Sambo

From the beginning, Sam struck me as somewhat of a rare kid.  I went to visit his sister, Heather, whom I had declared would be mine, during Christmas break from Michigan State.  A tall, bright-eyed boy of seven greeted me with a, "Hi, Rob!"  and asked me to play aggravation with him.  I lost.  The strategy was to get him on my side thereby sealing the deal with his sister.  The thing is, he whupped me pretty consistently at everything that involved the mind or smarts of any kind.

This kid knew it all.  He would jump into every conversation that took place among the adults with his two-cents.  He argued his point on everything from which end of a worm was the head to the qualifying height of a dwarf versus a midget.  Not to say the adults had such enlightening conversation, we just liked to bring up topics we knew he just had to jump in on.

As the years went by, Sam showed a particular nack for the sciences.  He participated in the local science fair since the fifth grade.  he was constantly collecting specimens, sometimes living, sometimes quite dead, sometimes in his pockets and through the laundry.  What we didn't know at the time was that he would turn his focus later on to a more serious problem that was hitting closer to home.

Ten hours after my wife, the very woman I had laid claim to, gave birth to our third child back in 2001, my wife had strange spots, almost the size of mosquito bites covering her.  After some initial consultation, it was deemed that she had an extremely rare for of cancer called lymphomatoid papulosis.  This disease had the potential to turn into lymphoma, which as you may have heard is at time lethal.  Sam, now fifteen, told my wife, "I am going to cure you, Heath."

We took that as a noble but un-likely gesture.  This kid won't be taken lightly though.  He will fight and argue and back it up with results.  He came up with an idea that the disease might be a reaction to the cells that could have been transferred during birth and it was just her body trying to rid itself of the foreign invader.  Sam used his science fair connections and experience to attack the problem head-on.  He recruited support from SVSU's professors and gained the use of their lab and equipment to test his theory.  Through DNA testing, he found he was right.  The spots contained the DNA of our firstborn, our son, Robby.  His project earned him a place in the state-wide science fair competition that spring of 2002.  He was only getting started though.  The recognition he received got the word out.  The recognized authority on the disease started working with him hand-in-hand.  The next year he was able to reinforce his findings and gain the Grand Prize at the state fair and earn a spot at the international fair.  There, he took the award for the best bio-chem project, in essence, making him the top bio-chem student in the world.

The scholarship offers rolled in, the magazines and papers wanted an interview, and he was invited to work at Harvard University for six months last summer and fall.  His goal was to try to determine if his findings were consistent in other subjects.  While most high-school grads were celebrating their freedom and impending higher education adventures, he was hard at work trying to nail down the cause of this deadly disease.  While his fellows were partying and exploring members of the opposite sex whom they could declare would be theirs, he was pulling fourteen-hour shifts in the lab laying the foundation to find a cure for my wife and the thousands of others for whom there was no known cure, no known totally effective treatment.

Sam came back this past winter to start at MSU.  After being away so long, though, he was homesick and spent his first few weekends back home with us.  He had fallen ill while at State due to his refusal to wear a hat while riding his bike to class and chance his mop of hair getting mussed.  For some reason, his crew enjoyed hairstyles that make them look like hobbits on a windy day.  A windy day with lots of electricity in the air, for that matter.  To the point, Sam was driving back to school after a doctor visit and got himself into a very bad car accident.  We almost lost him many times.

It seems as though God had a different plan for him.  The MMR ambulance happened to be just passing by.  The flight copter was available that night only for that exact period of time.  The ER nurses and doctors were on their game and he pulled through.  He was in a coma for months but showed signs of total recovery.  Sam was taken to Ann Arbor to recover when he was only able to move his foot in response to command.  Each week we visit and he is able to do more and more.  A month after his arrival he could shake his head yes and no, use a letter board to spell out words and had his intelligence, personality and humor intact.  He is so stubborn and special that even death, he did clinically die once, even death couldn't hold him for long.

He has too much yet to do on this earth.  Too many people to help.  Too many lives to save.  God stepped in and said, "Not this one, this one is mine and he has work yet to do."  Literally back from the dead, I give you my brother, my best-friend, Sam Howell.