A True Inspiration

[CHC04Vault]

My friend Melanie, is an outstanding track athelet, she will be going to Loyola College in Maryland to run track. Please read this story, it's insperational, and when i have bad days, i remind myself my best friend is strong with much worse

No shortcuts through pain
Mercy track athlete Melanie Mitchell has endured the loss of her father and a fire that nearly destroyed her home.

Melanie Mitchell
(Sun photo by Jed Kirschbaum)
Apr 1, 2005
Photo Gallery

By Edward Lee
Sun Staff
Originally published April 27, 2005
In many ways, Melanie Mitchell feels and acts like an adult.

That's not to say the 17-year-old Mercy High senior doesn't have her teenager moments. She still likes to go shopping with her friends, will drop what she's doing if challenged to play a game of pingpong, and up until this past year, eagerly awaited her father's traditional gift of the Christmas Beanie Baby.

But in the past year, Mitchell, a track and field standout with the Magic, has endured a painful ordeal.

Last April, her father, James, died after nearly 18 months with bone marrow cancer, leaving her and her mother, Kathleen, on their own.

Then, in November, a fire nearly destroyed the Mitchells' home in Reisterstown and forced mother and daughter to live in a rental home for almost five months. The Mitchells were finally allowed to return to their house late last month.

Through it all, Melanie Mitchell has had to help fill the role vacated by the death of her father. She has helped her mother mulch the yard and stain the backyard deck, shopped for groceries and arranged her college interviews and visits.

"I've grown up more than any teenager should have to," Mitchell said. "I've just been pushed into adulthood."

Yet there has been no negative impact on Mitchell's performances on the track. A little more than a month after her father's death, Mitchell set school records in the 300-meter intermediate hurdles and the long jump at the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland championships last May.

In indoor track and field this past winter, she placed second in the shot put and third in the high jump at the IAAM championships en route to being selected to The Sun's All-Baltimore City team.

"You would think that a kid who's had the bad breaks she's had over the last year would just fall apart, and I've seen a lot of kids just crash and burn with less stressful situations," said Mercy coach Randy Fowler. "She just doesn't show it. ... She handles it better than I think I would if I were in her situation."

Settling down

When Kathleen Taylor met James Mitchell in August 1978, Mitchell was a traveling musician based in Atlantic City. Told by Taylor that she would not settle down with a man who spent more time on the road than at home, Mitchell gave up his musical career to enroll in pharmacy school. On Aug. 3, 1985, the two wed in Beckley, W.Va.

Before they even married, the couple knew that Kathleen suffered from endometriosis, a condition in which tissue that lines the inside of the uterus grows outside the uterus and attaches to other organs in the abdominal cavity, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes. The tissue can interfere with ovulation and is estimated to cause infertility in 30 to 40 percent of women who receive a diagnosis of endometriosis.

But on July 19, 1987, Melanie was born.

By her own admission, she was a daddy's girl. She loved to sit on the mowing tractor with her father, took up the piano as her father had done years ago and giggled so often at his whispered jokes during church that Kathleen Mitchell had to separate the two by sitting between them.

Melanie Mitchell said she began to suspect something was wrong during fall 2002, when her father complained of pain during their lively games of pingpong. Another sign was when James Mitchell, who had gone 20 years without missing a day of work, began using his sick days.

Exhibiting symptoms of soreness, stiffness and a lack of energy, James Mitchell thought the cause was a pinched nerve in his back. Or maybe it was Lyme disease.

In January 2003, the family learned the devastating news: James Mitchell was told he had multiple myeloma.

According to the Association of Cancer Online Resources, multiple myeloma is a disease in which plasma cells in the bone marrow become cancerous. The cancer cells can become so numerous that they force out normal blood cells and cause anemia. The cancer cells also can cause bone breakdown.

"When we found out, it felt like I had just been hit by a car," Melanie Mitchell recalled. "The realization just hits you. I didn't want anybody to know about it. I didn't even want to think about it."

For the next 15 months, James Mitchell had his good days and bad days. On the days when getting up from bed and putting on some clothes took Herculean strength, he stayed at home and e-mailed his daughter's performances in track and field to college coaches.

On his good days, James would accompany his wife to watch Melanie at meets. Even though there were times when the pain was so unbearable he needed to stay in the car, he was happiest watching Melanie. "He used to say, 'If Melanie's there, then I'm there,' " Kathleen Mitchell said.

Spotting her father in the stands invigorated Melanie, too.

"I tried harder than I ever had," she said. "I was, like, 'He worked that hard to get here, I've got to work that hard to show him what I can do.' "

Worsening condition

Despite marked improvement after chemotherapy between February and June 2003, James' condition worsened in March 2004. His appearances at his daughter's track meets decreased, and Melanie broke down several times and battled bouts of depression in private.

"I knew my situation was so different from those of the people around me," she said. "I just figured they wouldn't be able to relate to my situation. ... They'd be, like, 'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,' but they wouldn't be able to relate or say anything that would really help out."

Kidney failure caused by the myeloma contributed to James Mitchell's death on April 13, 2004 - just 37 days shy of his 57th birthday and with Kathleen and Melanie by his bedside. Aside from taking a few days off from school, Melanie didn't make any dramatic changes to her daily regimen. She practiced with her teammates and competed in the McDonogh Private School Invitational on May 8 and the IAAM championships on May 15.

"I knew that if I took time off, I'd just sit there and grieve about it," Melanie said. "I knew that if I just kept busy, I could work through it, that it would be just that much less painful."

Dealing with her own grief, Kathleen worried about her daughter. While Kathleen went to counseling and joined a bereavement group, Melanie declined to do the same. When her 17th birthday came around, Melanie quashed any idea of a party and only reluctantly joined her mother, aunt and cousin on a trip to New York.

"It was extremely difficult, and people grieve differently," Kathleen said. "I'm more open, and she's not as open. We had to learn to appreciate each other and how we were different with dealing with things in different ways."

With mother and daughter helping each other, their outlooks began to improve. Melanie was part of the Magic's cross country team that captured its first IAAM championship on Oct. 27.

On Nov. 3, Kathleen and Melanie were having dinner at a Towson eatery and discussing the benefit of attending a church service for families who lost loved ones when Kathleen's cell phone rang.

On the other end was her father-in-law. "Your house is on fire," he told her.

After the two rushed from Towson to Reisterstown, they found that the fire - caused by a short-circuiting cell-phone charger in the kitchen - had left the structure of the split-level home relatively intact, but had gutted the interior.

Firefighters were able to prevent the fire from destroying some personal items, such as a collection of photos Melanie had created to honor her father's life and some of James' clothes.

But many other mementos were lost - as well as a lot of their property. Kathleen and Melanie Mitchell spent several nights at Kathleen's in-laws' house. With only the clothes on their backs, the two drove to a clothing store and re-outfitted themselves.

When their insurance company moved the Mitchells to a furnished rental house in the same neighborhood, mother and daughter sat on the rented sofas and cried.

"It was, 'Yes, we know you worked very hard to make it so nice, but it's not our home,'" Kathleen recalled. "It was such a state of shock."

Added Melanie: "My thought was, 'This is not home and it's not going to be home and we're not going to be home for a while.'"

Both mother and daughter trudged on through the holidays. It wasn't until last Christmas when Kathleen and Melanie went on a trip to Massanutten, Va., paid for by Kathleen's sister, that Kathleen noticed a change in her daughter.

"That was the first time in a long time that Melanie said she was having fun," Kathleen said, adding that Melanie had invited five of her friends to join them. "It was the best Christmas gift I could ever get, because I started to see my child come back to me. Before, we were kind of like zombies."

Things are getting better for the Mitchells. They moved back into their newly remodeled home on March 27 and after a successful indoor track and field campaign, Melanie is drawing interest from Loyola, Salisbury and Towson.

Melanie, who can compete in the hurdles, jumps and throws, said she has never felt more alive than on the track.

"It is a big outlet," she said. "With all that stuff inside you, you can just let it out here. ... I figure that I've lost these other things that I love. I've lost my home, I've lost my dad. I love track, and I want to keep that."

Most importantly, Melanie's outlook on life has brightened. Melanie said the ordeal has transformed her into a more confident and resolute young woman.

"It's been almost three years with this heavy load, but I'm stronger for it," she said. "I feel like I'm ready for anything. I've survived."

http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/high ... -headlines