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Show Fund-raising effort snowballs in 5-year-old's cancer battle P tffriM r by JANICE PERRY Record editor A new car, T-shirts, a race walk and a garage sale became symbols of hope to young Brent Bloomenthal and his family this week as the Park City community united to raise funds in the child's battle against a deadly cancer. Parkites opened their hearts and pocketbooks to the ailing 5-year-old in hopes of raising a seemingly unattainable unat-tainable sum of cash to fund a medical treatment that is the boy's last hope for life. Brent, a son of Phil and Jeannie Bloomenthal, Park City, suffers from neuroblastoma, a form of cancer that arises from nerve-cell tissue. The cancer can take many forms, and in Brent it has settled painfully in his bones, said Blair Bybee, his doctor at Primary Children's Medical Center. His only hope is a procedure commonly com-monly used to treat aplastic anemia and leukemia, but that only recently has been applied to Brent's form of cancer, Bybee said. The treatment also is expensive. The Seattle hospital where it would be administered requires the Bloomenthals who have no medical insurance and nearly $40,000 in mounting medical bills to post $100,000 before the procedure can be performed. A relative pledg- . ed half that sum and a growing number of Park City residents have set out to raise the other half. To this end, spaghetti dinners, car raffles, garage sales and other events have been put on the calendar and a Believers in Brent account has been set up at Summmit Savings & Loan in Park City to receive donations. dona-tions. As of Wednesday, nearly $5,000 in cash had been donated to the fund. As of press time, the following fund raisers had occurred or been scheduled: -A race walk last weekend originally was intended to put a new roof on the Park City Community Church, but promoters Marian Crosby and Ann MacQuoid changed gears and donated the $1,800 in proceeds pro-ceeds to Believers in Brent. A four-family garage sale held last weekend raised $800 and the families donated the proceeds to the cause. A letter went out to the business community Tuesday, asking merchants mer-chants over the weekend of Oct. 4, 5 and 6 to aid the cause. Businesses owners were asked to pledge a portion por-tion of their sales to Brent, display canisters on countertops to encourage en-courage donations andor make outright contributions to the fund. Local business leaders Randy and Debbi Fields donated a 1985 Chevrolet Sprint automobile to be raffled, with proceeds going to aid the cancer fight. Donations of $10 to the cancer fight fund will be requested re-quested for a chance at winning the car. Two Salt Lake City sister radio stations, KALL-AM and KLCY-FM, agreed to donate air time to promote the Believers in Brent weekend at Park City. Stein Eriksen Lodge and The YarrowHoliday Inn scheduled an Oct. 3 fund-raiser benefit dance at The Yarrow Restaurant with live entertainment and comedians from the Cartoons comedy club in Salt Brent to A6 Brent unites community. r . Cqprtnimqnedl ffDMDmm . . . arrangements to whisk the Bloomenthals to Seattle aboard a private plane if tests show Brent is now cancer-free and ready to undergo the procedure, said Teri Gomes, who together with Alan Ancell, Judy Holt and Mark Heiss have spearheaded the campaign. Brent's cancer specialist explained explain-ed the procedure itself is not new. "They've been doing it for years and years, but it's fairly new for this disease because it had not favorably responded in the past" to the treatment, treat-ment, Bybee said. The procedure involves the aspirationor aspira-tionor removal of bone marrow from Brent's hip. The marrow is saved while the child is subjected to whole-body radiation and chemotherapy to kill his remaining bone marrow. Then the boy's marrow, mar-row, which has been treated with other agents, is reimplanted or he receives the marrow of a sibling, Bybee said. The application of this procedure to neuroblastoma patients has been made possible by the advent of Cyclosporin and other agents, Bybee said. Cyclosporin, which has been hailed as a miracle drug, blocks the body's rejection of foreign Ijissue in a transplant. u ',,;;',; .--Vr "i; "It gives new and better control of the complications of the procedure," Bybeesaid. ; i;; .... ; r ,,, But this treatment, of neuroblastoma, Bybee, said, has a short history. "I spoke with Seattle (doctors) again today and we have no one who has had this transplant more than a few months ... maybe 20 to 50 percent per-cent are alive several months later." ,.''' Yet the procedure is Brent's last hope, Bybee said. Chemotherapy has only proved to be a stopgap in the treatment of his disease, stalling its progress temporarily but not halting it altogether. After Brent recovers from some of the effects of his most recent round of chemotherapy, a bone marrow sample will be shipped to the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles to detect the presence of cancer. If there is none, the boy can undergo the treatment in Seattle, he said. That could be as soon as two to three weeks. That is the reason for the haste in the fund-raising effort. The effort to aid Brent began in the halls of the Park City Community Communi-ty Church, where the Bloomenthal family worships. "Jeannie and Phil have been coming com-ing to church here and the people in this congregation will be with the Bloomenthals through the long haul," said pastor Mark Heiss. "They were here when Brent was diagnosed as having cancer," Heiss said. "These are people who prayed prayers and cried tears with Brent's parents and they watched his hair fall out through chemotherapy." He described the city's rallying to Brent's need as phenomenal. "The community's response has just been fantastic on such short notice, too," he said, noting the procedure pro-cedure has been a remote possibility for a long time. "Then suddenly, it becomes a real live option and boom!" he said. "The community's been coming together." Perhaps the largest donation came from the Fields, who purchased purchas-ed a new car outright and donated it for the raffle. "I think that when you live in a community like ours, we should do everything we can for the children," said Randy Fields. "I hope everyone who can get behind the community and help Brent will help out." .' Fourth-grade teacher Betsy Bacon has pushed the T-shirt drive for Brent at the elementary school and is gratified by the response of the parents. ; "I've had parents send notes saying, say-ing, 'I thank God for each of my healthy children and here's $8 for each one'" the cost of the new T-shirt. T-shirt. The T-shirts which are being silkscreened at rock-bottom rates by Mountain Design features kindergartener Chad Crowther's depiction of Park City as a land of sunshine, mountains and streams. The name of Parley's Park Elementary Elemen-tary School is "written across it in his own cute handwriting," Bacon said. She also noted Mary Doughty, owner of The Family Jewels and Picture Framing Annex, has matted and framed the original. It will be auctioned off, together with a T-shirt, T-shirt, at the middle school's spaghetti spaghet-ti dinner fund raiser Oct. 3. Also at that event, teachers will auction off their services for tutoring or maid service. The garage sale at the corner of Monitor and Lucky John drives was the work of Bill and Karen Coleman, Val and Steve Chin, Tina Lewis and Pam and Philip Thompson, said Karen Coleman. Others also donated goods, including Nancy Witt, Judy Taylor, Design Innovations and Diane Doilney. Brent from A1 Lake City. The donation is $10. A picture contest among Brent's kindergarten classmates at Parley's Park Elementary School resulted in a school logo voted on by the students. It will be printed on 500 T-shirts, T-shirts, which will be sold in Brent's behalf. The local Mormon Church Oct. 4 will host a $10-a-plate dinner, sponsored spon-sored by David Evans, with proceeds pro-ceeds going to Believers in Brent, The Treasure Mountain Middle School also planned a fund-raiser spaghetti dinner Oct. 3 on behalf of Brent. The Park City Emergency Center offered full-scale "executive checkups" for $175, pledging $50 from each examination fee to Believers in Brent. The Park City Rotary Club agreed to donate over the next few weeks fines levied against members for various rules infractions. This week that total is $46. The Park City Balloon Club plans to offer hot air balloon rides with the donations going to Believers in Brent. Miss Billie's Kids' Kampus preschool raised $300 and say the donations still are coming in. In the meantime, the boy's supporters sup-porters are working with Corporate Angels, a New York group, to make Bus riders ask for service The municipality has received a petition from 197 Park City residents asking that bus service not be suspended for the fall season. A number of residents have been struggling to make the city offer year-round bus service, rather than only during tourist seasons. The Park City Council, however, is not convinced it can afford to operate the buses during traditionally slow times of the year. The petition maintains the council does not understand the residents' need for the service. It says, in part: "After last year's petition, we all thought the city council and the city manager understood the dire need for public transportation in Park City." The city council is scheduled formally for-mally to accept the petition today, Sept. 26. Bus service is scheduled to be suspended Oct. 1. . ..' ... . . ,-, , .... A -.. s -"-J " 1 |