Horse Sparks Hope

My name is Devon, and I am 17. When I was 12, and I was getting my first break from chemotherapy for Acute Myeloid Leukemia, I told my parents that all I wanted was to feel my heart beat from something other than fear. So, against doctors’ orders, I was allowed a brief but powerful ride on my beloved horse Dudley. 

When Tracey Parsons and Susie Wrentmore from Make-a-Wish Idaho came to my house later that year, I shared that memory with them. After a short remission, the fast-growing cancer came back in my brain; it gave me double vision and a limp. I kept riding until the headaches got so bad, I was throwing up and I went to the ER three times one day before they ambulanced me back to Boise at 3 a.m.

Saving my life this time meant a move to Salt Lake City with my mom, without my twin sister, Gracie, massive radiation and chemo and ultimately a bone marrow transplant using my dad’s marrow. It meant isolation for the next six months, solid. No pets, no plants, few people.

I fought hard to get back to my health and my horses, but I lost a lot of kid time. Some friends changed a lot and moved on. I couldn’t physically attend high school with my sister because not enough people were vaccinated, they couldn’t do online school then. Dudley was retired with arthritis.

But I had to ride, so I used my dad’s horse Super Dave, to compete in high school rodeo barrel racing and pole bending for Wood River, and in the annual ski joring races. I stopped thinking much about my wish because everything in my life seemed limited with my challenged immune system.

Over the years, I and my friends have raised thousands for Make-A-Wish dressing as princesses. I was pretty happy with that. Tracey stayed in touch with me the whole time, talking through my ultimate wish and just reminding me to keep dreaming.

The granter is the most intimate contact a wish kid will have in this process. It takes a special gift to be able to draw out a child’s true wish. Tracey took time out of her own busy life to swing by my rodeos, or to grab a bite and chat.

“Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron,” has always been my all-time favorite movie. I had always thought I would like a horse just like that. He needed to be smart and fast and goofy, all business at work, but willing to play and swim in a river with me. He had to be a buckskin with a mane and tail as lush as Spirit’s and be able to be ridden bareback.

Apparently, Make-A-Wish Idaho had never had a request for a horse before, so I went for it. Little did I know, the perfect horse was waiting to be found in Montana. Tracey and my Aunt Trudy and her son Paul, had schemed to present the surprise by inviting me down to help teach barrel racing to her students.

I saw Paul riding that horse that morning and I was all, “dad, dad, that’s it, that’s exactly what I’m looking for!” And then I grumbled about how Paul always gets the best horses.

He said if everyone hadn’t been wearing masks, he would have spoiled the surprise with his grin.

As soon as I met my horse we went nose to nose. It felt the same as when I connected with my soul dog from my bed at Primary Children’s. I named him Koda, which is a Native American name meaning “the ally.”

In between my online schoolwork and working riding other people’s horses and cleaning barns with my sister, I’m on, or, near Koda, usually riding past Gracie and crowing about how perfect he is. He is exactly who I was looking for.

“It’s bittersweet,” my mom told a reporter. “We all know why we are here. Cancer’s what brought us together. But when you look at all that has happened in four years, and all these supportive people, you know Make-A-Wish is about more than just free stuff for the suffering. When they first approached us in the hospital, I was all hell no, that’s for dying kids, that’s not her! I thought they knew something I didn’t. Fortunately, my obnoxious response didn’t chase them off, and they explained it was for any child with a life- threatening illness. Before Dev even got close to her dream, she made a friend in this dark space and that friend, Tracey, was able to make her find the color the rest of us couldn’t see.”

On Nov.3, I will reach a milestone birthday, three years post-transplant. Life isn’t how I saw it, it doesn’t look like most people’s, but it is my life and I think it’s going pretty well. My dog is named Hiccup, and it reminds me that there are always hiccups between you and your dreams.

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