Sunday, August 04, 2002
DAUGHERTY: Area kids remain cancer-free, thanks to ATP
When a kid at the ATP Plus-Five Clinic has been cancer-free for five years, the staff throws him balloons and sings “Happy Off Therapy” to the tune of “Happy Birthday.” Dr.Cyndi DeLaat walks in and says two simple words, the best words anyone will ever hear: “You're cured.”
It's the happiest place at Children's Hospital. It's there because of a tennis tournament.
The good news is the ATP men's tournament at the Mason Tennis Center has raised $5 million for the clinic in the last 10 years. The bad news is, the tennis center is for sale, no one at the moment can afford it, and if the tournament goes, the clinic for children recovering from cancer probably will, too.
We can give you the numbers: Price tag, $16.5 million, closer to $25 million when interest is added; $20 million a year in revenues to the local economy, nearly 3,000 hotel rooms occupied, about 180,000 fans watching the best men's players in the world. But the money mountain can't buy the heady mixture of elation and joy of a 10-year-old boy who is told he doesn't have cancer anymore.
That's what happened for Kyle McIntire more than two years ago. He got non-Hodgkin's lymphoma when he was 5. His family lived the nightmare along with him, every spinal tap — “Don't let them hurt me again, Daddy,” Kyle recalls telling his father — chest tube and chemotherapy drip.
And then the treatments stopped, the years passed without the disease recurring, and suddenly, doctors and nurses were singing to Kyle McIntire. “It became like a bad dream that never happened,” his father, Mike, says.
![[img]](http://enquirer.com/editions/2002/08/04/doc_150x200.jpg)
Kyle McIntire sits with his father Mike and his brother Craig.
(Ernest Coleman photo)
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Dr.DeLaat and three others at the Five-Plus Clinic take it from there.
They monitor the success stories. Chemotherapy can damage kidneys and weaken hearts. Treatment can be psychologically devastating.
“We're trying to make people understand, achieving health may come with a price,” says Dr.DeLaat. “It's our responsibility to monitor them and educate them. A third of our patients have health problems. The more aggressive the treatment, the bigger the chance for learning problems.
“I don't want to be dramatic, but we might not be able to keep the clinic” if the tennis tournament moves.
Kyle McIntire is entirely fine. He's 13. He got back Saturday from a week at Camp Friendship in northern Warren County. It's a camp for kids with cancer and kids who've survived it. He's a normal kid who sings karaoke at the Dairy Queen on Thursday nights, rollerblades with his friends and wrestles.
Kyle “is a tough kid,” Mike says. “He held up like a champ, through all of it. He was a horse.”
The tennis at the tournament is great. The boost it gives the area is unquestioned. But none of it means as much as helping one child live the rest of his life.
The land at the tennis center is worth $7.8 million. That's if it were made into office buildings, as if we don't have enough of those. Maybe the collective local governments will find a way to buy the tennis center. Maybe help will come from somewhere else.
Regardless, losing the tournament would be a blow. Losing the money it provides the Plus-Five Clinic would be tragic. No charity event here raises more money, every year, than tennis in Mason.
Every child should have balloons in his life at least once. Kyle McIntire did. All it meant was everything.
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DAUGHERTY: Area kids remain cancer-free, thanks to ATP
