Michael Hartley
Hometown Favorite Teen Moves on After Astrocytoma

When Michael Hartley walked in the Relay for Life to support the American Cancer Society, he and his family had no clue that cancer cells had invaded his brain and would almost take his own life that night..

On June 11, 2004, Michael “went to bed perfectly fine,” according to Laura Hartley, Michael’s mother. At about two the next morning, Brownie, the family’s dog, began barking in the room where Michael and his brother Eric slept. Laura got herself out of bed to check on the children. She found Michael covered in vomit.

Too much ice cream, Laura thought. She tried to wake Michael for a shower and change of sheets, but “he couldn’t stand, and he wasn’t speaking properly,” she recalls. She called out to her husband, Richard, to call 911.

At the hospital, Laura curled up in a ball while she and Richard waited and waited for news. At long last, they heard what they did not want to hear: A CAT scan showed a tumor that had bled near Michael’s brain stem, a region that controls such vital functions as heart rate, breathing, and consciousness. At age 13, their son needed emergency surgery to remove the growth that would otherwise kill him. “It was horrifying, just a nightmare,” says Laura.

The neurosurgeon on call turned out to be a family friend who had played basketball with Michael two weeks earlier. He was able to remove the entire astrocytoma (brain tumor), sparing his patient the need for chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

In the Intensive Care Unit, Michael was lying with his head shaved, shunted, and bandaged as his parents watched for signs of consciousness. When he awakened a few days later, he could not speak. He started kicking the doctors and nurses with his right leg, until a nurse tied it down. Laura said to him, “Michael, they only tied your right leg down.” When he began kicking his left leg, she realized that he could understand what people were saying.

One day, the boy stopped moving. Only later did an MRI scan point to the likely cause: swelling in his brain stem. “I lost everything,” Michael says.

After three weeks at Hasbro, Michael went to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. “He couldn’t eat; he couldn’t speak; he couldn’t walk,” Laura says. He received nourishment through a feeding tube, and doctors said he would probably never walk again.

Michael underwent two months of physical, occupational, and speech therapy as an inpatient at Spaulding. Throughout this time, Laura stayed by his side, but neither 11-year-old Eric nor 9-year-old Lauren, his sister, complained about their mother’s absence from their home in Lincoln, Rhode Island.

Eventually, Michael’s body began functioning again. The speech therapy not only got him talking but also, through practice with pudding, restored his swallowing ability. “It took a while for other muscles to come back,” says Michael.

Even so, Laura notes that Michael never felt sad about his illness. Michael says, “It just happened so fast; what can you do other than try to get better?” As to what kept him going through the hard times, he credits his friends and family: “Knowing that, when I got home, they would still be there--that helped.”

When Michael’s talking did return, it began with a slow whisper; as it grew louder, it entered a robot-like phase. Laura still remembers the time Michael decided to phone a friend for the first time since he became ill; she was surprised that he remembered the number. His medical problems had left his memory untouched.

Gradually, the eighth-grader resumed his education, at first with the help of a tutor at Spaulding. Later, he also attended school in a wheelchair with an aide one day a week. After Michael moved on to the next grade, he and Laura, encouraged by his desire to avoid falling behind in his classes and to spend more time with friends, pushed to get him back into school full-time even though the medical experts thought it too soon.

Three months after a tumor unleashed bleeding in Michael’s brain, the family welcomed him back home. He began putting in a full day at school and continuing his rehabilitation as an outpatient.

Despite all his therapy, Michael could not stay up more than about two hours before exhaustion set in. That did not stop his 13-year-old friends from coming over to visit and transferring him from the wheelchair to the couch or helping him with his leg braces. “He couldn’t do a heck of a lot, and they would still come and hang out with him, and they still do, four years later,” Laura says.

Today, Michael says, “I feel good physically.” Defying the odds, he walks, although with a walker. He uses a wheelchair only at school so that he can hustle from one class to the next in under four minutes. He goes to a gym, where he rides an exercise bike and does strength-building leg presses to make walking easier.

When asked how his life differs now compared to before his clash with cancer, Michael says “it’s not too different” except for the fact that he no longer plays sports. When Laura reminds him that he walks with assistance now, he says, with a laugh, “Yeah, but big deal.” Even his yearly MRI stirs up no worries in him about the cancer returning.

On further reflection, Michael talks about the upside of his illness. As he once told his mother, “If I didn’t get sick, I wouldn’t have been able to go and meet the Raiders.” The family saw the team play football in Oakland, California, thanks to A Wish Come True. “That was awesome,” Michael says. Now, he serves as the Rhode Island group’s first ambassador and speaks at many of its functions. “I like speaking in front of people; it’s fun,” he says.

Michael’s love of sports and public speaking mesh well with his career plans; he wants to become a lawyer or a sports agent. Although he faced cancer fearlessly, he has found his senior year of high school stressful as he prepares for college. He looks forward to graduating from high school on June 12, 2009, exactly five years after his Yorkshire terrier saved his life.

Laura Hartley is writing a book about Michael’s cancer journey.