Wish come true
By Justin Hayes
Published in News on February 1, 2016 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Isabella McKeel sits on her mother Abby's lap while posing for a photo after her Make-A-Wish trip to Hawaii reveal Saturday night during halftime of the University of Mount Olive's men's basketball game. The 7-year-old was diagnosed March 25, 2013, and the wish marks her sixth month without treatment.
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Isabella passes a pineapple and coconut to her parents to clear her hands for more Hawaiian themed items being given to her by University of Mount Olive students and representatives from Make-A-Wish.
MOUNT OLIVE -- For most children, first grade is a year of charted enlightenment. A time to assemble the primary building blocks of higher-order learning.
Addition and subtraction, new friends and a sprawling cafeteria full of chatter are what most first-graders expect, but for seven year old Isabella McKeel, a student at Grantham Elementary, it marked a different type of milestone -- remission.
This past weekend, during halftime of the University of Mount Olive's annual church night celebration, the Eastern North Carolina Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation celebrated her triumph with a trip to Hawaii.
In June of this year, the McKeel family -- all five of them -- will leave Goldsboro for a two-week stay in the nation's 50th state, and in the process, can wave goodbye to a tumultuous three years.
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In March of 2013, Isabella's skin was beginning to show signs of petechiae -- a magenta colored run of platelet-deprived discoloration, accompanied by significant bruising -- which her parents, James and Abby, considered highly abnormal.
Ultimately, the abnormality became a horrifying reality.
Isabella was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is a strand of cellular infection that appears in roughly a third of all pediatric cancer patients and carries with it a rigorous treatment cycle.
The treatment came along with 23 lumbar punctures, each designed to examine cell activity in spinal fluid, and oral chemotherapy administered once daily for more than two years.
But Isabella never complained.
Isabella, whose interests range from horses to dance to arts and crafts, refused to miss a beat, and instead focused her energy on the well-being of children she considered less fortunate.
"The whole time she was in treatment, she was never mad. Never asked why ... but she did want a friend," her father, James said.
And after enduring five-hour road round trips that resulted in overnight stays and rigorous chemotherapy treatments, Isabella has ensured no one else will have to go through such an ordeal alone. The McKeel family, along with a few area sponsors, personally set about the task of hand-crafting over 100 stuffed bears, all of which now reside in the beds of children hospitalized at the Duke University Center for Pediatric Oncology.
Call it another wish fulfilled.
"She's been through more at seven than I've been through at 34," her father said, "and looking at her today, you'd never know anything was wrong."
But, Isabella McKeel isn't a normal first-grade student. She's a fighter and a free spirit and a survivor. And when she begins second grade, she'll have a Hawaiian tan to show for it.