Friday, March 19, 1999

Grandchild's cancer puts life in perspective

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BY JOHN JOHNSTON
The Cincinnati Enquirer

        Joe Marsala is an electrical contractor. He's part-owner of a small business that does mostly commercial work, such as the wiring in gasoline pumps.

        Margo, his wife of 38¹/₂ years, works part-time in a medical office, checking patients in and out, answering phones, doing some bookkeeping.

Everyone has a story worth telling. At least, that's the theory. To test it, Tempo is throwing darts at the phone book. When a dart hits a name, a reporter dials the phone number and asks if someone in the home will be interviewed. Stories appear on Fridays.

        “We're just ordinary people, everyday people,” says Margo, who is 57. “We got married. We worked hard for what we have. We enjoy our families.”

        That's reflected in the family room of their Green Township home. Several dozen photographs representing six generations are arranged on a wood-paneled wall. More rest on a mantle; more yet on shelves.

        The Marsalas' three children are married and live in town. Margo and Joe waited anxiously for grandchildren, and now they have five, ages 5¹/₂ to 2. From oldest to youngest, they are Anna, Emily, Dominic, Katie and Rebecca.

A family crisis
        At Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and New Year's Day, everybody comes to Margo and Joe's place, including aunts, uncles and cousins. The immediate family gathers for other holidays and birthdays, too.

        “We're always getting together,” says Joe, 58.

        A birthday brought them together one Saturday three years ago. But there wasn't much celebrating, because that's when some of them first learned of Emily's tumor.

        She was 2, the daughter of Jeff and Jackie Marsala of Covedale. Jeff is Joe and Margo's middle child.

        During a routine medical exam, a pediatrician detected something unusual near Emily's abdomen. Three days later, surgery confirmed it was a tumor. Two days after that, doctors operated again to obtain lymph node samples.

        The diagnosis was Wilms' tumor, a cancer that occurs in young children. In Emily's case, both kidneys were affected.

        It was, of course, a shock to everyone, Joe and Margo included. They had raised three kids without as much as one broken bone, let alone a serious illness.

        Now they would experience the unfathomable: a grandchild undergoing chemotherapy and having surgery to remove a tumor, one kidney and a portion of the other.

Tiny child, big bed
       

        Margo remembers Emily's tiny body in that big bed at Children's Hospital Medical Center.

        “Seeing her with all the wires attached to her, that just absolutely broke my heart. I kept telling myself, "You've got to be strong, you can't break down in front of her.' ”

        Joe often volunteered to stay in the waiting room with Emily's infant sister, Katie; or he would offer to get family members something to eat.

        “We started to realize he couldn't be in the room with Emily,” Jeff says. “He couldn't stand to see that.”

        This is Joe today: sitting in a padded chair in his family room, thinking about his granddaughter's illness, and saying softly, “It hit me hard.”

        He admits being the most emotional person in his family.

        “I mean, it's just ... .” He pauses. “It affects you. To this day it still upsets me. My son (Jeff), he holds it all inside. (Jeff and Jackie) handled it real good.”

        Says Jeff: “In looking back, I can say this in all honesty: I cried one day. That was the first day. After that, I didn't want to cry in front of (Emily). As long as she isn't sad, why should we be?”

        Says Margo: “The way Emily handled it, she became such an inspiration to all of us.”

        “She never gave up hope,” Joe says.

        Adds Margo: “When she lost her hair ... ”

        “ ... it didn't bother her,” Joe says.

Another scare
        Joe wasn't so fortunate. He worried himself sick.

        “I took a stress test and they kept me,” he says. “They wouldn't let me come home.” He called Margo and told her that doctors had scheduled an angioplasty for that day to open a collapsed artery.

        Says Jeff: “We look back and we say, maybe in some ways (the turn of events) was a blessing. Because we had been trying to get him to calm down, cut back on what he does with his business, and relax a little more, and he wasn't doing it.”

        Today, Joe and Margo say they have much to be thankful for: the prayers of so many people; the staff at Children's Hospital; and for the recovery of both Emily and Joe.

        Last September brought another scare. Doctors noticed that two small spots on Emily's second kidney seemed to have grown. They operated on her a fourth time, so tissue could be removed and tested.

        Doctors said it appeared not to be cancerous, so they decided against treatment. They will continue to monitor Emily, who is doing just fine.

        Her picture is among many on the wall in Joe and Margo's family room. She has long dark hair and blue eyes. She loves to read and color.

        Emily will be 5 years old next month, which means another family get-together with kids and cake and ice cream. Some folks take that sort of thing for granted. Joe and Margo Marsala know better.

       

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