THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, May 10, 1996 TAG: 9605100055
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
THE LAST TIME Margaret ``Peggy'' O'Leary graduated from school, she was an 18-year-old senior at Green Run High in Virginia Beach. It was 1987, and her grade point average was 1.87, not even a C.
``School didn't mean a lot to me at the time,'' she recalled. ``I was more into hanging out with my friends.'' She had no plans for the future, no desire to go to college.
Fast forward to Saturday, when the new Peggy O'Leary will graduate from Tidewater Community College. This time, O'Leary will leave with a perfect 4.0 average. She'll be one of three student speakers at the ceremony at Scope.
In addition, O'Leary now has an ambitious agenda: She wants to be a doctor. In the fall, she will transfer to the College of William and Mary to finish her bachelor's degree.
She credits her transformation to her rambunctious, yet chronically
ill, daughter, Tyler, who will be 3 in July. Tyler's medical problems jolted Peggy into a life of purpose.
Tyler was born with ``congenital nephrotic syndrome,'' a disorder in which the kidneys fail to retain the appropriate level of proteins. Both of her kidneys have been removed, and Tyler is high on a waiting list for kidney transplants.
To keep going, she's on a dialysis machine every night. She mostly takes her food, a liquid protein diet, through a stomach tube every three hours. And Peggy administers growth hormone to Tyler daily to ensure her proper development.
It's working. Tyler looked and acted like a robust 2 1/2-year-old one recent day, brazenly riding her scooter perilously close to the curb, ignoring her mother's warnings.
``When they first found out Tyler was sick, they told me she probably wouldn't live past her first birthday,'' Peggy, 27, said of the nurses and doctors at Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters. ``They gave me Tyler. So I feel the need to give that gift back to another family.''
Dr. Irene Restaino, a pediatric nephrologist who cares for Tyler, gives most of the credit to Peggy.
``It's through her care that this child has done so well,'' Restaino said. ``She's done such an extraordinary job with this child that this child has remained out of the hospital. She is thriving.''
Peggy - who'd gone through jobs as a receptionist, flight attendant and waitress - decided to return to school in 1994 to become a nurse. She didn't think a four-year school would take her because of her low high school average, so she went to TCC's Virginia Beach Campus.
Her family didn't take it too seriously at first.
``They actually said, `Yeah, right,' '' Peggy said. ``They thought it was a phase I was going through.''
Then they saw her first transcript and knew she was serious.
As she piled on A after A, she changed her aspirations, ``I did so well in school, I thought, why not shoot for it and become a physician?'' she said.
Peggy, a single mother who lives in an Oceana duplex, admits she's a procrastinator when it comes to studying, but she has flourished even while working 19 hours a week waiting tables.
It's not so rough, she said. ``Now I have a goal in mind, whereas then I didn't. You just set your mind to it and don't let anything get in your way.''
Just like Tyler. ``She's really strong-willed,'' Peggy said. ``If she wasn't, she wouldn't be here. She's a fighter.''
While they were sitting in the living room, Tyler repeatedly begged her mother, ``Walk on porch.''
``We can walk on the porch later,'' Peggy told her.
But Tyler looked as if she'd win. Of course, in many other ways so has Peggy. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by David B. Hollingsworth
by CNB