The Careful Path Into a Boy's Brain

Your assignment: Think of nothing. Clear your mind of every stray thought. Turn it into a blank slate or, perhaps more accurately, a PC that's been powered down.

It's hard, isn't it? But it's what doctors asked Tom Cooper, a 10-year-old from Lexington, Ky., to do about 10 months before they operated on him to remove a tumor that was lodged in the left temporal lobe of his brain.

This is near the brain's language center, the part of the brain that processes the words we say and the words we understand. Doctors at Children's Hospital were performing what's called a functional MRI. They instructed Tom to clear his mind, asked him to read sentences from a book and then watched as different parts of the brain fired.

Those were the parts they wanted to leave untouched while slicing out the tumor.

For more than a year, the Coopers -- dad Harry and mom Pat -- had been living every parent's worst nightmare: Their child was seriously ill. They'd been on vacation near Daytona, Fla., in the summer of 2002 when Tom felt sick. Doctors at the clinic where they took Tom thought it was dehydration. After hooking him up to IVs, they did a routine CAT scan. It revealed that something wasn't quite right in Tom's brain.

"That was sort of the start of the odyssey," Harry said.

Doctors back in Lexington said they had a pretty good idea what was in Tom's brain: a ganglioglioma, a rare but slow-growing and usually benign tumor. Because it was in such a critical part of the brain, they said the risks of taking it out were greater than those of leaving it in. But the tumor started causing severe epileptic seizures, and the Coopers went in search of other options.

"I'm an engineer," Harry said, "and [leaving it in] didn't make me feel good. And my wife didn't feel good about it, either."

A doctor at the National Institutes of Health recommended that the family travel to Washington to meet with Roger Packer, chief of neurology at Children's Hospital. He assembled a team that included William Gaillard, director of the hospital's Pediatric Epilepsy Program, and Derek Bruce, an acclaimed neurosurgeon who had just joined the hospital.

The Coopers were faced with a choice: Leave the tumor alone but consign Tom to a lifetime regimen of anti-seizure medication that sapped his strength and couldn't eliminate all seizures. Or operate, with all the risks that entailed.

Pat said that when Dr. Bruce met Tom, the neurosurgeon said, "Well, let's get that out of there so you can have a normal life."

Remembered Pat: "When he said that, we just said, 'Okay, of course. That's what we want.' "

They decided on the surgery. Tom Cooper remembers how he broke the news to his best friend in Lexington: "I said, 'I'm gonna have to go down to D.C. and have this brain worked on.' He said, 'Okay, I'll miss you.' "

Tom was worried that his friend would never see him again. Not that Tom would die -- though that was a risk -- but that he would be altered in some way, that a different Tom would emerge from surgery.

"This is one of the most personal operations you can have," his mother, Pat, said. "Somebody is in your brain. Your brain is your whole personality."

And your personality is very personal. "[Dr. Bruce] told Tom, 'I will be the only one in your brain,' " Pat said. " 'There won't be anyone else in there.' "

The surgery was scheduled for Feb. 4. The morning of the operation, said Pat, "Dr. Bruce came in and said to Tom, 'I'll be there when you go to sleep, and I'll be there when you wake up.' "

And then Tom left his parents and walked into the operating room by himself.

What was that like, I asked, watching your youngest child walk alone into the great unknown?

"It was awful," Pat said.

But the surgery went well, Dr. Bruce gingerly removing a tumor about the size of a plum.

"It was not the biggest tumor we've seen," Dr. Packer said. "But it shouldn't have been there."

And now, it isn't.

"He feels super," Pat Cooper said of her son. "He plays basketball and swims. He's still on anti-seizure medication, but that won't be much longer. . . . And he's still Tom, which was important."

How to Help

Harry and Pat Cooper were able to find for their son something that any parent in that situation would want: the very best doctors. One in 10 of the children in the United States who is found to have a brain tumor will at some point during treatment consult the doctors at Children's Hospital.

We have a bit of a head start in our effort to raise $600,000 for Children's Hospital by Jan. 21. Since last year's campaign ended, $17,238.13 has come in. Here's how you can help raise the remaining $582,761.87:

Make a check or money order payable to "Children's Hospital" and mail it to Washington Post Campaign, P.O. Box 17390, Baltimore, Md. 21297-1390.

To contribute by credit card online, go to www.washingtonpost.com/childrenshospital and click on "Make a Donation." When you get to the Children's Hospital Foundation site, click on "Donate Now." Make sure to designate "The Washington Post" when you complete the form.

To contribute by Visa or MasterCard by phone, call Post-Haste at 301-313-2200, then punch in KIDS and follow the instructions.

I'm at kellyj@washpost.com. Or write John Kelly, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.