With a little help from his friends

Eight-year old cancer victim Brandon Gomez survived on the strength of the community

Rosa Torres holds a small glass piggy bank and begins to cry. Although it's filled to capacity with pennies, the bank can not be worth more than five dollars.

But to Rosa, it is priceless.

She received the bank as part of a coin drive put on by Lakeview Elementary for her eight-year-old son, Brandon, who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in January. For her, the bank represents the outpouring of support the community has given to Brandon.

Now Rosa Torres says, "Thank you."

Brandon's trouble started more than a year ago, when the boy started getting chronic headaches.

"It wasn't like he was sick the whole day," Rosa said. "Some days he would wake up in the morning with a headache and he would throw up, then he'd be fine. "

Rosa said she thought that the pressure of raising two children on her own was finally taking its toll.

"I honestly thought it was stress because he didn't want me to go to work anymore," she said. "And I used to work a lot, seven days straight sometimes. And I figured it was all catching up.

Rosa took Brandon to the doctor, but was not overly concerned.

"You just worry inside. But I guess in my own mind I thought as long as I was taking him to the doctor, then he was safe. But there was still that underlying fear that there is something out there far worse."

Rosa took Brandon in for tests, but they came up inconclusive. It was after Brandon's CAT scan in late January that Rosa's worst fears were realized.

"When they were doing the scan I knew something was wrong," she said. "Because he had had the same thing a few months before and they were really friendly and talking to me, but this one, they didn't talk to me, they didn't make eye contact with me. I could see them nodding their heads (while) looking at the computer screen and I thought, 'Oh my god, they found something.'"

Eight days after his eighth birthday, doctors found a growth in his brain they estimated to be the size of a golf ball — large even for an adult.

The following day, at Sacred Heart Children's Hospital in Spokane, the news went from bad to worse. Doctors ran an MRI and discovered that the tumor was closer to the size of a tennis ball.

"They did a brain sample," Rosa said. "At that point the knew it was a medulloblastoma. It was cancerous."

It was then, Rosa said, she began to feel guilty for not finding it sooner.

"When you're dealing with it every day you should think to yourself, 'There's more going on,'" she said. "And I just feel so bad because I should've done more. I didn't have any hope at that point."

In a few days, Brandon was to have the tumor removed. Months of radiation and chemotherapy were to follow. Rosa said she had a tough time telling Brandon.

"He didn't know what was going on and I didn't know how to tell him," she said. "I kept on telling him they were going to do something to make him feel better and it's probably going to feel a lot worse before he gets better. "

Although the surgery was deemed a success, doctors told Rosa that Brandon had Posterior Fossa Syndrome — a rare condition that has left him unable to speak, eat or move voluntarily.

"Right now he is at a baby stage," Rosa said. "He can't purposefully move a lot of things, but he can move them. That's where I am with him. I've got to start all over."

Rosa said the best case scenario is that Brandon will fully recover. The worst case scenario — he will remain in the same state.

"The more rests that he gets the more healing that is going on," she said. "We've been trying to stimulate his mouth and get him eating again because if you can get back eating he can start talking again. It is probably a year before I will know, more or less, where he will be."

When Brandon and Rosa returned to Moses Lake in early March, the reality of the situation sunk in, she said. "Now that I am home," she said, "There's not enough hours in the day."

Or money in her bank account. By March, Brandon's hospital bills totaled more than $200,000. When Brandon was diagnosed, Rosa took leave from her production job at Inflation Systems, Inc. to be with her son.

"My only thought that I'm not going to die, the world is not coming to an end, the most that is going to happen is that I am going to lose my house and car, but I will be here with my kid," she said.

By April, her benefits ran out. With Brandon's father in prison, it stood as the Torres' sole source of income.

But the community stepped in to help.

The Lakeview Missionary Church made one of Brandon's insurance payments. The following month her former employer footed that bill. Rosa's house payment was made through donation and a benevolent account was set up through the local branch of the Bank of America. The local Kiwanis raised funds, and Chrysler of Spokane made her a deal on a van so that she could transport Brandon to and from his radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

"I want to thank everybody here in Moses Lake," Rosa said. "There have been so many people that have helped us out financially. I couldn't have gone this far without help.

"I am so used to providing for myself, and I feel like I am in debt. This is a debt that even if you paid back what they gave you, you can't pay back the fact that they gave to you. I don't think of myself as an outgoing person, so you think people forget about you or that because they don't even know who you are, that they're not going to help. It makes you realize people do care."

As for the future, Rosa remains positive about Brandon's prognosis.

"On the one hand, it is the worst thing to happen to a child, " she said. "But on the other hand it is the best thing that it happens to a child because as an adult you're not going to see (improvement). I think he's going to make it through. I can't help but be hopeful, but at the same time it scares me. I am so afraid of being away from him. I put in so much overtime, especially when I first got hired on (at Inflation Systems), and even before when I got my house I had two jobs, so there was a lot of time I didn't spend with him growing up that I just don't want to miss out on anything. I guess I'm scared to lose him now.

"I think for the next year it is going to be hard, but I just thank God that I have him and I have this year, at least that I know of," she said.

She said she knows this time would not have been possible without help from those more fortunate.

And then, of course, there was the piggy bank.

"Little kids have better things to worry about, like Pokemon cards, " she said, cradling the bank like an ostrich egg. "He could have been spending his money on that. He was so eager to help. How do you break something like this?"

She doesn't plan to. And like that piggy bank, the spirit of the community won't be broken.