Clay-Battelle teacher raises money for cancer research and awareness
Twelve hours.
That’s how long it took the doctors to do their work.
And when she finally woke up in recovery, Kylie Swanson knew what she had to do.
“I mean, I was shocked by the diagnosis,” the 18-year-old WVU freshman said.
“But I wasn’t gonna let it stop me.”
She began experiencing tooth and jaw pain over the spring while finishing up her senior year at Clay-Battelle High School.
Before the coronavirus clamped down, she was having a good academic and social experience at the close-knit school on the western end of Monongalia County.
Friends, clubs and Friday Night Lights: She was a twirler in the marching band and could send a baton arcing 30 feet in the air and right back to her palm without missing a step.
Twirling is a mix of Isaac Newton and interpretive dance.
Should you ask a twirler how she’s able to do it, she’ll laugh and give a standard answer just as precise as is vague: “Huh. I don’t know.”
That is, if she thinks about it — she won’t be able to do it.
There’s just too much going on with the physics of the field show. The best thing is to simply react to the gravity.
The gravity of her medical situation stomped down with a scary weight.
As an orthodontia veteran, she attributed the swelling and discomfort to her braces, and the dentists who did the initial consulting over the phone — no one was seeing patients in-person then due to the pandemic — thought so, too.
One round of antibiotics, then another, when the first round didn’t work.
The swelling never let up, though. The mass was overtaking her teeth on the right side of her jaw.
But COVID-19 had let up, just enough, and just in time for her to be able to see an orthodontist who sent her to an oral surgeon — who immediately ordered a biopsy.
Osteosarcoma.
Cancer.
The type she had is rare, but it occurs.
She underwent the 12-hour surgery Sept. 27 in Morgantown. Doctors harvested a bone in her leg to refashion her jaw.
That’s when Nikki Mattingly went to work.
Getting creative
Mattingly is the Clay-Battelle teacher who launched the school’s “Pink Out” fundraiser for cancer awareness and research 12 years ago.
That was after losing her beloved grandmother to breast cancer.
She wasn’t sure if such altruism would even be logistically possible this year with the coronavirus upon the land.
“Well, then I found out about Kylie,” said Mattingly, who grew up in the Blacksville area and is a Clay-Battelle alumna.
“And I said, ‘All right, there’s no way we’re not doing this.’ ”
Before, she had staged walk-a-thons and held school assemblies and fund drives at football games, with their bleachers full.
“We had to rethink a lot of it,” she said.
So, she went digital.
PayPal, Venmo, everything else out there.
“Yeah, we got creative,” she said.
With the recipient, the organizer and a socially distanced smattering of others present in Clay-Battelle’s main hallway Friday morning, the check presentation was made.
Call it a Pink Out record: “We brought in $9,300,” Mattingly said. “That’s the most we’ve ever made.”
Swanson blinked tears as she accepted the check.
No one fights alone
In the meantime, there are the daily notchings of achievements, that, much like during her majorette days, she checks with nary a thought.
“Well, I’m walking every day and back to eating solid food,” she said. “I’m getting there.”
One more thing: “I’m growing back my hair. All of it, because I’m wearing it long.”
She’s also growing at WVU.
Swanson has yet to declare a major, but she does know she wants to work with children. She wants to be there for them, she said.
Which, fits in with the theme of this year’s Pink Out fundraiser: “No One Fights Alone.”
“That’s for sure,” Swanson said.
Her fight, she said, is bolstered by religious faith, her grandfather Roger Swanson and her Clay-Battelle family.
For her, all of the above makes for a collective spirit that can glint just like a baton-toss in the lights at halftime.
“I don’t know what to say, except, ‘Thank you.’ ”
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