Biotech Students Attempt Holiday Miracle

Biotech Students attempt holiday miracle

By Ellen Foley of the Foundation/Alumni Staff

foley@matcmadison.edu

My two semesters of Beginning Yoga at Madison College find me and my fellow students this holiday season looking to align our bodies and work to control our stressors as we reach out to the community. In my practice "off the mat,” I came across three gifts that yoga gave me this year: coincidence, serendipity and synchronicity. And I've watched them play out through a wonderful activity by our Biotechnology students, which needs the help of alumni and friends.

My story starts when I met Jason Swanson last Spring. Maura, our second daughter, had her fellow University of Wisconsin-Madison students over to the house for a celebration of the UW's Improvisation Group. I remember how well mannered these young people were sitting on the deck with their hilarious senses of humor rising in loud laughs and hushing in anticipation of well-timed one liners. They were practicing these gifts that we didn't even know we had: serendipity, coincidence and synchronicity.

It was Summer when I heard from Jason again. His father and mother who are craftspeople living in the northern Wisconsin town of Mercer were driving through the state to sell their homemade Christmas ornaments when his dad had an attack of double vision. Dave and Robin Swanson landed at Marshfield Clinic. The diagnosis was iffy but they believedthe scans showed Dave had brain tumors. Jason contacted Maura. Our daughter, who was then at an internship in D.C., linked Jason and me together by email. Jason and I began to workon his dad's health care plan.

It was coincidence that Maura had chosen the Improv Group. It was serendipity that brought Jason and I together. Synchronicity follows as our story continues.

I strongly urged Jason to get the diagnosis from his mother so we knew if it really was brain cancer. The family was waiting for this information that the doctor would discuss in an appointment the following week. It was Wednesday at this point and I was worried that if it truly was some form of brain cancer, the Swansons had no time to wait a week for another doctor's appointment.

The diagnosis was small cell lung cancer that had spread to the brain. I strongly urged that the family get an appointment at UW's Carbone Cancer Center rather than stay at a midstate clinic. With the help of several friends and research by Jason, we discovered that Dr. Anne Traynor was an expert in this area and through a series of friendships that Jason had made and friends that Tom and I had made in our cancer journey, we snagged an appointment for Dave Swanson that Friday. Twenty-one-year-old Jason was a research machine tapping every organization I could think of. He made sure his parents' Badgercare transferred from Iron County to Dane County. He got advice from the American Cancer Society office. He employed the wonderful Center for Patient Responsibility at UW, that sent a notetaker to Dave's appointments so the family could take in the complicated information.

I have kept in touch with the Swansons during the past several months. The news is not great. Chemo and radiation did not work well, a mutual friend told me. Dave is now in a clinical trial and we have our fingers crossed. Jason, who I can only imagine is in a frenzy of work, final exams and family care, is having trouble answeringmy emails in recent weeks.

You wouldn't know that the Swansons face such a grim prognosis. Dave and Robin moved their family, including a 16-year-old daughter, to Madison and rented a one-bedroom apartment near the hospital. Those of us who have gone through horrible chemo treatments know that a one-bathroom situation is not ideal. And a tight space, especially with a 16-year-old, doesn't allow for the privacy of the person who is trying to get better or the child who is trying to become a woman.

With food stamps, an old van, a loan based on Dave's possible disability payments and Jason's $1,800-per-month in student worker wages, the Swansons were proud to be making it. Dave and Robin had no savings. Theyown a home in Mercer and they inherited a small family cabin shortly before Dave's illness. Other than those relatively illiquid assets in this slumping economy, they had nothing but perseverance.

Yet in chats with the Swansons, everything was ducky. They were glad the apartment had French doors that allowed the daughter to close off mom and dad who would visit in the kitchen. Jason, who held two student worker jobs in the medical and science labs at UW, had it figured down to the penny how he could support his parents, sister and himself during the cancer treatments and his last year of college. Jason and I did most of our collaboration via email and the phone. Then one day his mother Robin called me to thank me for "all you have done for my family.”

Jason had done most of the work. He told me in one conversation that his father had a rough childhood and the Swansons were people who knew how to take care of themselves. His sister, for example, was loving West High School after spending most of her life in Mercer. Jason said he was doing ok, but I could hear the fatigue in his voice.

Coincidence was about to strike again.

Every Fall Madison College, where I am director of development, hosts a reception for new faculty at President Bettsey Barhorst's home. This year, I was staffing it for the first time and spent my time chatting up Arts and Science teachers. We've hired many of them this year because of the deluge of students making up our 12 percent enrollment jump. Thomas Tubon was hovering near the windows when serendipity struck. Thomas works in a lab at UW and he's teaching a course at the College in biotechnology, a hot field with much demand by employers. Out of my mouth without a thought, I said, "You don't happen to know Jason Swanson?”

Great timing.

Thomas did know Jason as did others at the reception. None of them knew Jason's father was so ill. They had wondered why he had been absent at the labs.

I urged Thomas to think about figuring out a way the labs could help Jason. My husband was still having fevers from infections following treatment and the whole family had a several-week bout with the flu that prohibited me from being more helpful in person to Jason. I didn't want to get him sick and I certainly didn't want to take the flu to a small apartment with someone weakened by chemo.

Enter serendipity.

In addition to teaching at Madison College, Thomas also became the advisor to the student chapter of the Association for Biotechnology. He presented to these Madison College students the dire situation of their fellow future scientist Jason Swanson. Even though Jason was at UW and not at our College, the Madison Collegians' hearts opened. One student went directly to the ATM machine in the school's hallway and donated $100 in cash.

Thomas organized a fundraising event so that the students could figure out a way to help Jason without emptying their pockets of cash needed for tuition and their own living expenses.

And here is where you, alumni and friends,come in.

Dec. 11, this Friday, Thomas and the students in the Association for Biotechnology will host a raffle. They need you to buy tickets BEFORE FRIDAY to help the Swanson family. Tickets are $2 a piece or 3 for $5. The students found several prizes including a $500 cash card and an overnight stay for four and water park passes at the Kalahari Resort in the Dells, an 8GB Ipod Touch, a $100 Gift Card, a $45 certificate for Outback Steak House. In addition, they have smaller denomination gift certificates and gas cards, and other prizes such as candles, etc. You can email Thomas at Tubon@matcmadison.edu to buy the tickets.

Your support will reinforce my gratitude attitude to the universe. And reinforcement is the final of the four gifts that comes from opening your heart to the universe or to God or to your higher power or to your sense of Good Karma.

My brief encounters with Jason, his mother and his lab mentor, Thomas Tubon, did act as a reinforcer for me when Alison Prange of the American Cancer Society nabbed me to help her and a committee of others touched by cancer to launch a Hope Lodge. Wisconsin has one in Marshfield. It's a place that cancer patients undergoing treatment can stay for free while survivingthe harsh treatments endured by David Swanson and my husband Tom, now in remission after bone marrow stem cell transplant from large B Cell non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Families like the Swansons would not have to live in a one-bedroom apartment relying on their son's student paycheck if Madison had a Hope Lodge near the state's largest and most sophisticated cancer center. Jason's story made it hard for me to resist Alison's pitch. It was so very synchronistic with Tom's remission and my good fortune of finding a great job at a world-class community college.

So if you find yourself estranged from that Thanksgiving spirit that you held in your hands just a few days ago, think about helping the Christmas-ornament-making Swansons by emailing a purchase of tickets for this week's drawing to Thomas Tubon at Tubon@matcmadison.edu.

Not only will it energize the Foleys and help the Swansons, but it will also cement your new connection with the universe. And we hope it will open your heart to the wonders of coincidence, serendipity and synchronicity, the three Kings of our holiday season.