Gateway Young Achievers 2006

Festus girl's rebound from brain tumor

(Fourth in a Series)

Fourteen-year-old Emily Adams likes to write poetry to help her cope with stressful situations. And when she wrote "Until My Heart Stops Crying," she was certainly under plenty of stress.

She wrote the poem in January, 2005, the day before she underwent an operation to remove a tumor from the middle of her brain. The operation was conducted at St. Louis Children's Hospital in St. Louis.

Although the tumor was the size of a plum, it was benign. And, within two months, she was back at Festus Middle School resuming her high level of class work and community involvement.

Emily Adams

During the 2005-2006 school year as an eighth grader, Emily's work earned her a designation as a 2006 Gateway Young Achiever. This award is given to four elementary, four middle and four high school students in the St. Louis metro area.

(This article is the fourth of eight profiles by Young Saint Louis.com on the elementary and middle school awardees. If you'd like to read the three previous profiles, go to Past Stories and click on June, 2006; July, 2006 and/or August, 2006.)

The Young Achievers are awarded a $1,000 savings bond and are eligible for the national Young Achiever competition. The awards are by the International Leadership Network.

Emily said she had some blurred vision after the operation that made it hard to read. But, during her 1½-week stay in the hospital and another month at home, she worked hard to keep up with her seventh grade classmates.

She even made it to her spring induction into the Junior Honor Society.

In a Young Achiever nomination letter, science teacher Amanda Esparza described how Emily handled her homework. "I would shorten assignments for her but most of the time she would do the entire thing," Ms. Esparza said.

Emily said, "I was determined to earn my grades."

She was also determined to help other kids at Children's Hospital cope with their medical situations.

A plaque with some of her school honors

In the fall of 2005, when she was an eighth grader, Emily planned and conducted a drive to collect VHS and DVD recordings. She organized the drive as a competition between classes at the school. She said, "We're very competitive at our school."

Math teacher Mrs. Dawson's classroom was the winner, collecting 100 recordings. Emily said the prize was a school pizza party.

Her drive collected 1,100 recordings that were donated to Children's Hospital. That enhanced recreational opportunities for kids facing their own health emergencies.

For that campaign, Emily earned a "Do the Right Thing" award from KMOV-TV. The station honors kids for service projects and other good deeds in the community.

Emily said her first indication she had a health problem was when "I had numbness in my foot." Then, she fainted while at choir practice. The diagnosis of a brain tumor came on Jan. 26, 2005. And her operation happened just two days later.

About that experience, Emily admits she was "really scared." That's when the poetry writing kicked in. "I like to write and I especially do that when I have stress," she said. (For the full text of her "Until My Heart Stops Crying" poem, see below.)

After the operation, she said she had blurred vision in both eyes. But now, except for some continuing reduced peripheral vision in the right eye, she said she's healthy. And she's looking forward to entering Festus High School this fall.

She said she's looking forward to continuing a wide variety of studies and activities as she did at Festus Middle School. She received awards for citizenship, honor roll, merit, language arts, creative communication and science.

She also won the Tiger Excellence Award in 8th grade. Emily said that's "like a combination of student of the month and citizenship awards."

During her middle school years, she did peer tutoring with 6th graders. She also helped with pre-schoolers in the Head Start program. She was one of the baby-sitters for small children while their parents attended PPO meetings at school.

Emily said she'd taken baby-sitting lessons at St. Joseph Hospital in Kirkwood so she could help her mother when brother, Sam, was born. Sam is in first grade this fall.

She said she hopes to resume her school newspaper and yearbook work in high school. "But, I can't work on the newspaper until I'm a sophomore," she said.

Emily wants to study journalism "at a big university." She said she hopes to make a career out of writing. "I'll work in journalism before I begin to write books. I like fiction writing better," she said.

"Until My Heart Stops Crying" A poem by Emily Adams I sit here in this darkness, Not knowing what's to come, The room is full of people, But all my senses are so numb. I ask so many questions, Afraid of what I'll hear, I receive so many answers, And uncover what I fear. Why can't this all just go away, At the kneeling of a prayer, Why can't the tears come from my eyes, It's too hard for me to bear. I keep up my false smile though, And never let it fall, Or the tears that swell inside me, Will break through their rusty wall. I need to be strong now, And trust what God will bring, Trust that he will carry me, Until my heart stops crying.