Cancers don’t deter a teenage champion

TWIN FALLS, Idaho – Rusty Lowe just wanted to sit with his fellow band members this spring during the state 5A basketball championship game in Boise, but then he heard his name announced on the loudspeaker – Lowe wouldn’t be sitting next to the band this time.

He was an unusual sight to those who didn’t know him. Although he was only 18 years old, he used a cane to walk down the stairs to the floor of the arena. His face was covered with a breathing mask to protect him from the common cold – an illness that could kill him.

And a baseball hat covered his balding head.

But to the Bruins, he was the strongest man on the court, and he was someone who deserved a seat with the 5A state champions.

Lowe has been fighting a deadly combination of medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer, and leukemia since he was 10 years old.

For more than eight years, he has traveled to Boise for treatment. When his body couldn’t take more radiation, the doctors began using chemotherapy. And when his body degenerated to the point where a common cold could kill him, he began avoiding crowds.

But Lowe said everything he has gone through has taught him valuable lessons – the kind you can’t learn in the classroom.

“I have learned that when you go through tragedies like this, it ends up softening your heart a little bit,” Lowe said. “It’s definitely altered my life, but like anything else, it is what you make of it.”

So Lowe is making the most of what he has.

He plays the trombone for the Twin Falls High School band, although his illness has made it difficult for him to participate in concerts. He also helped raise almost $900 for the school band in the last three years.

When doctors told him he would need a bone marrow transplant within a month, he told them it would have to wait because he was planning to attend his graduation in May.

“I didn’t go to school for 13 years for nothing,” Lowe said.

“Besides,” he said, pointing to pictures of himself standing next to the Bruins with their state championship trophy, “I owe it to those guys, and all the others who have stood by me through all this.”

Lowe’s positive attitude about his condition – and almost everything else – is keeping him alive, his stepmother says.

“He has to be positive,” Debi Lowe said. “The fight will be over if he doesn’t have a positive attitude.”

She knows more than most mothers about caring for the sick and afflicted. Her oldest son was born with cerebral palsy, and she remembers some months when she would drive between two hospitals to care for her sons.

But caring for Lowe is a family affair – albeit a complicated one.

Lowe’s mom and stepmother rotate shifts when he is in the hospital. While one stays with Lowe in Boise or Salt Lake City, the other manages responsibilities at home.

“We probably seem like a strange family,” said Toni Tyler, Lowe’s mom. “But we make it work.”

In less than two months, they will organize the hospital rotations again. Lowe will receive his bone-marrow transplant in Salt Lake City, where he will be required to stay for almost three months.

“I would have to say I’m a pretty happy child,” Lowe said, looking at the poster dedicating the Bruins’ championship season to him. “And it’s my happiness that keeps me going.”