TORRINGTON – Camden Jackson’s smile will melt your heart.
That’s true of almost any nine-month-old, but there’s something extra with Camden. His eyes light up, and if he had more than his two front teeth, he’d show them all. He seems to look right into your eyes and it almost seems like he knows everything is going to be OK.
“He has been a total light for us,” Chelsi Jackson, his mother, said. “It makes you understand that things aren’t quite as bad. It puts things into perspective for us.”
Camden is quick to flash the smile. He doesn’t seem to have that nervous reservation most kids do. To be fair, though, he has had experiences most kids don’t.
In the past three months, Camden has spent more time with doctors and nurses than he has with other babies. He’s flashed that smile at pediatric neurosurgeons, radiologists and a long line of specialized healers.
It’s because when he was six months old, his doctors discovered a large arachnoid cyst in his skull.
The discovery set Camden and his family on a mission that came to an end just a few weeks ago, with brain surgery, hospital stays - and some unexpected blessings.
Through it all though, that smile was a fixture.
“It’s terrifying, just
not knowing.”
It started with a simple observation.
Camden’s head didn’t fit into his onesies. When Chelsi brought it up to Camden’s regular doctor, the doctor measured his head. As it turns out, it was large.
“We just noticed that his head was a lot bigger than our friends’ kids,” Chelsi said. “Our doctor measured his head and it was bigger than other six-month-olds. We went back a few days later because I noticed it growing pretty rapidly. We did an ultrasound, and they said we wouldn’t see anything on ultrasound unless it was pretty big.”
They saw something – a mass in Camden’s skull.
Camden’s father, Jeremy Jackson, got the call from his wife as he was leaving work.
“I was just about to turn onto the highway and I was just speechless,” he said. “I just stopped my car and sat there for quite a while. I just felt pretty empty.”
They were quickly referred to Presbyterian Saint Luke’s Medical Center in Denver, Colo. The family was there just two days later, but that was two days of not knowing what the mass in Camden’s skull was.
“It’s terrifying, just not knowing,” Chelsi said. “We just knew he had a mass and that was the worst news. We didn’t know it was cancerous, or If it was just a cyst, or what it was.”
“You always hear about stuff like that happening, but you never think about it being you,” Jeremy said. “And then, all of a sudden, that is your life now. It didn’t really sink in at first. We were just kind of in shock.”
The team at St. Luke’s determined the mass was a cyst. According to John Hopkins Medicine, arachnoid cysts are fluid-filled sacks that are often present at birth. They are not tumors, which was good news for the Jacksons. The bad news, however, was that while most arachnoid cysts are stable and don’t require treatment, Camden’s was more serious.
At their worst, arachnoid cysts can cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures, vision problems and developmental delays. Camden’s cyst, according to Chelsi, took up a large part of his skull, which put him at risk for some negative symptoms.
The surgeons determined that draining Camden’s cyst was the best course of action.
Camden needed surgery.
Sending their son into surgery was tough for the Jacksons. Jeremy works for the railroad, and he works with a crane that lifts coal cars. Chelsi is the volleyball coach at Torrington High School. They’re used to being in control – all of the sudden, they weren’t.
Jeremy said the family spent a lot of time praying over the ordeal, and Camden’s smile – the mostly-toothless grin that lights up the room, the one he shares with everyone he meets – let his parents know everything was going to work out.
“I prayed about it a lot,” Jeremy said. “I asked God ‘what is your purpose here? What is going on?’ As the dad, you were supposed to be the fixer. You fix things. You take the situation by the handlebars and make it better. This one was just totally different. God, this is on you. All I can do is be there for my family. We prayed about it together a lot.
“God made him such a light because he is so happy all the time. It was scary, but God making him happy all the time, let us know it was okay.”
Camden made it through the surgery, and after a few days of observation, the family was able to go home.
“In God’s hands”
But the ordeal wasn’t over. The biggest clue, according to Jeremy, was that Camden’s smile that he had worn throughout the entire experience, was gone.
“After the first surgery, things were going good,” Jeremy said. “Then, it didn’t go good. He was not smiling. He was not himself. We went to the ER two or three times and we told them he is not being himself. We went right as I got home. As soon as I walked in the door, her first words were ‘he is not okay.’ I looked at him, and his eyes were crossed. You could tell he wasn’t even looking at me. He was just not himself at all. We threw the kids in the car and we went.”
According to Chelsi, she had watched the symptoms worsen for several days, and refused to be turned away.
“He was only home for a couple of days and then he started showing signs the pressure was getting worse,” Chelsi said. “He started throwing up. He couldn’t keep anything down, and he lost like 3 pounds.
“I took him to the ER three different times. Finally, the last time, I told them they weren’t going to send me home.”
At the emergency room at Reginal West Medical Center in Scottsbluff, Neb., nurses and doctors flooded Camden’s room. A short time later, Chelsi and Camden were in a helicopter on the way to Children’s Hospital in Aurora, Colo. The cyst had returned, and this time it was putting pressure on Camden’s optical nerve.
“It was all kind of a blur,” Jeremy said. “We had doctors and nurses in there like crazy. The next thing you know, Camden and Chelsi are on a helicopter flying to Aurora. I just had to grab the bags and meet them there.
“That was like two or three days of not sleeping. Life was moving so fast right then. That was a blur. There is no other way to describe it. We didn’t even have time to be scared or overthink things.”
Children’s Hospital in Colorado is consistently ranked among the top children’s hospitals in the United States. There wasn’t much that could have made the experience any less stressful the Jacksons, but Jeremy said it would have been an impossible situation anywhere else. He said that within hours of his arrival, a team of neurosurgeons had assembled and had a plan.
“The thing was they just made it so easy because they were just so reassuring,” Jeremy said. “Everyone was so confident in what they did. They got in there and they made him feel better instantly. They knew exactly what to do. By the time I got there, it was like three in the morning. By six, they had their neurology team in there saying this is what they are going to do.
“That’s the thing that was our saving grace, the doctors and the nurses and that whole place. Everyone we dealt with made this experience so much better. They really did.”
Camden needed another surgery, and there wasn’t much time to waste. According to Chelsi, the young family had resisted a minor surgery for their three-year-old, Parker, because of the potential side effects of anesthesia. Now, for the second time in a week, Camden was being wheeled into surgery.
“It makes you feel very vulnerable because you have no control over what is happening, and you have to give your trust over completely to the doctors,” Chelsi said. “You just know that it is completely in God’s hands at that point. You can’t do anything but hope for the best and pray for the best. It is very terrifying every time he goes under. He has gone under four times in the last month now. It is very terrifying.”
The surgical team installed a shunt to prevent the cyst from refilling. According to Johns Hopkins, the shunt is a permanent fixture that allows the fluid in the cyst to drain into another part of the body where it can be absorbed harmlessly.
It wasn’t long after the surgery that Camden let everyone know, once again, that things were going to be OK.
“The nurses, they just ate it up because he just smiled the whole time, even when he was hurting,” Chelsi said.
“Exactly where we’re supposed to be”
An unfortunate truth in the Jackson family’s situation is that surgery isn’t cheap, and ‘affordable neurosurgery’ is an oxymoron.
But this is Wyoming, and around here, we take care of our own.
Not long after Chelsi went public with Camden’s issues on social media, the community started stepping up. The family received verbal support, financial support, and folks even showed up to help take care of their yard, while Camden was in the hospital.
“It is overwhelming,” Chelsi said. “It literally brings me to tears every single time I think about it. We just had so many people reach out to us. We got calls and texts, donations, people to care over our house for us, the volleyball team did a huge bake sale for us. The baseball team did a 50-50 raffle. The Douglas baseball team did a 50-50 raffle. We have received money from complete strangers and people that we don’t even know.”
The family has no connection to Douglas, by the way. Chelsi said she believes Kyle Nighswonger was behind the gesture, but she doesn’t know for sure.
And this weekend, the community will come together for Camden once more.
The Cam the Man Sand Volleyball Tournament, organized by Chelsi’s cousin Lindsey Lemmon, will be held at Northwood Park in Scottsbluff. Chelsi said she believes around a dozen teams paid the $100 entry fee to compete, and although team registration closed on Aug. 15, there will be a raffle on site for the family’s benefit.
Chelsi has been documenting both Camden’s journey and the community efforts under the hashtag #CamtheMan on Facebook.
While Chelsi was born and raised in Goshen County, Jeremy wasn’t. He said he and Chelsi had considered leaving the area someday if their careers led them in that direction, but after seeing how the community came out to support Camden, this is home.
“We’ve always talked about how I have a job here, but we can move to a different location if we need to,” Jeremy said. “She wants to teach, but if she doesn’t get a job here, we thought we could go somewhere else. I think this whole experience was amazing for both of us and showed us this is exactly where we are supposed to be.
“I don’t know of anywhere else that an entire community comes together like this. This whole thing made me realize that it doesn’t take just a family to raise kids. It takes a community and this whole community is our family. This whole experience opened my eyes to that. We have really close friends that weren’t uncles or aunts or anything, but now they absolutely are. They’re uncles, they’re aunts, they’re family.”
Camden’s prognosis is good. He will need frequent brain scans for the next few years, and he won’t be able to play football or any sort of sport with a high risk of head injuries.
“We have been working with the learning center and they just did a test,” Chelsi said. “Cognitively, his neurological development is right on track, which is good. He is a little behind physically right now just because he was bedridden all summer. We start physical therapy today. We hope to get back on pace in the next six months.”
There’s still a long journey to recovery, but one glance at Camden makes you believe it will all be OK. That smile didn’t waiver during the hospital stays, and it doesn’t waiver now. It served as light for his parents during the family’s struggle, and thanks to the efforts of the community and a team of expert doctors and nurses, it can serve as a beacon of hope for the rest of us.
“He’s such a happy baby, he’s got nothing but smiles for everyone,” Jeremy said.
