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Courage vs. cancer

7-year-old Durango girl battles leukemia
Chloe Harris, daughter of Stephanie and Craig Harris of Durango, is receiving treatment for acute myeloid leukemia at Colorado Children's Hospital. Doctors say she is responding well, Stephanie Harris said.

Like most Durango parents, Stephanie and Craig Harris' lives were a balancing act.

Alongside the daily chaos, chores and joy of raising their two children, Chloe, 7, and Jordan, 5, they worked.

That balance was shattered in January when they learned their daughter, Chloe, had acute myeloid leukemia.

In the space of two days, Chloe went from being a second-grader at Needham Elementary School to being a patient at Colorado Children's Hospital in the Denver area undergoing six months of intense chemotherapy. Immediately, Stephanie Harris closed down her holistic medical practice at Essence Chiropractic Studio in Durango to be by Chloe's bedside, where she remains.

Meanwhile, Craig Harris – a custodian at Miller Middle School who, during the last 20 years, has taken jobs at Steaming Bean Coffee Co., Carver Brewing Co., Nature's Oasis, Southwest Sound, Buckhorn Limousine and Durango Discovery Museum – has remained in Durango to care for their son, Jordan.

“Oh my God, at first, we were devastated,” said Stephanie Harris in a phone interview. “This changed the course of our lives. I shut down my business. And our family has been separated for weeks.”

Faced with that kind of diagnosis, many families could tumble into hopelessness, desperation and – given the harsh financial realities of medical care in America – poverty.

But in the face of a harrowing diagnosis, the Harrises are an example of courage in the worst kind of medical crisis – one's own child's – and their unwavering confidence in Chloe's recovery is a lesson in emotional resilience, the miracle of medicine and the comfort of community.

“We've been told it's curable, and we feel nothing but absolute certainty that we're going to get through this. It's a journey, but we're going to get there,” said Stephanie Harris, who spoke from Chloe's hospital room.

First, the fever

The journey began after Christmas. Chloe had a fever Jan. 10, but no other symptoms.

“It was a perfectly normal day,” Harris said. “But then I took her temperature. It was 101.7 – something surprising.”

She kept Chloe home from school. But then three days later, Chloe woke up with a lesion on her tongue, and her jaw was swollen on one side.

“The doctor said it was probably a virus, and that the fever would pass.” Harris said.

But it didn't.

Chloe's energy got worse, and she starting missing meals. The fever came and went. Then, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Harris took Chloe to the grocery store.

“She could barely stand up, but once we got through the whole shopping experience, she said she needed to throw up,” Harris said. “Then she passed out on the way to the bathroom. I caught her before she hit the ground. But when she woke up, she said, 'I can't see.'”

Harris rushed Chloe to the doctor, who gave her a blood test: Chloe's white blood count was way, way low.

She had acute myeloid leukemia, or cancer of the blood that could quickly become life-threatening if left untreated.

According to the American Cancer Society, “Acute myeloid leukemia is generally a disease of older people and is uncommon before the age of 45. The average age of a patient with AML is about 67 years.”

In a 7-year-old, it was an emergency. At Mercy Regional Medical Center, doctors established whether Chloe was stable enough to travel to Denver. She was. The family got in the car the next morning.

Responding well

Physically, chemotherapy can be tough on anyone, and conceptually, adults struggle with the reality of having cancer.

But Chloe is triumphing on both fronts.

“The doctors say she's responding well,” Harris said. “And part of the beauty of the program here is that it's someone's entire job to explain to the child what is going on medically in the child's terms – why their hair is falling out, how they're sick.

“Chloe speaks about it very candidly. She is way more accepting of this than the grown-ups in her life are. A teacher comes to do schoolwork with her; we do lots of games and crafts.”

Chloe exudes a positive attitude.

“She's very happy,” Harris said. “She just wrote an eight-page newspaper article about herself. The caption is, 'This is Chloe. She has cancer. She is very happy, but her blood is sick.'”

While living in a hospital wing is difficult, the homefront has its own challenges.

Harris said Chloe's brother, Jordan, is really sad.

“At 5, he's not really able to express his feelings,” she said. “But he told his dad that he misses his sister a lot. When he got his hair cut recently, he wanted to shave off all his hair and stick it on her head.”

Community support

Insurance is covering most of Chloe's treatment, but Durango is rallying around Harrises.

A family friend set up a bank account for donations to help replace some of Stephanie Harris' lost income. (The Chloe Harris Fund, First National Bank of Durango, 259 W. Ninth St., Durango, CO 81301.)

On Wednesday, 19 chiropractic practices in La Plata County donated their proceeds to the fund.

Petra Sullwold of Atlas Specific said last week that while she didn't yet have an exact number, she thought they raised at least $20,000, if not more.

“It was amazing,” she said. “Every single chiropractic office participated, and besides that, people were making donations in jars.”

She said she saw Craig Harris, who thanked everybody for what they were doing on his family's behalf.

“There has been great community outpouring for this family,” said Rachel Turiel in an email.

Stephanie Harris said without support from friends and family, the ordeal, already agonizing, would have been intolerable.

“We're at a really difficult point, just waiting to see whether her white blood count can recover enough for us to safely go home for a weekend,” she said. “We're both impatient to go home, and we won't know for another couple weeks or so whether she needs a bone marrow transplant. The waiting – just waiting – is hard.

“We couldn't get through this alone,” Harris said. “Financially, emotionally, people have come out of the woodwork to support us. Facebook messages, meals – they offer Craig and Jordan rides to visit us in Denver. It's just an amazing experience to get so much from the people in our lives.”

cmcallister@durangoherald.com

How to help:

A fund has been set up at First National Bank in Durango to help the Harris family. Please send donations to:

Chloe Harris Fund

First National Bank

259 W. 9th St.

Durango, CO 81301

​Or you can

donate online here.



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