Greg and his friends Nicholas Murphy (left) and Jeff Newell joke at lunch. JEFF JANOWSKI

Saving Greg: After the surgery

Web posted November 14, 1999

 The surgery
 Additional surgery needed
 Recovery
 Progress fades
 After the surgery
 View the picture story

Story by Tom Corwin
Photographs by Jeff Janowski

May 4, 1999

The bigger kids walk around Greg as he sits on the carpet in the music room, his head down, staring at the songbook in his lap. It is open to Song of the Skyloom, which tells of American Indian legends.

``Do you have the magnet, Miss Young?'' asks Greg's friend and classmate, Nicholas Murphy.

``Yes I do,'' says teacher Debbi Young.

The small but powerful white magnet is passed from teacher to teacher at Midway Elementary School in Camden as Greg travels from classroom to classroom. If he starts to have a seizure, they can swipe the magnet across the device in his chest and activate it, sending a 60-second burst of electricity to his brain in an effort to halt the seizure. In the lunchroom the previous Friday, Mrs. Green had to swipe him twice before it seemed to work.

``What does a loom do?'' Ms. Young asks the combined classes, now sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Greg's mouth starts to open, but he quickly shuts it. He will not make a peep during the entire hour as the other kids shout out the song, making rainbow signs and mimicking falling rain with their fingers.

Nicholas is one of six kids who march back with Greg to their Individualized Educational Program classroom, where kids with special needs receive individualized instruction. Today's exercise deals with coins.

Using cutouts of quarters, dimes and pennies, they have to select the correct combination to match the number Mrs. Green writes on the board.

``Greg, you be the scorekeeper,'' Mrs. Green says, and Greg nods.

Just two days from delivering her fourth child, Lynne enjoys some time with her sons Greg and Mack in August. JEFF JANOWSKI/STAFF

He just watches to the side as the two teams scramble to slap up the coins, laughing. Today is still a good day, a Tuesday with no seizures in a couple of days.

``He seems to be more alert, less tired,'' Mrs. Green says, ``a little happier. He wants to participate more, and he's raising his hand more instead of staying real quiet.''

At the back table, Greg hunches over a calculator and glances at the worksheet. He whisks through 8 minus 2, 4 minus 3, 2 minus 2, halfway through reaching for a pencil and now punching in numbers with the pencil in his left hand. He starts 3 plus ... and stops, pausing, freezing.

``Are you OK?'' Mrs. Green asks, her face knitted with worry.

``Yes, ma'am,'' Greg says, his voice hoarse.

When the vagus nerve stimulator was first turned on, the jolt every five minutes made Greg cough. His hoarse throat has mostly subsided now.

He punches in the numbers and goes to write 13 but writes 31 instead. He looks at it, puzzled, then changes it.

``He is aware he is making the mistake,'' Mrs. Green says, ``and it's hard for him.''

In the lunchroom, Greg sits in the middle of the table and is instantly surrounded by classmates on either side of the bench. Nikki Wilson, 10, dutifully takes her spot opposite him and gazes across the table at him. Greg's sub sandwich seems to slide apart in midbite, and he struggles to juggle the flopping pieces of bread.

``You got something here,'' Nikki says, gesturing to her chin, and Greg swipes his mouth with his hand.

In The Augusta Chronicle photo lab, Greg clowns for photographer Jeff Janowski (center) and reporter Tom Corwin. In town for a checkup, Greg got a tour of the Chronicle building. JEFF JANOWSKI/STAFF

``I've liked him since I met him,'' Nikki admits, since they were in the first grade. ``He's kind of special.'' Across from her, Greg looks down, as if he would like to slide under the table.

``He's got some scars on him,'' Nikki says, matter-of-factly.

Greg's mother, who is continuing to substitute at Midway, is on lunchroom duty today and comes up behind Greg. She sees his soggy ice cream sandwich sitting untouched on his tray.

``That's going to melt by the time you get to it,'' she says, leaning over and gently unwrapping it.

Greg waits until she has left and then picks it up and puts it on Nikki's tray. He goes back to the mangled bread halves.

Nicholas, sitting next to Greg, seizes the opportunity.

``That's your girlfriend, isn't it?'' he teases Greg.

Greg, eating an apple, gestures at him with it.

``Why won't you be my boyfriend?'' Nikki asks, pouting a little.

Greg tries to hide his face behind his apple.

``Are you going to take her on a date?'' Nicholas asks, grinning.

Greg puts down his apple and turns to him, crooking a finger with his right hand for Nicholas to come closer. As Nicholas leans in, Greg play-punches him in the shoulder with his left. The table dies laughing and snorting.

The other children watch out for Greg in the classroom and on the playground. Nicholas, Greg and Nikki are inseparable as they walk around in the warm sunshine of the playground toward the swings, where Nicholas pushes Greg up into the sky.

``Don't push Greg too high,'' Mrs. Green calls out.

The trio takes off from the swing, quickly walking a loop at the far end of the playground.

``Greg, what you going to do when you get home?'' Nicholas asks. ``You going to play with your dog?''

``My dog's gone,'' Greg says quietly.

``Is he dead?'' Nikki asks.

Greg shakes his head. A few weeks ago, Peanut and one of her puppies were stolen from the Wests' yard. They found the puppy a few days later when it got sick and the thief dropped it off at the shelter. There is still no sign of Peanut.

Mrs. Green watches Greg from the shade, holding his magnet. Her first child is due this summer, and she will be at another school next year.

``Greg's excited I'm going to have a baby,'' she says, but he's sad about her move to another school. ``He almost started crying.''

She looks as if she will cry herself, after working with him for two years.

``I want to be optimistic, to help him catch up,'' she says. ``He has so much potential, and he tries so hard.''

Turned loose from the van, Greg and red-haired Megan, 8, race across the yard, and Greg returns surrounded by onrushing puppies. He scoops up ``Whiney Hiney'' and parades him giddily around the yard.

Down the hill from their house, Dennis is playing farmer, mowing their three acres on the tractor, while Mack sleeps in the seat beside him.

Sunburned and sweaty, Dennis climbs down off the tractor, and Greg, Mack and Megan take off toward the swing set. Dennis settles into a lawn chair next to Lynne, six months of pregnancy now pushing out her shirt and swallowing her lap.

Greg tries to sit on her lap and settles for sitting on the end of the chair. But then he hops up and snatches up Frisky, another of the pups, and puts her in a small swing like a booster-seat.

``Greg, that's a baby swing, not a puppy swing,'' Lynne says as she gets up to rescue the dog.

Dennis just shakes his head, smiling a little. It is hard for him to see Greg as a teen-ager, to look that far ahead. It is hard to imagine what next year will be like. For the next 18 months to two years, Greg will go to the doctor's office for periodic checkups. They will adjust the voltage on the stimulator, perhaps changing how often it goes off. If that proves effective, one of his medications may be reduced, perhaps later dropped altogether.

Since the surgery and the implantation of the vagus nerve stimulator, Greg's seizures have been reduced by 80 percent. He often goes a day or two without having one. When he does, a swipe of the magnet to turn on the stimulator stops it within a few seconds. Greg seems more alert, enjoying himself more.

He grabs a bat, and Megan, waiting for dance practice, patiently pitches him the ball. Greg swings hard but misses. The ball is thrown back to Megan, who pitches to him again. A strong swing. Another miss.

``Greg gave his ice cream sandwich to his girlfriend today,'' Lynne tells Dennis.

``Nikki,'' Megan teases.

``She's my friend,'' Greg says.

``She's a girl, so she's your girlfriend,'' Megan says. Checkmate.

Greg swings hard again, barely tipping the ball, then turns the bat over to Mack.

``From what we've read, he won't outgrow it, the type of seizures he has,'' Dennis says. ``I really don't know how much he'll progress, but hopefully he will with the vagus nerve stimulator and getting off some of the medications.''

``Hopefully he'll be seizure-free,'' Lynne says, her voice a little quieter beside him in the shade.

A few yards away, by a small tree, Greg stands to the side, watching Mack belt a pitch from Megan toward the road. He is blinking a little in the sun.

He is waiting for his turn.

EPILOGUE:

On Aug. 25, almost a year to the day after he underwent the surgery, Greg became a big brother again when Hunter Blake West was born, weighing 8 pounds, 9 ounces. Lynne has decided to stay home with him until he is 2 or 3, Dennis says.

Now back at Midway, Greg is doing better in school and seems to be retaining more. ``He's counting money now, which he wasn't able to do before,'' Dennis says. Greg still averages about 50 seizures a month but has been able to drop one medication altogether and has worked his way down from 2 milligrams of Klonopin a day to 1 1/2. Greg didn't get a chance to play baseball but is now interested in golf. ``It wasn't a miracle,'' Dennis says of his son's journey, ``but he is learning more.''