Friends help boy overcome arthritis pain, social ostracism

Scott and Darice Jamison have a sense of how things would be if Caleb and Paul hadn’t found their son and invited him into their lives.

They knew their son Zach was hurting “emotionally, spiritually and physically,” Scott Jamison said. Diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, the Jamisons, of Woodstock, had seen their son on crutches for months at a time and unable to play, walk or sleep because of the pain.

Kids aren’t supposed to retire from baseball at age 8, but Zach had to.

And then classmates started making fun of him, ostracizing him on his good days, picking on him and reminding others not to befriend him on the bad days.

So here was this 12-year-old kid, physically hurting so much on most days that he described his pain level as close to a 10, a kid who had to quit sports and walk away from the activities he enjoyed most.

And then the emotional torture started.

“Socially, it was getting extremely rough,” Zach said during a break from playing video games with his two best friends on a recent Friday night.

In a way, the three seem like typical eighth- and ninth-grade boys. They hang out in a basement, eat pizza, play Wii games and challenge each other’s manhood while competing for virtual world dominance. But the weight of what these kids know creates a somber sense of maturity.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I’d be here today without them,” Zach said.

Caleb, sitting on the floor, and Paul, stretched out in an old recliner, don’t seem surprised.

“It shows what a difference one person can make on another’s life,” Caleb said.

Paul added, “It tells me that I’m glad I met him.”

As is often the case, it took nearly a year for the Jamisons to get an accurate diagnosis of juvenile arthritis. At first, they felt the disease was under control, but this is a progressive disease and things started getting worse. When Zach’s hips started hurting so badly that he could barely walk, if at all, the Jamisons tried conventional medicine. Then they sought alternative treatments. They bounced from one doctor to the next, desperate to find someone who would take on this challenge and provide some hope for relief.

As time passed, the relentless physical pain morphed from frustration to depression. Zach was losing his fight with the disease, and his parents were losing their son.

Zach’s medicine wasn’t really working, and the pain was so intense that it made him throw up for days at a time. He hated going to school because he was embarrassed by how he walked, how he had to go to the clinic so often and how, occasionally, he would vomit at school.

“Here comes ‘Crip,’ ” a kid would say.

“No, it’s ‘Chicken Legs.’ ”

And Zach thought to himself, “I can’t do this.”

“I felt embarrassed, humiliated,” he said. “And all of this is being brought on because I’m hurting and I can’t control it. And kids are laughing?”

By seventh grade, Zach had withdrawn socially. His body was a wreck. His spirit was beaten, and his hope for something better was about gone.

Kids who had been his friends since he was 4 quit talking to him because this little clique of girls, who decided who was popular and who wasn’t, didn’t think Zach was cool enough. So if they were still friends with Zach, something must have been wrong with them.

It’s heartbreaking logic that is played out in middle schools everywhere; it leads to bullying by association. Survival of the fittest was demanding that Zach lose.

“He so much wanted to fit in,” Darice Jamison said. “It’s important at that age to be accepted, and instead, he was being taunted, then would come home exhausted, in pain, and wouldn’t be able to sleep because of both.”

Scott and Darice knew their son, little by little, was dying on the inside. They prayed over him. Over and over, they pleaded: “God, please give him relief; give us wisdom; lead us to a doctor who can help; restore our hope.”

Never giving up, Scott and Darice finally found hope and some answers. Zach found hope and a reason to live. Medically, the answers were in Baltimore, where, eight months ago, a doctor was willing to do arthroscopic surgery on Zach’s hips when no one else would. Emotionally, they found hope in Bridgepointe Church’s youth group. It was a fairly small group with only a handful of 12- and 13-year-old boys. There was a kid named Paul Guebert who went to school at E.T. Booth Middle School. And a King’s Academy student named Caleb Boerner. Zach, who went to American Heritage Academy, had found a couple of kindred spirits.

“We thought Zach was pretty cool,” Caleb said. “Besides, there weren’t a lot of kids there to hang out with who were our age.”

‘Amazingly different’

If that wasn’t a ringing endorsement, it soon would be. To Caleb and Paul, it just seems normal to see each other on Wednesdays and Sundays at church and then hang out at the Jamisons’ house a couple of weekends a month.

“When Caleb comes over, he always asks what Zach feels like doing,” Darice said. “Caleb accommodates him whether that is what Caleb really wants to do.

“And knowing that Zach has a lot of difficulty sleeping and uses a special mattress, Paul always asks where Zach would be more comfortable — sleeping over at our house or if he feels well enough to sleep at Paul’s. Paul has given up his bed for Zach so Zach would be comfortable, and Paul slept on the floor,” Darice added.

In a sense, Paul and Caleb don’t see the big deal. They get how low Zach had been, and they understand that he needed rescuing. Thinking of others first, putting a friend’s needs ahead of their own, that’s just who these boys are.

“I put myself in a mind-set to do what he wants to do when we hang out,” Paul said. “No big deal.”