the Thompson family.

Brady had his first grand mal seizure when he was 3 years and 9 months old.

Brady’s seizures come in myriad forms — some are violent and others can result in nothing more than a blank stare and momentary loss of alertness. The seizures can burn up to 2,000 calories per day, making it difficult for Brady to keep weight on. Brady had a permanent feeding tube surgically installed in August.

Immunizations and seizures

B

rady suffered his first grand mal seizure on Sept. 1, 1995 — he was 3 years and 9 months old. Life in the Thompson house would never be the same again.

A grand mal — or tonic-clonic — seizure features a loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions. It is this type of seizure that most people associate with epilepsy.

“It was a slow day in Pleasant Grove,” Lori recalled of Brady’s first grand mal. “We had the whole police department, fire department and ambulance right as (everyone) was getting out of school. They said it wasn’t a seizure, but that I was misinterpreting something. But first thing the next morning he had another grand mal, so they figured out it really was.”

Doctors were unable to diagnose the exact cause of Brady’s condition or how to treat it — a trend that has continued over the ensuing 12 years.

Some doctors, said Darrell, have said Brady

shows tendencies of Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, an extremely rare disease with no known cure.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Lennox-Gastaut is characterized by seizures of different types, usually starting before the age of 4, accompanied by developmental delays and behavioral disturbances.

The syndrome can be caused by brain malformations, perinatal asphyxia, severe head injury, central nervous system infection and inherited degenerative or metabolic conditions. No cause can be found in 30 percent to 35 percent of the cases.

Doctors, however, have never officially diagnosed Brady with Lennox-Gastaut.

“We have tried to pin them down a few times,” Darrell said of the numerous doctors who have treated Brady, “and almost nobody will commit.”

Whatever Brady’s disease actually is, the Thompsons believe his condition was triggered by

Continued next page

While playing basketball outside his family’s home in Lindon, Brady has a seizure at 3:21.37 p.m.

Continued from previous page an adverse reaction to his immunizations as a child. He received his first immunizations when he was a year old. According to Lori, he received the shot at 1 p.m., and by 5 p.m. he was uncontrollably shivering.

“I called the doctor’s office, and the doctor said next time we’ll give it to him different,” Lori said, referring to the method of administering the immunizations.

“It doesn’t alarm you because they just say we’ll do it different next time,” Darrell said.

Brady received his second set of immunizations, which also produced shivers, on July 13, 1995. In the month and a half between those shots and Brady’s first grand mal, Darrell and Lori noticed an increased clumsiness in their son. He would fall down for no apparent reason, and an occasional bowl would fly off the table while he was eating.

“In retrospect, there were probably dozens if not hundreds of seizures between the

immunization date and his first grand mal,” Darrell said. “We just didn’t understand until after all the forms a seizure can show up as.”

The Thompsons have since become relative experts in Brady’s various types of seizures. In addition to grand mals, some of the other common seizure types Brady experiences include atonic (also known as drop attacks) and absence (characterized by staring, subtle body movement and momentary lapses of awareness). Seizures also can be categorized into two classes — partial (resulting from abnormal activity in one side of the brain) and generalized (affecting both sides of the brain).

“Brady has all types,” Darrell said, noting that partial seizures can even be as simple as a blink. “I could go on and on because he is capable of showing us something new — like running in place during a seizure — on a regular basis.”

In conversation, Brady often can be in the middle of a belabored sentence only to be interrupted by an absence seizure —

causing his eyes to lose focus and his head and body to nod forward. He can snap out of it after a few seconds and immediately pick up his interrupted sentence.

While those seizures can be relatively consequence free while he is sitting, they are much more dangerous when he is standing up or walking — as he is prone to injury if the attack doesn’t end before he falls into something or ends up on the ground.

Over the years, the rate of Brady’s seizures have fluctuated wildly, the Thompsons say. Doctors have attempted to treat him with 15 medications in myriad combinations — many of which worked for short periods of time before gradually losing effectiveness.

“When his body hadn’t gotten used to the doses at first, he would have what we call a ‘honeymoon’ period where he would be seizure free for up to a couple of weeks,” Darrell said. “Then he would start having what they call break-through seizures and we could never gain control

again with each medicine. With the exception of the three years that Vagus Nerve Stimulation was working for him, he has continued to have more and more seizures ever since, with diminishing times of good health in between.”

Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) is a device that is generally implanted in the upper left portion of a person’s chest, with lead wires that attach to the vagus nerve on the left side of the neck. The battery-operated VNS device sends regular electrical pulses to the brain, designed to offset or interrupt the electrical disturbances in the brain that cause seizures.

In addition, when a person feels a seizure coming on, use of a special magnet can trigger extra electronic stimulation designed to offset the seizure.

VNS, first implanted on June 30, 1999, worked well for Brady until the battery wore out after three years, at which point it was discovered that the lead wires also were damaged, Darrell said. A second device was implanted in August of 2002

Brady is back to playing basketball six seconds later at 3:21.43 after having a seizure (see photo on previous page). Also pictured is Brady’s brother Luke [left] and his father, Darrell.

— but an infection following the surgery led to untimely complications two months later. The whole family — including Jordan, Brady and younger brothers Luke and Austin (who the Thompsons adopted after Brady) — were in Orlando, Fla., combining business with Disney World pleasure. The morning after arriving, however, Darrell and Lori noticed two wires — the ones that attach to the vagus nerve — sticking out of Brady’s neck.

Darrell and Lori took Brady to a neurosurgeon in Orlando for advice.

“He said, ‘You have two choices. You can have him admitted to a hospital here immediately or you can fly home immediately,’ ” Lori said.

Choosing the latter option, the Thompsons booked the next available flight to Salt Lake City. In the time before the flight, they made a hurried visit to the so-called “Happiest Place on Earth.”

“We had a five-day pass and we only

used four hours,” Lori said. “We’ve never taken the boys back.”

While waiting for the site of his left-side infection to completely heal, doctors implanted another VNS device on the right side of Brady’s chest — a move that was viewed as more risky and experimental.

When the right-side device didn’t help Brady, another unit was placed again on his left side.

This time, the left-side surgery also failed to control his seizures. Brady still has both the left- and right-side VNS units implanted, making him, the Thompsons believe, the only person in the world with two stimulators at the same time.

These days, Brady suffers anywhere between several hundred and several thousand seizures a day.

The physical strain of his seizures can force him to burn 2,000 calories a day, so it is extremely difficult to keep weight on his wiry 5-foot-8-inch frame. He had a feeding

tube surgically installed in his stomach on Aug. 8 — which he accidentally popped out during a seizure. A second tube was put in on Aug. 31.

The permanent feeding tube allows him to eat whatever he wants during the day, and then be nourished all night with formula through his tube.

He jumped from 83 to 90 pounds in the first two weeks and has maintained fairly steady, at least weight-wise since then.

Brady’s poor health and constant need for supervision finally forced him to drop out of school in February. The ninth-grader receives tutoring at home from a teacher for one period of about 30 minutes a week.

With no official diagnosis or cure for Brady’s travails, the Thompsons can only trace the start of their son’s troubles to those first two sets of immunizations.

“We were asking the doctors everything we could think of that might have caused him to have seizures,” Darrell said,

referring back to when they started. “It actually took us a long time to pinpoint the DTP shot as what we firmly believe to be the cause. There are still people in the medical community that think we’re wrong about it. I think they’re afraid we’ll turn people away from immunizations and that worries them.”

Immunizations often are blamed for a host of health problems without conclusive proof. The Thompsons, however, can only judge by the timing of what happened to their son.

Brady has received no immunizations since that second set.

“The closest Brady has come to immunizations since then is a tetanus shot,” Darrell said. “I don’t preach to people not to have their children immunized, just to be informed as to the possible side effects beforehand. As for Brady, they don’t get any more chances with him.”

A mother’s letters B

efore officially turning Brady over to the Thompsons, his birth mother wrote him a letter explaining her decision.

She wrote that she was 22, single and already had a 2-year-old son — and that it was already a struggle for her to support herself.

“The doctor who delivered you,” she wrote to Brady, “told me about the people who are your parents now. I knew they would love you and give you more than I ever could have. It was the hardest decision I will ever make in my whole life. Even know, while I’m writing this, you are 1 1/2 days old, you are with your new parents, and all I want to do is call them, ask them about you, hold you and tell you how much I love you. Don’t ever think I didn’t love you or want you, none of this was your fault.

I only did this because I knew you would have a better life where you are now.”

She also wrote that she would welcome the opportunity, if he desired, to ever find her or just talk to her on the phone, noting that the Thompsons had all the information they would need to seek her out.

“If you don’t want to get in touch with me,” she wrote, “I want you to understand that you are a part of my life. I will think of you every day. I love you very much and you will always be in my heart as my son.”

Brady’s birth mother also wrote a letter to Darrell and Lori, explaining some of the reasons behind her decision to trust her new son to them, sharing some personality traits of her 2-year-old son that Brady may share and offering a few of her own ideas about raising children.

“Please understand that I love my son very much and this is tearing my heart out,” she wrote. “Please love my baby and take care of him. I know you can give him a better life than I can financially, but I will always love him.”

She also shared a bit of family medical history — noting that she and her 2-year-old son both had ear problems that required surgery to implant tubes.

“Other than that,” she wrote, “there are no medical problems in my family.”

Ironically, Brady’s ears have never been a problem.

Brady’s birth mother wrote him a letter that the Thompsons were told to give to him when he was old enough to understand. She also wrote a letter to the Thompsons outlining her own wishes for how to raise him. “She gave us the greatest gift that day,” said Darrell about Brady.

“Brady is a very intelligent kid and knew what he wanted, and even though he did not know really what I was there for, he knew as long as he could stay at home that that was what he wanted.”

Kim Campbell, Brady’s hospice nurse, listens to his heart during a visit. Brady made the decision himself to go on hospice care in January because he hated going to the hospital and being poked and prodded by doctors.

The hospice worker K

im Campbell is the hospice worker assigned to Brady. Campbell started her nursing career in the emergency room, where she dealt with death in much more immediate and traumatic situations.

She started working hospice cases part time and discovered that she much preferred helping patients die on their own terms at home rather than in the ER. “Hospice is there to manage symptoms, keep the patient comfortable, and to educate and prepare the patient and families for the death of their loved one,” said Campbell, who is employed by Intermountain Healthcare’s Homecare division.

One of the main reasons the Thompsons supported Brady’s decision to go on hospice care was his clear disdain for hospitals, which seemed to drastically diminish his will to live. He has spent so much time in various hospitals undergoing tests and treatments to no avail over the years that visits for anything other than emergency

care tended to do more harm than good.

“The first thing I remember about Brady was how he did not want to go back to the hospital and how he chose himself to have hospice,” said Campbell, who has been doing this work now for four years. “Brady is a very intelligent kid and knew what he wanted, and even though he did not know really what I was there for, he knew as long as he could stay at home that that was what he wanted. The other thing was how happy Brady was despite his illness. His outlook on life amazed me and continues to amaze me.”

Campbell typically visits Brady once a week — but the visits can increase according to his condition. In addition, on-call nurses also are available 24 hours a day.

“They care about their patients,” said Lori of the hospice nurses. “At the hospital, you go in and they have 10 minutes to spend with you. Here, if it takes a half-hour, then she’s here a half-hour.”

When Brady has had accidents requir-

ing emergency-room care, Campbell has arrived at the hospital before him and prepped the attending physicians on his medical background and special needs.

There was some talk in August about assigning another hospice nurse to oversee Brady’s care.

“They were going to pull Kim off because she was getting too attached to him — which is what Brady does to people. She pretty much told them it would be a cold day in ... ,” Darrell said, letting the obvious end to his sentence go unfinished.

When asked about her near shift in assignment, Campbell was a tad more diplomatic.

“I have, over time, built a trusting relationship with Brady as well as his family, which I feel is important,” she said. “I did not feel that changing nurses would be the best move for Brady.”

Campbell said it is natural for her to form bonds with patients and their families after a period of time, although she does try to

KIM CAMPBELL

hospice nurse

keep the emotional ties low without taking away from the caring aspect of nursing.

“The best way I deal with the emotions of my job is after seeing a patient suffer for a period of time, it is better for me to imagine them in a better place where their disabilities are not an issue,” she said. “This way of thinking has helped me not only help my patients make that transition from life to death easier, but also helps make the sadness of their passing easier for me to deal with.”

The Thompsons, who speak glowingly of Campbell, have only one complaint since going on hospice care, and that occurred during a touch-and-go weekend for Brady in mid-July. Lori phoned an on-call nurse with a frantic request to come adjust some of Brady’s medical equipment.

According to Lori, the nurse balked at driving up from the southern end of the county, and then offered some harsh advice.

“She said, ‘Why don’t you just turn it off?

He’s dying anyway,’ ” Lori said. “That is not the thing you say to a mom when her son is dying.”

By and large, hospice has been great, Lori said. “With one exception, and they keep her away from me now.”

‘Can’t I at least try?’

D

espite the limitations his body has placed on him, Brady is not one who easily takes “no” for an answer. He wants what every teenage boy wants: to fit in, be accepted and participate in activities everyone else his age is doing.

At one church activity a few years ago, Brady insisted on joining the throng of bicycle riders pedaling down Provo Canyon. A seizure partway down the trail diverted him from the paved path right into the Provo River itself.

The Thompsons, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, tried to take him home to change out of his wet clothes, but he flatly refused.

“He wouldn’t go home,” Darrell said. “He said to Lori, ‘Go get my clothes.’ ” So she drove home to Lindon, retrieved a fresh pair of clothes and returned — all so Brady could continue on with the planned schedule of events.

Brady’s potential for injuring himself at activities naturally created a concern for the Thompsons’ local church leaders, to the point where they questioned whether it was advisable for him to participate in certain youth functions.

“I told them that if you will give me enough advance notice, I’m creative enough that I can devise a way for him to participate,” Darrell said.

One of the first things Darrell did was create a low-riding, double-three-wheeled-bike contraption — with flexible plumbing pipe and some nylon rope inside the pipe — that allows Brady to ride out front and have limited ability to turn while his dad rides behind with the ability to brake.

On another occasion, Brady’s young men’s group went on a rifle-shooting activity near Saratoga Springs. Once again, Darrell stepped in.

“Brady’s strength was terrible at the time and I knew he wouldn’t be able to hit any of the targets, so I went out and bought a .410 shotgun for him,” Darrell said. “I gave him close targets and helped him steady the barrel. He was tickled pink to hit the target every time.”

Yet another activity involved a guided horse ride along a rim in Bryce Canyon National Park.

While Brady’s physical health at the time wasn’t too bad, seizures were still a definite concern.

The solution?

“Lori and I had learned that if Brady had a

“Wipe your mouth, Snail Trail,” Darrell will often tell Brady.

The nickname comes from Brady’s excessive drooling — another effect of the brain damage from his seizures.

“He wants to be independent.

He wants to be as much as possible.”

LORI THOMPSON

Brady’s mother saddle that had a high seatback and big swells in the front, that we could tie a rope around it and it would lock him in from falling off during a seizure,” Darrell said. “We called the people that run the tour and made sure they had a saddle that would work for what we needed and that one of their horses had the kind of temperament that would not get Brady in trouble.”

The effort was a success. “It was one of those times he got to feel like everyone else, and he smiled the whole time,” Darrell said.

Brady’s efforts to participate are not all so elaborately staged. At one gathering, the youth group met at a nearby park and switched plans at the last minute from playing Frisbee golf to Frisbee football. Recognizing that Brady’s eroded motor skills would make his participation nearly impossible in the latter, Darrell suggested to his son that maybe the two of them should find another activity.

Brady, however, looked at his father and said, “Dad, can’t I at least try?”

That simple phrase embodies the essence of Brady.

“He wants to be independent,” said his mother.

“He wants to be as much as possible.”

And what he needed was a friend who could help him achieve those goals.

Coming out of a seizure in laughter, Brady is caught by his best friend, Joel Drake, while out getting donations for the Boy Scouts of America. In one of their initial meetings, Brady suffered a seizure at a nearby park and Joel helped him home. The two have been best friends ever since.

The best friend J

oel Drake received an almost instant indoctrination into the world of all things Brady. The burly, rough-and-tumble 11year-old and his family had barely moved into the Thompsons’ Lindon neighborhood in March of 2004 when Brady, then 13, stopped by to introduce himself and ask the newcomer an important question.

“I asked him if he wanted to be my friend,” Brady said.

And what was the answer?

“Yes,” Brady said.

Shortly after their initial meeting, Joel

bumped into Brady at a nearby park. Brady was sitting on one of the benches and the two struck up a conversation.

The discussion was unexpectedly interrupted when Brady had a forceful seizure.

“He had a seizure and flipped over and hit his head on the concrete,” Joel said. “He curled up into a ball. I was kind of freaked out ’cause I had no clue what happened to him. I was like, ‘What the heck?’ But then he came out of it and he was OK. I was like, ‘How can he be OK, he had a big thunk?’ ” Joel then half carried, half guided his new

friend home.

Darrell described the experience as “Brady 101.”

Making close, personal friends had mostly eluded Brady over the years. As anyone who’s ever spent some time on a school playground can imagine, his illness and seizures have been the subject of some ridicule and mean-spiritedness.

At other times, a simple lack of understanding or empathy led to disappointment.

“Part of it is Brady thinks the world loves him,” Darrell said. “I don’t think he ever meets somebody that isn’t a friend unless they do something to prove the contrary.

Even then, Brady has a huge capacity to forgive and forget.”

As one example, Darrell related how a group of neighborhood boys formed a band.

Somehow, Brady got the impression that he, too, was going to be in the group and the

Thompsons bought him an electric guitar so he could participate.

Brady received a rude awakening, though, when the boys made it clear he was not invited.

“Brady wanted so much to be a part of it,” Darrell said. “It would have been pure heaven if they could’ve invited him, even just once, and let him make some noise.”

So it was that Darrell and Lori were understandably a little skeptical of their son’s immediate enthusiasm after Joel helped him home following his seizure in the park.

“Brady came back from the park and said, ‘I have a new best friend.’ ” Lori said.

“And we thought, ‘Here comes another heartbreak,’ ” Darrell added.

That observation may have been solidly based on years of experience with Brady’s past relationships, but the Thompsons had no idea how wrong they were this time.

Darrell holds Brady up while he seizes waiting in line at a Subway restaurant in Saratoga Springs. Brady’s numerous momentary seizures often make him the subject of unwanted attention in public. “I don’t like it,” he says of the staring. “I say they stare ’cause they think he’s good looking,” says Darrell.

Everybody stares G

oing out in public can often be an unwelcome adventure for Brady. His unbalanced walking, coupled with his numerous momentary seizures and penchant for drooling all tend to make him the subject of unwanted attention from those who just don’t know how to react.

“He says, ‘Everybody stares at me, Mom,’ ” Lori said. “But the little kids just want to give him hugs.”

“I don’t like it,” Brady said of the staring.

What would he want those who can’t help staring at him to understand?

“I’m not like you,” he said.

“I say they stare ’cause they think he’s good looking,” Darrell said.

Once, when shopping at Costco, Lori said a group of children kept running up ahead just so they could turn back and brazenly watch Brady come toward them.

“How do we stare back at them and give them ‘the look’ to make them stop?” Lori said, her motherly instincts kicking in.

It’s not just children, though, who aren’t quite sure how to act around Brady. Adults, too, can be flustered into making juvenile mistakes.

Darrell told of a simple visit to a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant gone awry. While the Thompsons were waiting in line to order,

some nearby children were intently watching Brady. But then their mother pointedly corrected them in front of everyone by loudly blurting out, “It’s not polite to stare!”

“Well, yeah,” Darrell agreed as he related the story, “but it’s also not polite when you point it out in such a way.”

Kids, apparently, come in all ages.

ON THE WEB

“I’ve often said, if I had to deal with what Brady did, I’d like to lay in a corner and die, and yet Brady comes up smiling ... for all the years we’ve been dealing with it what I realize is I’m looking at the voids in Brady’s life; Brady sees the time that he is awake.”

— DARRELL THOMPSON

∫ Slide show and video interviews at heraldextra.com/brady

The Thompsons take a ride in Brady’s Polaris Ranger near Five-Mile Pass. Brady received the Ranger from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Utah. “That Ranger is happiness to Brady,” said his mother, Lori. “He can’t be in it without a smile.”

When Darrell takes Brady in his Polaris Ranger, Brady tries to push the gas pedal. Darrell has to keep his feet close to kick Brady’s away when they need to slow down.

Brady’s wish T

here is no question that Brady’s most prized possession is his Polaris Ranger ATV — a gift he received in 2006 through the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Utah.

Growing up, one of Brady’s favorite activities was riding behind his dad on a four-wheeler. The combination of Brady’s increased seizures and decreased strength and stamina, however, curtailed those adventures because he could no longer hold on to his dad safely as they rode.

Brady wasn’t able to give a lot of verbal input other than a “yes” or a “no” during discussions as to what his wish should be.

According to his father, the choice came down to three items: an Alaskan hunting adventure, a Polaris Ranger or a kiss from Hermione (actress Emma Watson from the “Harry Potter” films) — the mere reminder of which still causes Brady to break into a full-face grin a year later.

It was finally decided that the Polaris Ranger was the best fit and Make-A-Wish went about securing the exact model — described as a kind of golf cart with fourwheel drive — with the camouflage paint job Brady desired.

According to Mark Wiesenberg, the wish-granting volunteer who worked Brady’s case, the perfect Ranger was found at Mountain Extreme Powersports in Lindon.

“We call this Make-A-Wish magic as it was hard to find a Ranger with a camo paint job,” Wiesenberg said.

Just before Christmas, one year ago, Brady’s family took him to the Make-AWish offices in Murray — under the guise of checking to see what was taking so long with his request. Brady was completely taken by surprise when, in front of many family members and friends, he found his Polaris waiting for him with a big red bow on it.

Brady’s stunned reaction was a memorable one even by Make-A-Wish standards.

“It was the most inspiring moment I have ever witnessed in all my years of being involved with wishes,” said Frank Nilson, director of program services at Make-AWish. “The look of joy and surprise on Brady’s face was priceless — his eyes popped open for a few seconds and he just stood there as his wish began to sink in. Finally, Brady’s face turned into a huge smile and he looked up at his dad with giant, sparkling eyes, as if to say, ‘Look at THAT!’ ” Make-A-Wish found Brady’s story so touching that he was chosen as the cover model for the Utah foundation’s 2007 fundraising campaign.

“Everyone who was there that day says the very same thing about the event,” said Christine Sharer, CEO of Make-A-Wish’s Utah foundation. “They talk about the wide, brilliant smile that lit up Brady’s face and never left it once. He just climbed in the driver’s seat and stayed there.”

According to Sharer, Brady’s experience exemplifies all the foundation is trying to accomplish.

“If a wish can bolster a child’s will to live, we want to tell that story,” Sharer said.

“The community often sees a wish as a fi-

nality or a last resort. But those of us who do this work every day know otherwise.

A wish can be an empowering experience.

It can help the child see a positive future to reach for. It can renew a child’s willingness to fight for that future. It can remind everyone that that life can still be joyful, rich and good. Brady’s story carries that message.”

Riding beside his father in the front seat of the Polaris is probably Brady’s favorite spot to be in the entire world. The vehicle can fit the entire family and has led to untold hours of freedom and fun for the sick teen. It’s been used for deer spotting and hunting, trunk-or-treating and even for a sacred “last” ride when it appeared Brady had mere hours left to live.

“One of the best things about his wish, though, is its involvement of his whole family, his whole neighborhood and even a larger community,” Sharer said. “When a wish brings people together in this wonderful way — and wishes usually do — we consider it the best of all possible outcomes.”

It’s no small wonder, then, that Brady is so possessive of it.

“He loves that Polaris,” said Sheron Drake, Joel’s mother and a close family friend. “He is determined to take it with him.”

Lori and Austin, Brady’s youngest brother, shop online together while Brady is asleep in his bed behind them. Brady sleeps on a hospital bed in the same room with Darrell and Lori so that if something happens during the night someone is nearby to help him.

He’s not heavy, he’s my brother J

ordan is the only Thompson sibling who can recall a seizure-free existence. Now 20, Jordan was nearly 8 when Brady suffered his first grand mal.

“He was always a goofball,” Jordan said, remembering Brady’s first four years.

“He was a chubby little thing. ... And I was stoked to have a little brother.”

The Thompsons adopted two more children after Brady — Luke, who will turn 13 on New Year’s Day, and Austin, who will celebrate his 12th birthday on Thursday.

While Jordan was thrilled to have a younger brother, Brady had a completely different reaction to Luke’s addition to the family. Let’s just say it rated a bit lower on

the excitement meter than “stoked.”

According to Lori, the family only had Luke a few hours before Brady asked, “Can we take him home now?”

As one might imagine, there’s an interesting dynamic among all the Thompson children. Brady’s condition naturally requires a lot of care and attention, but Darrell and Lori still find a way to make sure everyone feels involved.

“We all just kind of understood,” Jordan said of Brady’s need for additional parental attention. “We knew that he needed a lot of focus, but they were always pulling us aside and making sure that we knew it, and trying to spend as much time with us as they could.”

The subject still comes up occasionally.

“You know, they’ll still pop off with things like, ‘You love Brady more than me,’ ” Jordan said of his youngest brothers.

“They’ll try to use it as leverage, but it’s just too funny ’cause it’s not true.”

Luke and Austin tend to employ different coping mechanisms when dealing with Brady’s tenuous condition. One tries to show little emotion about it while the other has a hard time keeping his feelings inside.

“Luke, I believe, has always seemed like he lacks the ability for close ties or the need for affection,” Darrell said when asked to evaluate how his sons have dealt with the situation. “He tries to help a lot with Brady

and shows kindness towards Brady, but you hardly ever see emotion about it. I know sometimes Brady gets irritated with Luke because he is the ‘big’ brother and wants Luke to know it. Luke also does little things to Brady when nobody is looking.

Austin, on the other hand, takes it all to heart and Brady’s poor health takes a big toll on him. Sometimes he will sit on Lori’s lap or mine and cry. I can tell you that is one of the times there is no way to put a smile on.”

Sit down with Luke and Austin for a few minutes, and it’s easy to see their father’s

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When asked to share their feelings about Brady’s condition, Austin gave a one-word reply: “Sad.” Luke’s answer, while containing more words, was more succinct.

“If I were him, I don’t know what the point of living would be,” he said.

When questioned about what activities he likes to do with Brady, Luke said, “I like to watch movies with him and go on the Polaris (four-wheeler).

And I like him to get mad at me.”

Why? “It’s just funny when he gets mad.”

OK, so little boys everywhere love nothing more than getting under the skin of their older brothers. But just when you start to think Luke maybe enjoys it a little too much, Jordan delivers another view.

“Luke is the most helpful one. I mean, I can’t do the things that Luke can do,” Jordan said, noting how Luke will attend to some of Brady’s more personal needs. “Luke can just do it, and Brady will get mad at him, but Luke will just keep on going.

“Luke will just take a punch in the face and keep on going.”

Austin added a special request to his Christmas list this year.

“I told Santa, ‘Get something really that can make Brady’s life easier,’ ” he said.

While Darrell and Jordan display a mostly strong front around the others, there are a few times when they, too, struggle to maintain composure.

“There’s times when I’ve been at work with my dad and we’ve both just broken down in tears in the truck because we couldn’t start thinking about it, and we just couldn’t take it. We had to pull the truck over and just cry,” Jordan said.

“At home, I’ve never seen him lose face at all,” Jordan said of his dad, “but when we’re at work, it’s kind of a more intimate setting — just me and him — and there’s been two or three times that one or the other of us has broken down.”

“He’s always smiling and he’s also a complete pain in the ass. He’s everything that everybody wants to be in their life — happy no matter what.”

JORDAN THOMPSON

older brother Jordan may very well be the older brother, but he freely admits that he looks up to Brady.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in my life who, basically, sits around all day, can’t do anything, has no idea what the future holds — and doesn’t care. I mean, he’s my hero,” Jordan said.

“Because no matter how bad his circumstances seem to the outside world, he’s like, ‘Whatever.’

He really doesn’t care, he just wants to live his life ... he wants a car, he wants a cell phone. He realizes that he can’t really have those, but he’s not deterred by that fact.

“He’s always smiling and he’s also a complete pain in the ass,” Jordan said, chuckling at the ironic juxtaposition of those descriptions. “He’s everything that everybody wants to be in their life — happy no matter what.”

Luke, Brady’s younger brother, puts on Brady’s shoes despite his broken arm.

At left, while on the phone, Lori catches Brady in the middle of a seizure. His older brother, Jordan, was holding Luke down so that Brady could throw a ball at him.

‘It’s my life, what am I going to do about it?’

S

ome of Brady’s most endearing traits are his overwhelmingly positive attitude and riotous sense of humor. For those who really make the effort to try and know him, he has that rare gift of allowing them to see past his physical frailties and into his heart.

“It’s those eyes,” said Sheron Drake. “They just get you.”

Indeed, during periods when he finds it difficult to speak, it’s amazing how expressive his eyes can be and how much communication occurs nonverbally.

Ask him how he’s doing during those times, and a typical Brady response is to hold out his arms, palms up in front of him, and shrug his shoulders as if to say, “It’s my life, what am I going to do about it?”

During a Scout trip to Yellowstone several years ago, the boys and leaders gathered for a testimony meeting — where individuals can express their personal thoughts on life, religion, the outdoors and anything they desire to talk about.

“One leader got up, then another. Then some kids did,” Darrell recounted, noting that he didn’t quite know what to expect when Brady followed suit. “With Brady it’s kind of a loaded gun — you don’t know what you’re going to get. He said, ‘You know, I spend a lot of time in the hospital and get a lot of shots.’ He then points up (to the sky) and says, ‘That’s OK, he’s looking out for me.’ All the leaders had wet eyes. He just takes it all in stride.”

During periods of decent health, Brady enjoys being outdoors shooting hoops, hitting baseballs off a tee, playing Frisbee or riding along in his Polaris. He enjoys a special fascination with spotting deer and would love nothing more than to bag his own trophy buck some day.

Ask him what’s the last thing to cross a deer’s mind and he quickly answers, “A bullet!”

Brady often finds the greatest joy in life’s simple pleasures.

Like going for a walk with his best friend, Joel Drake.

“We just walk around the neighborhood and he says hi to everyone he sees and talks to them if they have the time,” Joel said. “It means a lot to him when you do something like that. I wouldn’t look at it that way myself, that’s just who I am — but he thinks it’s a real cool thing.”

Lori told of a day in late August, when all Brady wanted to do was lay outside with her under the family’s peach tree. So they did.

Brady, face dripping in peach juice, raved about how great the ripe fruit tasted.

“He makes us appreciate the little things,” Lori said quietly.

During stretches when he is bedridden or unable to go out much, Brady can likely be found watching one of dozens of movies his family has stored in the front sitting room.

Specific movies provoke direct reactions.

Like any other teenage boy might react, an over-the-top flatulence scene in the littleknown movie “Escanabra in the Moonlight” elicits peals of laughter from Brady. Certain parts of “The Goofy Movie” force him into an attempt to dance along. Let’s just say you

With a little help from a nurse, Brady squirts his mother with a water gun. The pumping action helps keep up his muscle strength.

Brady often finds the greatest joy in life’s simple pleasures. “He makes us appreciate the little things,” Lori said. would never find these moves on an episode of “Dancing With the Stars” as Brady apparently grooves to a beat only he can feel.

The “Harry Potter” film catalog is also a favorite, but it’s the second in the series — “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” — that requires definitive action. There is one scene where Ron Weasley’s mother chastises her sons when they arrive home in the morning after a night rescue of the boy wizard. When that scene arrives, Brady always calls for Lori, no matter where she may be in the house, to recite along with mother Weasley as she exclaims in a lessthan-pleased voice, “Where have you been?

Beds empty, no note, car gone! You could have died! You could have been seen!”

Her performance always draws chuckles from her sick son.

Brady also has the ability to laugh at himself.

Sheron Drake told of a time when Brady was having dinner with her family.

“He had a grand mal at our table and his face went right into the plate of mashed potatoes,” she said.

At first everyone was worried, she said.

But then her 8-year-old son, Jared, started laughing and everyone, Brady included, joined in.

It’s his life, what are you going to do?

Brady gets a boost from his dad while playing basketball on the trampoline. Brady enjoys participating in physical activities despite his limitations.

“Hell will freeze over before I ever put my son in a home. Yeah, I have no life and I’m tired, but I would never put him in a home. That’s a death sentence.”

LORI THOMPSON

Brady’s mother

Darrell runs over to Brady in the family’s yard after he falls during a seizure. Brady’s seizures have resulted in numerous falls that have required visits to the emergency room. “He’s just Brady — he’s going to find a way to hurt himself,” Darrell said.

Of ‘red-rag drawers’ and scars B

rady’s seizures can come at any time and take many different forms, and keeping him from injuring himself is a virtual impossibility.

The Thompsons, in fact, have what they refer to as the “red-rag drawer” in their kitchen — which comes into play when Brady falls and blood is involved. As the name implies, the rags are, indeed, red in color — initially, not just from Brady’s blood.

“When he’d see blood, it would upset him,” Lori said. “All the kids know that if Brady falls they should get a rag out of the red-rag drawer.”

“If he didn’t see blood,” Darrell said, “he didn’t think he was hurt.”

The injuries are sometimes severe enough that there is no disguising them. In March, Brady fell outside near a neighbor’s house, opening up a gash in his head that required four staples to shut.

“It looked like a crime scene because it was a head wound,” Lori said of the accident site.

But it was a fall on April 8, Easter Sunday, that proved much more serious. Extended family members were scheduled to arrive that evening to gather around a fire pit in the Thompsons’ backyard. In true Brady fashion, he was anxious to get the fire started with his father — several hours early. Darrell told him they needed to wait, but Brady sneaked outside, the family thinks, to start gathering firewood. Instead, he had a seizure and fell nearly 7 feet — onto concrete — off a retaining wall overlooking the walk-out area of the basement.

“Jordan heard a thump and went outside,” Lori said. “Brady was covered in blood.

He was bleeding out of his ear. (Jordan) screamed so hysterically that we couldn’t understand him.”

Brady was taken by ambulance to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, where, after initial treatment, he was flown by helicopter to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Darrell and Lori made the drive to Salt

Lake, but were shocked on arrival to learn their son was already in surgery to repair a newly discovered arterial bleed in his brain. Medical staff told the Thompsons that if the injury had remained untreated for another 10 minutes, Brady likely would have died.

It took 25 stitches in his head and six in his ear to close Brady’s wounds. He was released to go home with his family five days later.

The Thompsons observed that each accident robs another piece of their son’s personality.

“You do lose a little bit of Brady in the process,” Darrell said. “When Brady’s done trying, then we’re done trying.”

The Thompsons were adamantly opposed to the idea of putting Brady in any kind of a nursing home or institution.

“Hell will freeze over before I ever put my son in a home,” Lori said. “Yeah, I have no life and I’m tired, but I would never put him in a home. That’s a death sentence.”

Darrell has since taken steps to prevent a

repeat accident at the same site — installing poles and roping off the area with plans for a fence and gate. Those efforts didn’t, however, stop the inevitable second guessing.

“He’s just Bra dy — he’s going to find a way to hurt himself,” Darrell said. “I’ve been beating myself up over it.”

Brady being Brady, he managed to generate yet another holiday visit to the emergency room. Lori was preparing to take him for a walk on Father’s Day, but as she was retrieving her shoes, Brady went outside without her and fell, putting a deep gash in his head.

This injury took 15 staples to close.

“You know, I think we are doing OK with Brady’s injuries, but when he gets hurt bad again and we see all the blood that a head injury generates — I know we are all still traumatized by the Easter Day fall,” Lori said. “It gets a little humorous when doctors worry that we may be upset about him ‘going to have a scar.’ A ‘scar’ doesn’t even rate on our meter.”

Laughter, the best medicine H

umor is one defense mechanism the Thompsons use to cut through the mounting stress of living day to day with their son’s health issues.

If you didn’t know them personally, one might be taken aback by some of the things that escape their lips. Spend any amount of time with them whatsoever, though, and it’s obvious that the good-natured ribbing is a part of everyday life in the Thompson house. Even the most biting sarcasm cannot disguise the deep love and concern bubbling below the surface.

“I think it has just been time that has given us the ability to laugh at things,” said Darrell.

“Sometimes our life is such a sad state of affairs that you just can’t help but laugh.”

One day Brady was watching one of his favorite videos, “The Goofy Movie” — parts of which would send him into funky dance gyrations and fits of laughter.

Family friend Amber Drake, 18, stopped by and asked Brady, “You watching ‘The Goofy Movie’?”

Without missing a beat, Darrell quipped, “Yeah, he thinks it’s a mirror.”

After returning home following his neardeath accident on Easter, Brady was still receiving shots on a daily basis. Recounting a shot that he had received in his buttocks, Brady said, “It hurt.”

Unable to resist the perfect setup, Darrell responded, “It gave him brain damage.”

“You’re evil,” Brady said with a laugh, clearly enjoying the mockery aimed in his direction.

Brady will occasionally be walking in his home when a seizure forces him to lose balance. He has

been known to fall into walls, where the impact from his shoulder or head will leave a hole.

“I’m like, ‘Why can’t you fall into a stud?

Why do you always fall between them?’ ” said Lori after describing Brady’s latest self-started, home-improvement project — a good-sized hole in a downstairs wall.

One of Darrell’s favorite running gags revolves around Brady’s Polaris four-wheeler — which he received from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Utah. No matter how out of it Brady may be physically, Darrell can always incite a spirited reaction by bringing ownership of the prized Polaris into question.

In early October, during one of the downturns in his health, Brady developed a slight up-anddown head bob. Darrell made a comment about going somewhere in “my Ranger.”

Brady immediately perked up and forcefully responded, “MY Ranger!”

“I asked you if I could have it and you were nodding your head up and down,” Darrell said.

“No ... MINE!” Brady said.

They then, as always, shared a knowing laugh.

As any other teenager, Brady loves talking on the phone.

So it was that the Thompsons found a unique way to solve two concerns at once.

“When the telemarketers call, we let them talk to him,” Darrell said. “Some people, I’m sure, think we’re weird, but you have to have a sense of humor.”

The family’s e-mail moniker says it all: mstbnuts.

Brady can’t help but laugh as neighbor Sheron Drake hands him a friend’s baby.

At right, Brady looks over at his father, Darrell. Spend any amount of time with the Thompsons and it’s obvious that deep love and concern abides behind the family’s good-natured teasing of each other.

Brady blows the “fluff” from a dandelion while playing out in the yard. Earlier this year, the Thompsons decided to search for Brady’s birth mother. “ ... We want her to have the opportunity to know him,” Darrell said of the decision.

The search E

arlier this year, independent of each other, Darrell and Lori both began pondering the possibility of attempting to locate Brady’s birth mother. The continued downward slide of their son’s health helped turn their minds to the woman who brought him into world.

“We’re going about it gingerly,” Darrell said in April, noting that the search wasn’t

being made on Brady’s behalf — because, truthfully, they weren’t sure if he completely grasped the concept and its ramifications.

“Lori and I are perfectly happy. But we want her to have the opportunity to know him.”

“It’s not the happily ever after she envisioned,” Lori said.

“I asked (Brady) if he wanted to meet her.

He said yes, but in Brady’s world, he never

has enough people to love him. He thinks everyone should love him, even when he’s ornery.”

Ironically, despite all the information Brady’s birth mother provided at the time of his adoption — including name, Social Security number, her birth date and the names of her parents — the Thompsons were stymied in their attempts to reach her. They filed a request through the Social Security office in late May, but never heard anything back.

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” Lori said.

The more time that passed without an answer, the more the Thompsons figured finding her was perhaps not meant to be.

“With all the information we have about

her,” Darrell said in late July, “we thought it would be relatively easy to find her. The truth is we have had no luck at all in locating her. When I think of how much she had to love him, I really want her to meet him, but the truth is that it would be so much easier emotionally to never have to meet her. Brady is such a special soul and we won the lottery when we got him. He has made us reach so much higher and beyond ourselves just by being a part of our family — but could I convey that to his birth mother or would she just be heartbroken over the damaged, frail boy we have now?”

It’s a question that would have to be answered later.

Joel Drake, Brady’s best friend, watches over him while he sleeps in a hospital bed in the Thompsons’ front room during a downturn in his health. On the surface, the two may seem like a mismatched pair — one burly and strong, the other skinny and frail — but Joel and Brady share a unique bond.

‘He’s teaching me’ T

o witness Brady and best friend Joel Drake — now 16 and 14 respectively — interact is at first an unexpected delight. It then evolves into a study of human compassion and true friendship on a level most teenagers — and many adults, for that matter — likely never experience.

Words are spoken, but they are clearly not needed. The main communication emanates from within.

During one of the downturns in Brady’s health, where he could not do much for himself, Joel sat near his friend on a couch in the Thompsons’ TV room. It was dinner time and without saying a word, Joel

picked up a piece of pizza and casually fed his friend — holding a slice up while Brady leaned forward to snag a bite. The process was repeated until Brady was done, with Joel often wiping the drool off his friend’s mouth between bites.

Observing this scene of compassion was a moving experience for a first-time witness, but it was obviously old hat for Joel and Brady. To understand their background is to better understand their bond.

According to his mother, Sheron Drake, ever since he was young, Joel has always been the “one” that teachers look out for.

The “one” that takes pride in irritating his sisters or others because he didn’t seem to

care about anyone but himself.

His friendship with Brady has changed all that.

“Joel is a funny kid,” she said. “Ever since he was a toddler he would just run and bowl people over. He’s like a bull in a china shop.

He’s also had friends, but they’ve always been kind of afraid or intimidated by him because he’s so big. Since he met Brady, I’ve seen a different side of him.”

That different side includes a compassion and caring that was unknown to her previously.

It also includes faith and prayer.

“Most of the time when Joel says a prayer, it’s warp speed, get it done as soon

as possible. Often you don’t even know what he’s said,” Sheron said, with moisture beginning to glisten in her eyes. “But there’s been a couple times I’ve seen him in his room on his knees, tears streaming down his face, praying for Brady. I don’t think he knows I’ve seen him.

“I thought it was interesting this last time when Brady pulled through, Joel said, ‘I knew he would make it.’ ” The last big scare she refers to was in mid-July, when Brady’s health was so poor that family, friends and hospice workers did not expect him to make it through the night.

Joel was scheduled to leave on a weeklong Scout camp early the following morning.

“At 5 in the morning, he said, ‘Mom, I have to see Brady — I have to,’ ” Sheron said. “So I took him over at 5 in the morning. He kissed him on the head and stroked

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Above: A letter that Brady wrote to his parents is one of the few things the Thompsons have of his handwriting.

The damage the seizures have caused in Brady’s brain has affected his speech and motor skills.

At right: Brady, at age 11, rides his horse named Vagus — named for a nerve which had an electric stimulator attached to it to help control seizures — in this family photo.

Continued from previous page his hand. And he said, ‘I’ll see you, buddy.’ He cried all the way to camp — a two- to three-hour drive.”

With no communication between home and his camp in the High Uintahs, Joel had no way of knowing how Brady was doing during his six days at camp.

As is his style, Brady managed a rebound in health once again. By way of surprise, Brady and Lori traveled with Sheron to retrieve Joel from camp.

“Brady threw up in the car on the way up there,” Sheron said with a laugh, before turning serious.

“When I saw Joel, he had this big pack on. He wasn’t excited to see me, but I told him, ‘I have a surprise for you in the car.’ He looked past me and saw Brady — and he dropped everything and ran to the car. He was so happy to see Brady alive.”

Ask Joel what the single greatest thing he has learned from Brady is and his answer belies his years — and directly relates to the maturity and change his mother has noticed in him.

“He’s taught me that what seems like service to other people ... is in reality helping me,” Joel said. “It’s helping him, too — but he’s teaching me.”

Funny how that works.

Darrell takes up a vigil at Brady’s side as his son sleeps in a hospital bed in their front room in July during a serious downturn in his health. At one point during this stretch, hospice workers and family members were unsure he would make it through the night.

This time, Brady understood W

hile the Thompsons were always acutely aware of the long-term downward spiral of Brady’s health, they were never quite sure that their son himself grasped the frailty of his own mortality.

At least until the evening of July 30.

Family friends Wes Harward and Tyler Nielsen stopped by to see Brady that night as Harward was making a round of farewell visits before leaving on a two-year proselytizing mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The two young men were among a group of about eight boys Jordan’s age, who used

to help watch Brady at church several years ago. These boys — then 16 and 17 years old — volunteered to shadow Brady during church classes and help keep an eye on him and care for his needs.

“At that time, Brady was likely to get up out of class and wander the halls or whatever notion would hit him at the moment,” Darrell said. “He loved the attention of the older boys, though, and they were pretty successful at keeping him in class and giving Lori and I a break.”

Those boys are now turning mission age at 19, and several of them have stopped by to see Brady before leaving town for vari-

ous assignments around the world.

Harward was scheduled to depart for the Brazil Joao Pessoa Mission the following morning when he and Nielsen stopped by to visit Brady in July.

“It was his last stop before leaving,” Lori said, noting that the visit occurred during a downturn in Brady’s health, when he couldn’t fully communicate and was limited to simple answers of “yes” and “no.”

“He kept trying to talk, but couldn’t,” Lori said. “He’d look to me to help him.

“I’d say, ‘You want him to obey the rules?’ And he’d turn to Wes and say, ‘Yeah.’

“And you want him to learn the language?’ And he said, ‘Yeah.’ ” It was the answer to her next question that provided the greatest insight. “ ‘And you’ll see him in two years, right?’ ” Lori asked. “And he just looked at him and shook his head and said, ‘No.’ ” It was not only a poignant moment for Harward, who Lori said was teary-eyed, but also for the Thompsons.

“She and I were just waiting for his answer,” Darrell said of the pause between query and response, “because we never really know what he knows.”

Now they finally had an idea.

The immunization debate A 2000 study of Colorado children found that those who filed religious or philosophical exemptions were 22 times more likely to acquire measles and six times more likely to acquire pertussis (whooping cough) than vaccinated children.

Two years ago, Utah Valley saw an outbreak of whooping cough -- the county health department recorded more than seven times the normal amount of cases. Those sick kids can spread disease even to vaccinated children. If the number of parents taking exemptions continues to grow, Miner said, the risk would increase, and the state would have to disallow exemptions to protect the population.

Logan Molyneux DAILY HERALD

M

arie Hansen of Spanish Fork says something changed the day she took her son Dylan to his 1-yearold doctor’s appointment.

Until then, Dylan had been successfully overcoming developmental problems caused by his low birth weight. But when he got his MMR and chicken pox immunization shots, he started crying uncontrollably and stopped breathing regularly.

Doctors and nurses were eventually able to stabilize him, but Hansen says she never learned exactly what happened.

She assumes it was a seizure, but all she really knows is that she soon realized something was wrong.

“He just seemed really off the next week,” Hansen said. “He didn’t really run a fever or anything, he was just off. The best way I can describe it is that he kind of lost the spark in his eye. I can show you pictures and it’s just night and day.”

Hansen is among a small but growing number of parents who choose not to vaccinate their children, and according to the medical community, consequently increase the population’s risk of disease.

Arguments against vaccines include the idea that large pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the vaccines are corrupt and lobby for vaccine laws just to make money. There has also been increased interest in natural health and the idea that you can be healthy without medicines. But the biggest complaint is that vaccines are administered by force.

Laws in every state require schoolaged children to receive a series of vaccine shots. Because there is overwhelming medical evidence and opinion stating that vaccines are not only safe but the greatest triumph of public health in history, many who choose not to vaccinate do so quietly and don’t speak out about it for fear of being seen as a bad parent.

Growing numbers Once home to one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation, Utah has increased its rates in recent years, and now ranks 20th. But more parents are now signing exemption forms to avoid the required series of vaccine shots for their school-aged children. According to Dr. Joseph Miner, director of the Utah County Health Department, about 5 percent of Utah County children have vaccination exemptions with UCHD, a number that has been rising in recent years.

“Utah has a history of having some of the lowest immunization rates in the nation,” Miner said. “We’ve been last, then next to last, then almost average.”

The state finally made it above average in 2006, with 78 percent of toddlers up to date on six vaccines. The national aver-

A matter of public policy Robert Johnston, an associate professor of history at the University of Illinois-Chicago, has studied the anti-vaccination movement for 20 years and said most of the resistance revolves around the freedom of making an informed choice.

“This is really the only area of American medical life that they’re not allowed to offer a truly free consent,” Johnston said. “Some of them may even vaccinate, but they may speak out for the right to choose. They’re willing to hear that vaccines are safe, but they want to make that freedom of choice.”

Vaccine skeptics say parents should do their homework before taking their children down the shot path.

“When you make a decision that involves a risk, you want to be the best parent and have the best information possible,” said Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, a leading vaccine skeptic group. “Vaccines should not be separated from the informed consent ethic in medicine. We recommend that parents do their homework and talk to one or more health professionals and get all the information they can.”

Fisher said overwhelming medical and public support for vaccines sometimes drives some parents to hide their choice.

“You have people telling you you’re unpatriotic and selfish when you’re just trying to protect your child,” Fisher said.

“Parents who do not vaccinate their children are seen as selfish, and they’re talked about as a danger to public health.

And when they use a religious exemption Daily Herald

age was 77 percent.

Most other states have lower vaccine exemption rates, perhaps in part because Utah is among a minority of states that allow parents to cite medical, religious or philosophical objections to the immunizations. In other words, parents can opt out for any reason. Most states only allow medical or religious exemptions (requiring parents to state that vaccinations are against their religious beliefs) and Mississippi and West Virginia allow children to miss vaccinations only for medical reasons.

Immunization programs are becoming victims of their own success, Miner said, because as contagious diseases disappear, parents see less of a need to vaccinate their children. A recent Associated Press study found a rise in religious exemptions in states that don’t allow philosophical exemptions. Some parents admitted their real concerns were about the safety of the vaccines, not their religious beliefs.

The increasing exemptions are a problem for everyone, because vaccines are only effective to the extent that everyone gets them. Dr. Russell J. Osguthorpe, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo, likens it to requiring everyone to drive the speed limit so everyone has a safe ride.

“We don’t immunize just for fun, or because we can,” Osguthorpe said. “It’s because children die from preventable diseases.”

to get out of it, they’re called liars. So the problem is that when parents talk about this they can then be targeted by their communities.”

Driving those who choose not to vaccinate underground is not the goal of public health officials like Utah County’s Dr. Miner. He said his work is a constant effort to educate.

“You have to constantly educate people about what it used to be like with infant mortality and preventable diseases,” Miner said. “But unfortunately it takes an outbreak of whooping cough to remind people that this is what our grandparents were talking about when you used to have six or 10 kids in order to raise four of them to adulthood. Now we take it for granted that we’ll raise all of them to adulthood, but that’s not the way it used to be.”

Reaction risks Yes, vaccines have risks — no medical treatment is 100 percent safe. Osguthorpe points out that, for all the good they do, vaccines aren’t risk free.

In recent years, the number of reports to the CDC’s national adverse event reporting system, which was created to catch problems with vaccines, has exceeded the reports of childhood diseases that are preventable by vaccines, with the exception of chickenpox, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Manual for the Surveillance of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases printed in 2002. The manual concludes that “in the absence of disease, benefits of vaccination may be overshadowed by reports of vaccine adverse events,” which could result in the resurgence of diseases that can be prevented by vaccines.

The National Immunization Program lists 27 diseases that are preventable by vaccines. Information from the CDC says nearly all those vaccines can lead to swelling or redness at the injection site and anything from mild to severe allergic reactions.

But medical evidence shows the more severe reactions to vaccines to be very rare. The CDC’s site says seizures (jerking or staring) like the one that may have affected Dylan Hansen of Spanish Fork occur in 1 out of every 3,000 doses. But long-term problems like Dylan’s mom describes, such as lowered consciousness and brain damage, occur in less than 1 out of a million cases.

“From an entire population point of view, the risk is so small that it is far, far outweighed by the benefits,” Osguthorpe said. “But if you have had a bad reaction, even if it was one in a million, it was your child.”

It’s not inconceivable that a vaccine could result in a severe reaction that causes the death of the patient, but such cases are so rare that a causal link is dif-

“Oh. My. Heck. It’s Easter,” laughs Darrell as Brady lays in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit after having brain surgery following a fall in the backyard. “If anything is going to happen, it’s going to be on a holiday,” said Lori. The Thompsons have spent birthdays, Fourths of July, New Years and now an Easter in the emergency room at various hospitals.

Other family members who came to their house for Easter dinner continued on without them as Brady was flown to Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

ficult to establish.

Doctors should report cases like Hansen’s, but they may not always link the problem to the vaccine because such links are so rare.

Osguthorpe said if there were any kind of trend developing, as was the case with intussusception, it would certainly be noticed and corrected.

Timing the shots Besides the risks associated with vaccines, some parents complain that there are just too many shots. The complete schedule of childhood immunizations recommended by the National Immunization Program requires 15 vaccine doses. Some of the doses can be combined and given in a single shot, but others can only be given separately and still others require “boosters” later in life. It could add up to a dozen or more needle pokes.

The schedule is there for a reason, Osguthorpe said. First, as a public health program, it was developed for everyone, not for individuals. Second, it was developed based on the times children are vulnerable to each disease.

“The reason we immunize babies is that’s when they need to become immune,” Osguthorpe said. “You and I don’t die from pertussis but babies do. And we don’t give

the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to children under 1 year because those diseases don’t affect younger children.”

Still, Hansen believes that there shouldn’t be a single vaccine schedule. She believes her child’s pre-existing condition should have elicited special care.

“Doctors really, I feel, need to wake up to the point that all kids are different,” Hansen said. “It shouldn’t be a cookie-cutter approach. I think they need to look at the children and their health issues. Obviously I don’t have any research to back it up, but in my opinion, there’s a reason some kids are having problems with the vaccines.”

Margie Golden, director of school nursing at the UCHD, said many times parents who file exemptions end up vaccinating their children later, either because colleges require them (most don’t accept exemptions), for travel or to serve a mission for the LDS Church. Though the children are eventually immunized, Golden says they were at unnecessary risk for years.

“The diseases hit the younger kids too, and maybe more so, so immunizing the younger kids is important too,” Golden said.

“We encourage parents to keep their kids up to date from birth on. I do hate to hear of cases of pertussis or other diseases that are preventable with a vaccine.”

How vaccines work WHEN A VIRUS INVADES YOUR BODY, the immune system figures out how to kill it with a combination of antibodies. But that process usually takes longer than it does for the disease to infect and damage the body, so you experience symptoms of the disease until it is killed. Once your immune system fights off the disease, your body creates a “memory” of how to defeat the virus in the future, and you become immune to that disease. If the virus comes around a second time, it is quickly recognized and your body can remember how to beat it. Vaccines introduce a weakened version of a virus to your immune system, so it has a chance to create a memory without having to fight off the real disease at the same time. If the real virus does show up, it’s easily recognized and killed. Rarely, patients can experience mild symptoms of the disease from the weakened virus, but generally the needle poke is the worst part of the experience.

Joel Drake, Brady’s best friend, steadies him as he stands on a stool to look at a nest of baby birds in a tree in the Thompsons’ front yard. “It still amazes me how he’s able to be so happy while he’s constantly going through tons of stuff,” Joel said of Brady.

Young and relentless B

eing friends with Brady is sometimes an all-or-nothing venture. If you’re in, you’re in all the way.

Joel discovered this early on.

Shortly after making friends with his new neighbor up the street in 2004, Joel, a loner by nature, was feeling a bit overwhelmed.

“You know, at first, I guess it was after a couple weeks of (Brady) coming over every day that Joel was kind of getting tired of it,” said his mother, Sheron. “I talked with him and said, ‘Joel, you just need to talk to him and tell him you need some space.’ ” Joel did just that.

Sheron laughed and said, “And Brady would say, ‘OK, can I come back in an hour?’ ” During periods of time last year when Brady was home from school, Sheron would return from her teaching job in the afternoon and find the family answering machine flooded with calls.

“I’d come home and there’d be 18 phone messages saying, ‘Joel, can you play? ...

Joel? ... Joel?’ ” These stories were shared in good humor, bordering on sheer admiration at the relentlessness and exuberance of a boy others might think has nothing left to live for.

In fact, those who don’t make the extra effort to get to know Brady are the ones who are missing out, Sheron said.

“They are totally missing out on the experience of a lifetime, in my opinion,” she said.

“He has touched everyone in my family — every single one of them. He’s touched all of us, but especially Joel.”

Sheron believes one reason for the boys’ strong bond is because of their special ability to be “annoying” to each other. (Some would consider this a teenage rite of passage.)

“Brady can be kind of annoying, but Joel will be annoying right back,” she said with a laugh, before turning serious again. “I

think that’s what attracted Brady to Joel — because he would treat him like he was normal. (Brady) doesn’t get that a lot.”

For the record, Joel disagrees with the “annoying” label.

“He’s not really annoying to me,” Joel said, “but he can be to his brothers.”

So what is it exactly that Joel likes most about his best friend?

“The way he has so many reasons to be really sad, but he’s the happiest person I know,” he said. “It still amazes me how he’s able to be so happy while he’s constantly going through tons of stuff.”

The Drakes used to live in San Jose, Calif., and Joel initially was not a fan of his family’s relocation, first to Pleasant Grove and then to Lindon. Citing his love for the beach and his friends in California, Joel said he has definitely struggled with the move to Utah.

He returned to California this summer

During a spur-of-the-moment trip to Yuba Lake on Aug. 1, Darrell places Brady in an inner tube. The cold weather didn’t damper Brady’s spirit — he smiled the whole time. Brady’s legs were so long that they sometimes covered his face from splashing water. for a special camp in the High Sierras with a lot of his friends from his old neighborhood and LDS Church group. The experience inspired some moments of personal introspection that led to an epiphany of sorts, allowing him to come to terms with living in Utah.

“I think it really hit him at that camp,” Sheron said. “He said, ‘Mom, I know why I’m (in Utah). It’s because of Brady. He’s the reason I’m here.’ ” Not for him to help Brady, mind you.

No, his realization was that he was here so Brady could influence his life and help prepare him for the man he would become.

“I’ve helped him in some ways,” Joel said, “but he’s helped me in a lot more ways.”

The Thompsons said they were touched to learn of Joel’s light-bulb moment.

“That was enlightening to us because that seems to be Brady’s lot in life,” Darrell said, “but you don’t know it until somebody says it.”

And means it.

The last ride B

rady gave everyone much more than a scare in early to mid-July.

If there’s any cycle to Brady’s health patterns, the Thompsons say, it seems to follow a series of peaks and valleys. Progressively, the peaks never seem quite as high as before while the valleys gradually get a little lower.

Brady’s health took a rapid downturn on July 6 when he suffered 13 severe grand mal seizures during the night. Two days later, he was hit by eight grand mals in a two-hour period. His strength sapped, he continued to lose energy throughout the week.

“We haven’t given up hope that his poor little frame is capable of one more miracle, but have made sure that over the past couple of years that nothing has been left unsaid,” the Thompsons wrote in an e-mail sent to friends and family at that time. “We pray that he will turn around and show us we’re wrong, but we have this feeling that this time his little body is so tired that he won’t be able to come back from this.”

The family’s fears were put to the test on July 14, a Saturday. Brady was on 5 litres of oxygen, Lori said, and his heart was beating in the 160s. On top of that, he was completely unresponsive and had a difficult time breathing. A visiting hospice nurse told the family that Brady probably would not make it through the night.

“We knew we might have only hours left with him,” Lori said.

It was determined that Brady should have one last ride on his beloved Polaris Ranger.

While Brady remained unresponsive, those that were there witnessed something they’ll never forget.

“One of the most touching things I have ever had the sacred opportunity to witness was a day we didn’t think that Brady would make it through the night,” said Sheron Drake. “(Darrell) was crying and determined to take Brady for one last ride before he left us. Darrell scooped him out of his hospital bed, gently kissed him, and I helped carry the oxygen tank to the waiting Polaris.

“Both his mom and dad drove him around the neighborhood for what we all thought was his last time. I have never seen anything more touching, when parents love their child more than life itself, take him for a ride on his wish. They knew it meant the world to Brady even though he was not responding to anything.”

Brady did hang on through the weekend and by Monday, while he had rebounded slightly, his energy level was still extremely depleted. He lay on a hospital bed in his family’s front sitting room, covered by his favorite blanket (a raggedy, coming-apartat-the-seams light blue one he’s had for years), a pulse monitor clipped to the big toe on his left foot, and a feeding tube dangling from his nose.

The temporary feeding tube, the Thomp-

sons pointed out, often serves as a fairly reliable barometer as to how their son is feeling.

“You can always tell when he’s getting better,” Lori said, “because he’ll yank it out.”

To spark a reaction, Darrell informed Brady that they had given his four-wheeler away.

“No!” was Brady’s exasperated response, followed by a weak, but knowing, smile.

Lori sat near his bed, holding a plastic newspaper wrapper in her hands, unknowingly twisting it around and around her fingers in a fit of nervous energy as she discussed her son’s condition and kept checking his pulse and heart monitors.

Darrell reached over and tickled Brady slightly, getting the desired reaction.

“This is a thousand times better than he was yesterday,” he said.

Eric Redd, a neighbor and Brady’s Scoutmaster, stopped by for a visit and to share a smile. Redd coaxed Brady into flexing his thin arm muscles for him, getting a huge smile from the sick teen.

“If you were a professional wrestler,” Redd told Brady, “you would be ‘The Praying Mantis.’ ” The description, one realized sadly, fit perfectly.

As Brady rested, the Thompsons showed a video of a family Christmas several years earlier — which showed a rambunctious boy filled with the excitement of the morning and talking clearly. It was hard to believe it was the same boy who now lay in a hospital bed several feet away.

“We have had this Brady for so long,” Darrell said, indicating the boy resting in the bed, “that we have forgotten what a talkative, smart-aleck kid he was.”

Two days later, Brady jerked out his feeding tube — and the fight was on again.

ON THE WEB

I thought why do I have to live in Utah? ... then I thought that the reason why I’m here is for Brady, and Brady’s here for me.

— JOEL DRAKE, BEST FRIEND

∫ Slide show and video interviews at heraldextra.com/brady

Lori lays with Brady as he sleeps in a hospital bed in their front room in July. Brady’s health was so precarious, hospice workers and family members expected him to die. Brady defied those expectations, however, and proved everyone wrong.

Darrell carries Brady into the house after a ride on his Polaris Ranger. The Ranger was a gift from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Utah and is Brady’s most prized possession.

‘He’s taught us all how to live’ T

ruth be told, you shouldn’t be reading Brady’s story yet.

This project was initially conceived as the opportunity to follow one youth’s passage through hospice care. It was designed to record Brady’s final six months — or less — and the emotional journey of a family losing a child a little bit at a time.

Along the way, however, we not only learned that Brady lives at his own pace — he dies at it, too.

As it unfolded throughout most of this year, this story became less about Brady’s slow death and more about his quick life.

A life that deserves celebrating and not mourning.

Not yet anyway.

“I don’t know how he does it,” said Sheron Drake. “It’s one miracle after another.”

Thanksgiving Day delivered a double

dose of gratitude in the Thompson house.

Brady’s 16th birthday was a day no one would have dared envision earlier in the year.

And yet, even the celebration of that milestone brought temperance to the Thompsons.

“I was writing down all the names of people coming for Thanksgiving and I wrote down ‘Brady,’ ” Lori said, “and I wondered if it would be the last time I would be doing that.”

It’s an outlook the Thompsons have been forced to adopt for some time. They do, however, take time to stop and smell the roses — that is if Brady hasn’t already uprooted them for delivery to the elderly women in the neighborhood, as he has done in the past.

“As long as he’s here and wants to keep

going ... as long as there’s quality to his life and he wants to live it, then we’re in it for the long haul,” Darrell said — way back in February.

The haul has been longer than expected as Brady’s fight continues.

And it’s a costly one at that. Brady is on Medicaid, which pays the bulk of his bills, but there are countless out-of-pocket expenses. Brady’s stay in Primary Children’s Medical Center after his fall on Easter, for example, incurred a total charge of more than $150,000.

“I can’t even make a good guess,” Lori said of Brady’s annual medical expenses.

“All I can say is the last two years, an average would be over $200,000.”

Whether financial or emotional, it all exacts a toll.

“I don’t think anybody has a clue what

Darrell and Lori go through on a daily basis,” Sheron said. “They don’t see that emotional roller coaster of wondering if your son is going to die on a daily basis.”

Which brings us back to the search for Brady’s birth mother — an effort that seemingly stalled several months ago despite all the information she had provided the Thompsons at the time of Brady’s adoption.

On Nov. 26, that information was sent to Jill Ekstrom who runs Utah Finders, an agency that specializes in tracing and reuniting willing adoptees with their biological parents. Two days later, Ekstrom reported that her Utah County associate, Van Canann of Counter Strike Investigations Inc., had, in fact, located Brady’s birth mother.

According to Ekstrom, she is currently living in Michigan.

With the desired contact information

Brady and Darrell ride around the block in special recumbent bikes they bought so that Brady could enjoy the same activities as his brothers and not worry about falling when he has a seizure. Darrell can connect the two bikes with flexible plumber’s pipe and rope so that he can ride behind Brady and have the ability, if needed, to brake his bike.

now available to them, it still took the Thompsons three weeks to wrap their heads around the virtual reality of facing something that had been on their minds for more than seven months.

“Until we contact her, there will always be that little voice in the back of our heads telling us this will break her heart,” Darrell said on Dec. 8, when asked about the delay.

“It is the overriding of that feeling that says if there is any possibility that she would want to meet Brady, that we have to make that call.

“We’re one phone call away now,” he said.

The Thompsons, however, never got the chance to place that call.

As fate, destiny or complete coincidence would have it, on Dec. 17 — the very day the Thompsons actually anticipated the possibility of placing the call — Darrell answered a “private number” call on his cell phone.

Brady’s birth mother was on the other line.

It turns out that she had received the query the Thompsons had sent through Social

Security after all. She had been sitting on the information for a while, trying to work up the nerve to risk opening a chapter of her life that still remains a complete secret to her family.

The two parties were able to share sentiments they each had nurtured over the past 16 years — since that night they stepped off a UVRMC elevator together and entered totally different worlds that would be forever altered for different reasons. (Yes, Brady’s birth mother confirmed — that was her in the elevator.)

“I just told her, ‘You know, I want you to know, he’s never been just ours,’ ” Darrell said of Brady.

“I said, ‘This is a neat, neat kid’ and I thanked her again for what she had done for us. And I said that ‘I wanted you to have the opportunity to get to know this kid, because he’s really amazing.’ ” While she naturally was saddened to learn of Brady’s health problems, Darrell said his birth mother knew she had done right by him by allowing his adoption.

“She ultimately came to the conclusion,

especially after talking, that this was where he was supposed to be,” Darrell said. “She said ... ‘It just confirms to me that you guys were meant to be his parents.’ ” Like contemplating a still-wrapped Christmas present under the tree, what this gift of knowledge will ultimately offer its recipients is still unknown.

But there is hope, faith and peace of mind — even if there might not be a lot of time.

“I think the ability to have us be open and willing to let her be a part ... was absolutely priceless to her,” Darrell said. “Whether she feels like she can act on it or not, the ability to do it and acknowledge that he’s here and who he is, and all that, was well worth anything else.”

The doctor who delivered Brady twice — first at birth and then to the Thompsons — has managed to keep occasional tabs on Brady over the years.

“I think Brady’s been kind of a challenge for them, I mean, he’s had some problems along the way, and yet I think he’s made their life really cool, too, in spite of those challenges,” said Dr. David Broadbent, an

OB/GYN who has been practicing for 31 years. “(Lori) will bring him by occasionally and I’ll see him. He’s not had the easiest life in the world, but he seems like a really nice kid, just a wonderful person.”

No matter what the future holds for this remarkable teenager, his impact certainly will be felt long after his fight is over.

Just ask his best friend.

“Once you get to know him you can’t just forget him,” said Joel Drake. “He’s one of those people you will never forget.”

Joel’s mother couldn’t agree more.

“Brady has brought out a compassion, concern and love that I haven’t seen before,” said Sheron Drake of changes she’s seen in her son. “He’s brought out a compassion and concern for another human being that is pretty awesome to see in a teenage boy. Now (Joel) makes friends easily.

I think Brady’s taught him a lot, especially tolerance.

“He’s taught us all how to live.”

And die.

Although a few of those lessons have yet to be taught.

As years have gone by with all the things weʼve been through One thing thatʼs always been constant is you I walk through the door and see in your face Though youʼre not always able to meet my gaze It may not always seem much like I care I just hope you know Iʼll always be there To pester and poke and bug you all day I guess we all show love in a different way I like to treat you like nothing is wrong Slap you around and sing annoying songs Iʼll always treat you like youʼre doing all right with stupid antics like a one-sided pillow fight But I saw you lay there on that sad Easter day And thought Iʼd never say what I need to say I love you, Brady, always have, always will The love I have has never been so real So just remember when youʼre sick in your bed Youʼll always be Brady and just fine in my head.

Written by Jordan Thompson Brady’s neighbor and Scoutmaster Eric Redd coaxes a laugh by asking Brady to flex his bicep during a visit on July 16. “If you were a professional wrestler,” Redd teased Brady, “you would be ‘The Praying Mantis.’ ” The picture on the TV screen shows a more-healthy Brady in a family video from several years earlier.

Brady raises his eyebrows at his father while waiting for the doctor at Primary Children’s Medical Center. Brady uses Vagus Nerve Stimulation, which is designed to prevent seizures by sending regular, mild pulses of electrical energy to the brain via the vagus nerve. He is believed to be the only person in the world to have two, one on each side of his chest.

His time with Brady

By Doug Fox

Brady introduced me to the singing buck on the wall of his bedroom during our first official visit on Feb. 26.

It’s one of those quirky novelty items, you know, where the head bobs, sways and lip-syncs to a pre-recorded song — in this case, a version of the Garth Brooks tune “Friends in Low Places.”

As Brady laughed while he danced and grooved to the music, I found a few of the song’s lines straight-to-the-heart appropriate from what I had already learned about this remarkable young man — in spite of the absurd fact that these nuggets of wisdom were emanating from the mouth

of phony trophy deer.

“But you’ll never hear me complain ... cause I’ve got friends in low places ... I’m not big on social graces ... cause I’ve got friends in low places.”

It turns out that the singing buck had another trick up its ... er ... um ... upper torso — which also can conveniently be triggered by a microphone. That allows the deer’s mouth to move and “speak” anything that is said into the microphone.

Brady’s father, Darrell, showed me how it worked.

“Hey, where’d my butt go?” the deer head said in mock outrage.

It was at that precise moment I knew the Thompsons

were my kind of people.

I spent countless hours with Brady and his family over the past 10 months.

I treasure every one of them.

It is said that a person’s eyes are a window to their soul.

If so, Brady’s soul offers a high-definition view of grit, happiness, determination and an endearing sense of humor — remarkable traits all, for someone facing his daily trials.

In addition to all the other things I learned about Brady, I know that he loves chocolate, his nickname is “Buddha Man,” and if a visitor stays too long that he will not hesitate to point toward the front door and say, “Go!” There have been many of what the world would call coincidences in the quick life of Brady Thompson. Another literally happened as this project was closing in on deadline.

The last-minute occurrence helped culminate a seven-month effort to find Brady’s birth mother — to give her the opportunity to know this incredible individual while he still haltingly walks among us.

Yes, Brady may have friends in low places — but you can’t convince me he doesn’t have them in high places, too.

During a day trip to Yuba Lake in August, Brady searches the shore for a stone to skip. His frail body was held up by his mother.

Her time with Brady

By Ashley Franscell I was eating dinner on Easter Sunday when I got the call.

I let it go to voicemail, waiting to check the message until after everyone was done eating.

The trembling in Sheron Drake’s voice made my hands shake.

“He fell in the backyard. About 7 feet. He was bleeding out of his ears. He’s been flown to Primary Children’s Hospital. You should probably go.”

I called her back in a panic, only hearing pieces of our conversation.

“He’s in surgery. They just got to the hospital. They’d like it if you’d come.”

My heart raced as I grabbed my jacket and headed out the door. I could hardly tell my guests where I was going — my voice cracked, my words were scattered and my thoughts were incoherent.

I climbed into my car and headed toward Primary Children’s Medical Center. My tears started as soon as I turned the key. My left knee bounced at the stoplight: anxious and scared. The three miles from my house to the hospital seemed like 100.

The bottom of my sleeve was wet from wiping my eyes.

I was afraid he was dead.

For the next three days I went to the hospital each morning and evening. He was asleep most of the time.

The moment that he woke up and matter-of-factly stated “I’m hungry” was the moment that we all knew everything would be OK. We all laughed. Brady would be OK. Brady has a contagious spirit. He has an orbit and as you get close, it sucks you in. Everyone loves Brady. And Brady loves everyone.

For 10 months I was Brady’s shadow. I went to Boy Scout meetings with him, we watched movies together. I grabbed the back of his T-shirt when he began to fall.

I always looked forward to seeing Brady. He became my crutch. Seeing his smile put my bad days in perspective, and seeing him fall down and get back up inspired me. He gives us all hope.

The Thompsons have given me the greatest gift that a photographer could ever ask for. They allowed me into their lives. They let me share Brady. They let me tell their story.

In a sign of unfailing love, someone always has a hold of the back of Brady’s shirt to keep him from falling during a seizure.

“What an absolute blessing it has been, and I hope it continues to be, to be one of the few who get to follow behind Brady and experience his life.”

— DARRELL THOMPSON, FATHER