Ethan Hoagland
Atlas: the mythological figure who, with tremendous strength, upholds the boundary between the mortal world and the heavens above. Many know him as the muscled, stoic figure carrying a globe on his shoulders. Sweet Home’s very own Atlas is 18 months old, loves music and is fighting for his life.
June was a month of firsts for Atlas Whitlow and his family. Atlas, the first child of Alex and Jessica Whitlow, and the first grandchild of Alex’s parents, celebrated his first birthday. With Alex preparing to leave for a mission trip to Romania the day of Atlas’s birthday, June 22, the family celebrated five days early.
Tummy troubles had been bothering Atlas as his father left for the mission trip. Alex returned July 5th, and as Atlas’s symptoms persisted, the family found themselves in the emergency room six days later.
“So we go into the ER, just thinking, you know, he’s got some kind of stomach bug,” Alex Whitlow said. “The nurses came in and kind of had this weird, apologetic look and were like ‘hey, we’re not sure what to do with what’s going on.'”
The nurses told the Whitlows they would need to see a specialist in Portland. They still didn’t know what was wrong with Atlas, until one of the nurses came back with a devastating clue.
“She just said, ‘hey I’m so sorry,'” Alex said. “It was kind of like, this confusion of why are you sorry?”
Tumor indicators in Atlas’s blood tests came back in the hundreds of thousands.
“She basically let us know that it’s a pretty high possibility that our son has cancer. For us, it was one of the most hard to hear moments.”
Just days after Atlas’s first birthday, the new father steeled himself to call his parents, the first-time grandparents, and give them the news.
“My dad’s a pretty stoic person,” Alex remembered of the call. “And so to tell my dad, and to have him go silent was pretty hard to handle too.”
The family saw the specialist in Portland, and as tests continued, learned Atlas suffered from hepatoblastoma, a liver cancer that targets children from infancy to five years old. It had also spread to his lungs.
But Atlas’s case is unique. Alex explained that doctors considered removing the cancerous part of Atlas’s liver, and letting the rest grow back. The problem: the cancer had taken over 90% of Atlas’s liver.
“Actually the doctors were really confused about how our son, who has less than 10% of his liver as active, viable tissue, isn’t in liver failure,” Alex said. Aside from getting glucose back into his bloodstream, Atlas’s liver is slowly but surely “functioning like a healthy liver should.”
“They’re [the doctors] not even sure how or why that’s possible,” Alex remarked. In naming Atlas, his parents gravitated toward the myth because of its themes of perseverance and strength. By choosing the name, Alex said they hoped it would imbue Atlas with the qualities he would carry for the rest of his life.
“He has become the epitome of those words, and we are blown away by how strong and resilient he is at 18 months old,” Alex explained in a text.
Heading into the holidays, it’s touch and go for the Whitlow family. Atlas is on the list for a liver transplant at Stanford Medicine. Once they “get the call” for a transplant, the Whitlows have “six to nine” hours to get on a plane and arrive in California for the procedure. They’ll be staying at the Ronald McDonald House, a charity that shelters families traveling for medical purposes. Alex’s parents will drive the family car to California. Atlas will have to spend three months in Stanford recovering.
Answering the phone in Portland, where Atlas is undergoing chemotherapy, Alex described a sense of isolation. He was unsure his family would get to spend Christmas in their own community.
But members of the Sweet Home community hadn’t forgotten the Whitlows. They’d been planning.
Nate Tyler, interim principal at Sweet Home Junior High School, attends River of Life Church with the Whitlows. When he learned what the family was going through, he had an idea.
“One thing I wanted to get involved with the kids here is thinking outside themselves, getting involved in the community – which we value here in Sweet Home – and helping others,” Tyler said. “We brainstormed different things we could do with leadership class and different things. But when I heard about this at church, I brought it to my team, the counselors and the other administrators, and the whole team was like ‘let’s jump on that.'”
To raise money for Atlas and his family, Tyler and his team thought outside the box. They found a way to galvanize support: paying to break the rules. For a dollar, kids could wear a hat for a day, which is normally against policy. For five dollars, kids could pay for the privilege of wearing pajamas. On Friday, Dec. 15 they paid five dollars to attend a special screening of “Home Alone” at the Rio. And, science teacher Ryan Kildea raffled off prizes printed by the school’s 3D printer.
All told, the kids at the Junior High raised about $2,200 themselves. Word of mouth contributions from their families brought the fundraiser’s total to $4,150 for the Whitlow family.
“I hear kids coming up and asking about Atlas, what’s been going on, what’s the treatment like, when [are] things going to happen,” Tyler said. “We know families struggle, but kids are still bringing in donations to help out. And so that concept of, ‘yeah my life isn’t perfect, but I’m still gonna help out because there’s someone worse off–’ having that is why my wife and I moved back to Sweet Home.”
“It’s overwhelming,” Alex said of the community’s support. “One of the things I love about having grown up in Sweet Home is the love of our community. I’ve seen it time and time again, where something happens and our community comes up and is able to wrap their arms around different situations.”
As the fundraiser unfolded, Jill Wilson, librarian at the high school, texted Jessica Whitlow a message from the junior high’s media assistant, Velma Canfield. Wilson passed along from Canfield that the kids’ engagement with the fundraiser for Atlas “blew their minds.”
“‘He is so loved. Alex is so loved. You are so loved,'” Alex said, choking up as he read the words from Wilson’s text. Alex called the text one of the “most encouraging” things his family had received.
The junior high isn’t alone in rallying support for the Whitlow family. A GoFundMe organized by Rachel Maynard, a Sweet Home mother no stranger to tragedy, has raised more than $19,000 for the Whitlows.
Meanwhile, 18-month-old Atlas continues to live up to his name.