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My hero is Devin VanCleave. For a school assignment, I was supposed to pick someone that I thought of as a hero. I chose Devin VanCleave, a boy who lives on my dad’s street. I chose Devin because he is a close friend of mine and because he survived cancer.
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COMMUNITY HERO:
DEVIN VANCLEAVE
by Rolf from Portland
One afternoon while Devin was playing soccer, his leg began to hurt. His parents took him to the doctor and found out that he had soft tissue cancer in his left leg. The cancer was called rhabdomyosarcoma cancer, a very aggressive and uncommon type of cancer in children. He was only ten. No child over ten had ever survived this form of cancer.
The other reason that I think he’s a hero is that he was the ambassador to a toy drive for children’s hospitals all over the Portland area. This means he was the face of a campaign to collect toys for sick children. The main campaign volunteers came from a huge group of motorbikers.
In spite of the fact that he has had all these serious experiences, Devin is still fun to be with and all around a great nice guy.
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It was likely that the cancer was going to kill him and he knew that. It was in an advanced state. He had chemotherapy and radiation. The intervention took between 9 and 10 months, and he had treatments every 3 weeks. It took 2 months before they knew that the treatment was working. The treatments made him quite sick and his hair fell out. At one point, he was in the hospital for 60 days because he had chemo, two surgeries on his leg, and an infection. He had to be in a wheelchair for a while after all that. Now he walks with a limp as one leg is quite a bit shorter than the other.
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Written by
Rolf from Portland
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A.B.A.T.E. of Oregon will collect toys for hospitalized kids in 2007. Rhabdomyosarcoma is discussed by The American Cancer Society. Shriners Hospital is where Ambassador Devin helped out. Biker-Events.com has 1700+ pics from the 2006 Toy Run! |
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I interviewed Devin and his mother, Terry. |
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Last changed on:7/27/2007
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