HIS 11TH YEAR, plus a few extra months at this end, produced a whirlwind of new experiences for Greg Hand, Ellicott City seventh-grader, baseball player and first-time wrestler on his way to being a cancer survivor.
"Getting to travel outside the country" was tops, he said. "Usually, we just go to New Jersey." The Make-a-Wish Foundation sent Greg and his family on a seven-day Disney cruise in the Caribbean. Magan's Bay in St. Thomas made a huge impression.
Greg also met a bunch of Washington Redskins while he was in the hospital. He really, really liked Darryl Pounds, a regular visitor before free-agency made him a defensive back in Denver, where he still visits hospitalized children.
Think celebrity visits to hospitals are merely public relations gimmicks? Not Greg. "It's amazing. You actually meet stars who do this stuff," he said. "It's so fun to see them come in your room and get a picture and talk with you."
Just as fun, Greg - and his dad, Marshall, his mom, Janet, and brothers, John, 14, and Chris, 7 - took in a game at Camden Yards, where the Orioles let him stand in the batter's box. The boys took home an American League ball autographed by Brady Anderson, Delino DeShields, Jeff Conine, Harold Baines, Will Clark and a couple other pre-purge Orioles, although not Cal Ripken Jr. Which was no big deal to Greg, who prefers Ken Griffey Jr.
Maybe most important, though, Greg played baseball. His smash hits during tryouts for rec ball, before anyone on the team knew what he was going through, earned him a travel berth despite just having moved from Laurel to a new house north of Route 108. He's still thrilled; made the team for next spring, too.
That 11-and-under team, the Columbia All-Stars from the Columbia Youth Baseball Association, proved to be salvation, in a sense.
Because a couple days before his 11th birthday in August 1999, doctors had diagnosed a spongy swelling in one of Greg's armpits as a form of Ewing's sarcoma, a cancer that strikes mainly young people. It's rare; 100 kids at most per year in the United States experience it. Surgery in early October 1999 pared the malignancy from a bone under in his left arm.
Extended treatment was to come, and Greg's doctors encouraged him to play baseball as much as he could. And he wanted to, so much, although wobbly knees resulting from the treatment didn't help in left field. Some days, he was so exhausted that making it around third to home plate wasn't a certainty. He wore a special chest protector his father thought up and had a racehorse tack-maker fashion from padding motocross riders wear.
Chemotherapy sessions, many of them multi-nighters, went on every three weeks for 11 months at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington; they ended in September. Greg underwent 40 radiation sessions, too; neither he nor his father will soon forget six hours of creeping home after one at George Washington University Medical Center because of a snow-ice storm that paralyzed Washington's evening rush hour.
Among Greg's other memories: Two ambulance rides in one evening after a device inserted in his chest to make chemo easier popped loose - not serious, as things turned out; and "I got an A on my science quiz about cancer - 105 percent."
Not positive was the chemotherapy making Greg's hair fall out. A few insensitive Clarksville Middle School classmates compounded that situation. After all, Greg told a visitor, he missed half a year of classes, so those kids neither knew him nor understood.
What mattered, besides family, was the baseball team. "They treated me normal, a lot nicer," as Greg put it. It wasn't coincidence, for example, that a team so young should come to include several bald players.
Added Greg's father, who also shaved his head: "We really want to thank [coach] Mike Swartz, the parents and the team for the way they supported Greg. It helped him through a lot of stuff 11-year-olds shouldn't have to deal with. ... It's not quantitative, like the drugs, but we know he really benefited from the baseball."
Greg impressed some not on his team, too. He and Swartz had to miss the league tournament. But when play ended, opposing coaches surprised both, awarding the most valuable player trophy to Greg Hand.
"It made me cry," said Swartz.
"That," said Greg, pausing, "was really cool." He was at the dining room table of a home decorated already with two trimmed trees and looking forward to a Christmas far more upbeat than last year's.
Greg faces tests for another year, but the latest results are solidly trending the way he, his parents - and others - want. Which even offsets his latest medical adventure, a broken collarbone from his first wrestling match Dec. 9.
