Mustang students are raising money this week to help freshman Cole Jackson in his fight against a rare cancer — so he can get back to being a normal teenager.
Mustang High School students are giving Cole's family the proceeds from their King and Queen of Hearts fundraisers this week, and Mustang Creek Elementary teachers volunteered to allow children to throw pies at them to help raise money for their former student.
This past fall the Mustang Mid-High football players shaved their heads in solidarity with their teammate and dedicated their flawless season in his honor.
Cole said he's touched by how much his fellow students care for him, but he's a bit embarrassed about being in the limelight.
“I don't like attention,” he said.
Life upside down
Last summer Cole started having headaches, and then, they noticed his right eye seemed to be bulging from its socket, said his mother, Rhonda Coleman-Jackson.
At first doctors thought he had a cyst. Cole underwent a procedure to drain it on July 2, which seemed to improve his symptoms, and he celebrated Fourth of July with fireworks and friends.
The next week, the Jacksons received the phone call that shook up their lives. Cole was diagnosed this summer with rhabdomyosarcoma, a soft tissue cancer that is diagnosed in about 350 children in the United States each year. Instead of a cyst, Cole had a 5-centimeter long malignant tumor near his sinuses that was inoperable due to its proximity to his optic nerve.
Doctors determined the cancer was stage II and had not spread to any other location in his body or affected lymph nodes. Coleman-Jackson said that was good news, because with chemotherapy and radiation treatments, the cancer has an 80-percent survival rate.
Shelby Jackson said her younger brother seemed to take the news in stride, while everyone else in her family panicked.
“I think the first week was probably the worst, like finding out and being so scared — not having any idea what was happening,” she said.
Cole faced a whirlwind of tests and doctors' appointments with realism that surprised his father, Mike Jackson.
“You just cope with it,” Jackson said. “You don't have a choice.”
Eau de fried chicken
Instead of football practice, Cole started more than 10 months of chemotherapy, with one outpatient session each week and every third week, he is hospitalized for a stronger dose. The inpatient treatments are the worst, he said, and make him so nauseous he doesn't even try to eat before or after them any more.
Since his diagnosis, Cole has lost more than 25 pounds.
Certain scents make his nausea worse — alcohol swabs and his mother's perfumed lotion are among the main culprits. Now, just the thought of fried chicken makes him ill.
On those days, Jackson said it's tough to find anything his son will eat.
“It's a rough few days when we have to do inpatient,” his father said.
The therapy leaves him feeling weak in his joints, Cole said, and it has wreaked havoc on his sense of taste. He said he's also worried it has affected his vision, although his parents are hopeful these changes are not permanent.
In addition to chemotherapy, Cole underwent six weeks of proton laser radiation therapy at a cancer hospital in Houston, Texas. The Jacksons fought for their son to get the treatment after the insurance was initially denied.
Coleman-Jackson said they worried Cole's growing brain would be damaged if he underwent traditional radiation therapy because of the location of the tumor. The proton laser beam is more focused and leads less damage and side effects.
The treatments took about 15 minutes, but Cole said he could smell an electrical burning odor when the laser was on.
“It was so close to my eye and nose it would make me smell and see weird stuff,” he said. “When it was happening, I could see a blue-purplish flash whenever the beams would hit me.”
Cole spent most of August and September in Houston receiving treatments, and his parents took turns staying with him. He said the distance and traveling was tough on his family, but they made it through it.
Cole was able to start his ninth-grade year on Sept. 20, about one month late, although he received tutoring while undergoing radiation treatments in Houston. He normally doesn't miss school for routine chemotherapy, but the inpatient treatments knock him down for a few days.
On nights when he's felt to badly too sleep, he played his Xbox 360 online with a cousin in Dallas.
Cole also practices playing guitar, which he started learning about a year ago.
Jackson said through it all Cole hasn't complained, not about the treatments or feeling sick. When his curly locks started falling out, Cole joked, “Maybe it will grow back in straight.”
Reason to hope
Last week, Cole underwent scans and tests to check on the progress of his treatment. Coleman-Jackson said the results brought the best possible news, showing a small amount of scar tissue and no active disease. He still has to undergo chemotherapy treatments through April and then undergo more tests in May.
Through it all, she said their friends, family and church have offered a tremendous support. In those first few weeks, friends delivered home-cooked meals to the family, which Shelby described as “the best food I have ever eaten in my whole life.”