Charlie Denton loved the great outdoors.

The nine-year-old, who attended Frostick Elementary School in the Croswell-Lexington Community Schools in Sanilac County, Michigan, loved to ride motorcycles, loved fishing, and he loved going hunting with his father, Chuck Denton.

He also enjoyed a good scrap with his younger brother, Beau, just 24 months his junior.

So when Charlie complained of a bad headache in the summer of 2016, his mother, Lindsey Tabor, knew something was really wrong. It wasn’t like him to complain. He was a busy young man.

Plus, Charlie was born with a condition known as neurocutaneous melanosis, which is known to cause tumors and cancer. Though Charlie had been tested at birth and his condition was found to be benign, Tabor knew this condition could rear its ugly head at any point in Charlie’s life.

Though a CT scan did not initially find anything out-of-the-ordinary wrong with Charlie, when the headaches persisted, Tabor and Denton knew they needed to take their son to Children’s Hospital in Detroit.

There, an MRI showed multiple tumors pressing on his spinal cord. Surgery was scheduled to remove them, and as a side-effect of surgery, Charlie was partially paralyzed.

Over the course of the next 24 months, the tumors multiplied and ended up in Charlie’s brain. It quickly reached a point where, while there were things that could be done to inhibit and slow their growth, there was nothing that could be done to permanently stop them.

Charlie, who died in July, 2018, at age nine, didn’t let a lack of time affect his passion for life.

Within days after brain surgery, he went out hunting.

After he was paralyzed, Charlie’s parents did not want him to be restricted to the indoors, so they invested in a track chair – basically a heavy-duty, off-road wheel chair – so that he could continue to hunt and fish and do all of the activities he had previously enjoyed doing outside.

And he took advantage of every minute available to him.

“He loved being outside,” Tabor said. “We wanted him to have as much fun as he possibly could. He went hunting, he went fishing, he went on motorcycle rides.”

It was during the spring of 2018 that the doctor’s told his parents to prepare for the worst. “They told us, what he has, there’s not been a cure for it, and they gave us maybe two weeks,” Tabor said. “We made the decision to bring him home on hospice.”

Visiting Nurse Association and Blue Water Hospice attended to Charlie’s hospice needs at home in the Croswell area.

“I told him we were going to have a party for a while,” said Tabor. “We never told him he was dying, but I think he knew.”

No sooner had they gotten home and settled with hospice, when Charlie asked if he could go to school again.

“So I said okay,” Tabor said. “So he finished fourth grade. We had a graduation party for him. He wanted a dog, so he bought a German Shepard with his graduation money.

“We got Thor in June and that dog was just glued to Charlie. He just laid there with him.”

Donna, a nurse from VNA/BWH, visited Charlie once or twice a week.

“Donna would take his vitals and sometimes she would just play games with him,” said Tabor. “The VNA staff was good and always went along with our wishes. We always included Charlie in the decision-making process. Donna asked him, ‘If anything changes, do you want to go to the hospital?’ And he said no.

“I was okay with that because I believe in quality over quantity of life.”

After Charlie died in July, Tabor noted that Joe, the VNA/BWH chaplain, spoke at the celebration of life held in memory of Charlie.

“Joe still calls me once in a while to check in,” she said.

And Charlie’s heavy-duty off-road track chair? It has already gotten some additional use. Tabor said Charlie’s dad used it this fall to take a terminally ill child out hunting and everyone had a good experience. The child passed away two weeks later.

“We’re going to do a scholarship fund or something similar for Charlie,” Tabor said. “Chuck is thinking about a hunting foundation for him.”

Tabor, who had always wanted to be a nurse, returned to school this fall and is a straight-A student working toward a nursing degree at St. Clair County Community College.

“I come from a long line of medical professionals,” said Tabor. “A few years ago, I went back to school and I was accepted into the nursing program at SC4.” Fate intervened when Charlie got sick, so, before she officially started the nursing program, Tabor gave up her seat so she could stay home and care for her ailing son.

“I’m now taking classes toward my bachelor’s degree,” she said. “I’m sure Charlie will let me know what I’m supposed to do. I miss him.”

by greatlakeswoman

For more information regarding the various ways that Visiting Nurse Association and Blue Water Hospice can help your family through a wide variety of medical issues, ranging from in-home assistance with home and personal care, in-home nursing and therapy, and hospice care, to both in-home and at the Blue Water Hospice Home, please call (810) 984-4131, or visit our website at www.vnabwh.com.