Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 21, 1991 TAG: 9104190107
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON NEW RIVER VALLEY BUREAU
DATELINE: PEARISBURG LENGTH: Long
When the other kids in the neighborhood were playing outside, she just wanted to sit and watch.
She didn't have the energy to join in.
And when it came time to go inside, she struggled, her feet less steady than they had been when she was a toddler.
She often needed help to get home.
"It finally got to the point where she could just barely walk," said her father, Steve Hall, a trooper with the state police in Giles County.
But today, Ashley is a different kid.
Now when the other kids swing or slide or run or jump, she joins right in. And if it's time to go home, she's always the first one inside.
Ashley Hall, now 4, is racing through life the way she should be - at a kid's speed. The phrase, "walk, don't run," never even enters the picture.
This is a story with a happy ending.
At first, Ashley showed no signs of sickness. She ate the same, played the same and acted the same as she always had. She never complained.
Her parents, however, noticed that their daughter's urine was an odd color. They took her to the doctor.
This was on a Friday.
By Monday, she was undergoing surgery in Winston-Salem, N.C., at the Bowman-Gray School of Medicine.
Ashley had a rare cancer that attacks the kidneys of small children and then spreads to other internal organs - in her case, her aorta and her pancreas. Doctors said the tumors were the size of two softballs.
"We couldn't believe it," Hall said. "How could something that size go so long without us knowing it? But that's the thing about this particular type of cancer. From what we've been told there are usually no particular symptoms that go with it."
Ashley handled it well, he said.
"We couldn't really tell her she was sick because she wasn't - to her. We more or less just told her there was something in her belly that needed to be taken out."
Yet, nothing was taken out initially.
The hold that Ashley's cancer had on her insides was too much, doctors said. Before it could be removed, they would need to shrink it first with chemotherapy.
This was April a year ago.
Meanwhile, word of Ashley's illness was spreading around Giles County and elsewhere across the New River Valley, especially in the law enforcement community.
Naturally, people wanted to help.
First, there was a benefit softball game played in Pearisburg with teams made up of police and rescue workers from Wytheville to Radford. It raised some $2,000.
Ashley's day care in Pearisburg, Hugs & More, held a tricycle-a-thon that raised about $5,000 for her and another sick child.
The Radford Police Department solicited donations from local businessmen and community leaders that raised nearly $1,400.
In addition, there was a raccoon hunt sponsored by the Giles County Sportsmen Club, a street dance in Narrows, an auction in Glen Lyn, and a professional wrestling tournament at Giles High School, among other events.
All in all, more than $10,000 was raised.
"In a way, you really had to humble yourself," Hall said. "I mean we never needed any help before, and here everybody was doing something."
And the donations are still coming in.
"You go down there and you feel like you're all alone, and then you come back here and there's all this support. It means a lot that people thought of us enough to do these things," he said.
Hall, 30, and his wife, Tami, have lived in Pearisburg for six years. They believe that his job as a state trooper has worked to their advantage.
"I'm sure there are plenty of others who are going through things just as bad, probably worse, and you never hear about them," Hall said. "I've often wondered how much my position has helped us."
Then again, there have been other times when it has made him feel like a heel - like when he is writing a speeding ticket and the motorist asks him about Ashley.
"That always makes me feel about this big," he said. "I say, `I'm sorry, but I've got to do this. It's my job.' "
And has he ever let anybody off the hook?
"I don't think they think they'll ask about Ashley just to get out of anything. I really do believe they're sincere," he said. "But the answer is no."
That's not to say he doesn't appreciate people asking, or all the contributions. In fact, he was happy to have this opportunity to publicly thank everyone who has helped. "We just didn't want people to think we're like, `Thanks for the money, now leave us alone,' " he said.
Today, Ashley is in remission.
After three months of chemotherapy, she underwent surgery again last July to remove the remaining cancer.
It went even better than hoped. Although she lost a kidney, Ashley went home after just eight days - she was supposed to have been in the hospital twice that long - and her doctors are now predicting a complete recovery.
All that's left is for Ashley's hair to grow back, although its loss has never bothered her much.
"I think she's actually kind of proud of it," her mother said.
Her stock answer: "One day her dad was driving real fast down the road and it just all flew out the window."
by CNB