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Local boy granted his Hawaiian wish
By Stephanie Hutson, Staff Writer
John Carpenter is a small boy that looks to be in elementary school. With innocent eyes and a sweet nature, it is impossible not to be drawn to him immediately.
Earlier this year John had a wish, to go on vacation to Hawaii. That wish was recently granted by the North Texas Chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation when they sent him and his family to Hawaii for a week.
John suffers from a rare blood disease called histiocytosis that is caused by an excess of white blood cells that cluster together and can attack the skin, bones, lung, liver, spleen, gums, ears, eyes and the central nervous system.
At 13, John has the body of a 7-year-old and the heart of a 5-year-old.
“He just accepts it n he doesn’t really know anything different,” John’s mother Patti Carpenter said. “He has not asked questions and he doesn’t think of himself as being sick.”
Staying on the 23rd floor of a hotel directly on Waikiki Beach, attending luaus, snorkeling and swimming with dolphins, John and his family had the experience of a lifetime.
“I swam with the dolphins n they’re nice. I fed one a squid,” John said. “It was tingly but I didn’t mind, I wasn’t scared.”
The trip was just what the family needed to enjoy being together, without doctor visits or hospital rooms.
“It gave us all an opportunity to really celebrate,” Patti said. “We have come to a point where John is at a good point in health and we needed to be together as a family and relax.”
It wasn’t just John that needed the trip. The family rearranges schedules to accommodate John’s treatments and doctor appointments, and his condition often requires more of his parents’ attention than his siblings do.
“It was nice to feel like we all got a reward n for the disruptions in our schedule when John has treatments and the times when we needed to concentrate more on him,” Patti said.
An exciting part of John’s Hawaii trip involved one of his favorite movies, Disney’s Lilo and Stitch. A Make-A-Wish coordinator arranged for him to hear a performance of some of his favorite songs from the movie, performed by children in the same Hawaiian private school that sang them for the film.
“The kids were so sweet and so kind to John,” Patti said. “They all gave him a hug and presented him with gifts. I was very pleased and so touched by their generosity.”
John currently has tumors, but is not undergoing any treatment because they have remained stable. While John is not aware of a life outside of histiocytosis, he is aware of his role as what his father calls a “goodwill ambassador.”
His outgoing personality and genuine nature make it easy for John to talk to people. By the way he reaches out to people, his father jokes that he runs for mayor in every town he visits.
“He is conscious of the fact that he is a goodwill ambassador,” John’s father Jack Carpenter said. “He has the ability to make a friend with anyone in less than a minute, and he knows that he has that as a gift. People will open up to him because he is so genuine.”
While in Hawaii, the family attended church on Sunday morning. Before service was over, John managed to charm the lady next to him, a retired nurse, and she offered to buy him and his family dinner.
“Just knowing us five minutes — we were overwhelmed with the generosity of the people we met,” Patti said.
Jack attributes John’s easy manner and likeable personality to his parents’ conscious effort to keep him positive.
“When you have what is called a ‘handicap,’ that can affect your attitude and outlook on life. We see it as an empowerment and choose to look at it that way,” Jack said. “That is partly why John is the way he is. The best thing we have done for him is to instill a positive attitude.”
As for the future, John wants to be a chef — “like Sponge Bob.”
Part of the benefit of the Make-A-Wish Foundation is the ongoing support the foundation provides. John and members of his family have been to several other local events since their return from Hawaii.
“Once you’re a wish child, there are so many other events that you can go to,” Patti said.
The Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas covers 106 counties and has granted more than 1,700 wishes since 1982. The foundation expects the number of wishes granted to exceed 325 in 2006.
Even with all of the wishes granted, there are resources for more, Jack said. He encourages local families with a terminally or chronically ill child to apply to have a wish granted by the foundation.
“The foundation has a quota of the number of wishes they want to fulfill, and sometimes they can’t even meet that quota because not enough people apply,” Jack said. “They have so many resources, and they can’t find enough children to get them out to.”
To learn more or apply to have a wish granted, visit www.northtexaswish.org.
It is approximated that histiocytosis affects 1 in 200,000 children born each year in the United States. This illness is so rare, there is little research into its cause and treatment, and it is often referred to as an "orphan disease," meaning it strikes too few people to generate government-supported research, according to the Histiocytosis Association of America’s Web site.
Visit the Histiocytosis Association of America’s Web site, www.histio.org, to learn more.
Contact staff writer Stephanie Hutson at shutson@acnpapers.comm.
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