Despite a new house and community goodwill, daughter's cancer takes its toll on family

By Gwyneth Gibby

Corvallis Gazette-Times

The mouldy walls of the Byers' old house are a distant memory. Their new house is clean and airy; the construction crew installed state-of-the-art water reservoirs so the water is clean, too.

The family is delighted with the home they received from the TV show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." It is 4,000 square feet of beautiful dream house. Hundreds of people worked on it during a week of record high temperatures in July, many of them volunteers. Thousands more watched and wished the family well.

But the Byers family still needs another kind of extreme makeover - the kind that will rid their 8-year-old daughter Boey of cancer.

"I'd give it all away in a heartbeat if she didn't have to have this," said Boey's mother, Rachel.

As a landscaping crew from Stutzman Services put the finishing touches on the front lawn and garden Saturday, complete with boulders and gravel raked in the traditional zen garden wave pattern, Boey napped inside.

Her given name is Jenessa, but everyone knows her as Boey, the self-proclaimed warrior against childhood cancer.

"She's worn out physically," Rachel said. "She's depressed."

This past week is the first since the house was completed in mid-July that the family has been home for more than a few days. Most of the time has been spent at Doernbecher Children's Hospital in Portland, where Boey has undergone multiple courses of chemotherapy. It is a very aggressive, painful treatment, Rachel said, and basically torture for her daughter.

The good news is Boey's recent bone scans have been good. The tumors growing out of her spine have disappeared. Others remain, however, and doctors have said only 10 percent of children with recurring rhabdomyosarcoma, the kind of cancer Boey has, survive longer than five years.

Such statements anger Rachel. They don't take the family's faith into account, and God is an important part of their outlook.

"God can do things," Rachel said.

And statistics can be misleading, according to Boey's father Rob, because it's a rare form of cancer so the number of cases doctors base their predictions on is very small.

"Statistically you can't measure God," Rob said.

Boey has spent most of her energy in the past couple of months fighting her own lonely battle. But her efforts to get the Conquer Childhood Cancer Act passed have not been forgotten. The bi-partisan legislation would provide $150 million toward finding a cure. Boey wrote a letter in support of the bill and it was read into the Congressional Record. Rachel is proud that Boey has helped move the bill forward.

"It's getting to the president that much quicker," she said.

While Rob and Rachel focus on Boey and her brothers, friends and community members have launched a drive to help with some of the financial difficulties the family still faces.

Susie Foster heads a team selling $25 raffle tickets (five for $100) to win an afternoon with Boey. There are also chocolate bars for sale with wrappers containing tickets to the unveiling of the house, Oct. 7, when the show airs on ABC. Tickets and chocolate bars are on sale at booths set up at Starbucks in downtown Corvallis, Timberhill Shopping Center, Ninth Street and in North Albany.

"What I'd really like to do is pay their mortgage off," Foster said.

Unlike some recipients of "Extreme Makeover" houses, the Byers still have an outstanding mortgage, amounting to about $220,000. With the bigger house they also have much larger energy bills, $500 for six weeks this summer. They will eventually have to pay much higher property taxes on the new house, too. Then add in the ongoing medical bills.

Rob and Rachel are grateful for the support of the community. Rob has enjoyed encountering people he doesn't know who tell him about working on his house.

"Going into stores," he said smiling, "and having people say, 'Hey, I organized your closet!'"