By Rod Hansen
Staff Writer

Jacob Schaffner enjoys a moment in the playground of Maple Avenue Elementary School. Jacob has been undergoing treatment for a form of children’s kidney cancer since his diagnosis in June. (The Goffstown News/Rod Hansen)

Disturbing medical news has robbed one local family of the ordinary joys of summer.

Jacob Schaffner, 7, was diagnosed with a form of childhood cancer in June, just as he was finishing his year as a first-grader at Maple Avenue Elementary School.

The family knew something was wrong when blood turned up in Jacob’s urine on June 2.

“When that happened, the first thing Jacob asked was, ‘What could that mean?’” said Jacob’s mother, Elaine, during a recent interview in the family’s Birch Court home.

“We couldn’t tell him, because we didn’t know.”

They did know, however, that it probably wasn’t good.

Their fears were confirmed when an ultrasound at Nashua Pediatrics in Milford revealed a growth on Jacob’s left kidney.

Surgery to remove the kidney at Children’s Hospital in Boston followed. Elaine Schaffner said hospital nurses relieved their tension by delivering hourly reports from the operating room.

Before the surgery, medical staff told the Schaffners surgeons would install a medical device called a “port” in Jacob if they found his growth to be malignant.

The bad news announced itself when a nurse emerged from the operating room told Jacob’s parents, “They’re putting the port in now.”

The news proved devastating for Elaine Schaffner, making real one of her worst fears as a parent.

“When you think of a parent’s worst-case scenario, childhood cancer is one of the big ones,” she said.

Jacob was diagnosed with a Wilms tumor, a kidney tumor fairly common among childhood cancer patients.

“When they saw it was a malignant tumor on his kidney, they assumed it was a Wilms tumor,” Elaine Schaffner said.

The weeks since then have been an emotionally exhausting roller-coaster ride of hospital visits, chemotherapy treatments and surprising acts of kindness.

Elaine said the family has felt outreach equally from friends in the school, the town and a community of families who have themselves coped with surviving childhood cancer.

Members of the Schaffner family include Elaine, a speech and language pathologist with Goffstown High School; Jacob’s father Richard, who works for a Manchester-based environmental consulting firm; brother Zachary, 12, a seventh-grader at Mountain View Middle School; and sister Sadie, 9, a fourth-grader at Maple Avenue.

“We’ve probably shed more tears over the kindness of others as we have over the disease itself,” said Elaine Schaffner.

Despite the hardship of handling her son’s childhood cancer, Elaine Schaffner keeps most of her words enthusiastic about the hospitals, treatment centers and support organizations the family has encountered over the past few weeks.

Children’s Hospital itself has played a major role in helping the family get through Jacob’s ordeal, Elaine Schaffner said.

“They’re top notch at Children’s Hospital,” Elaine Schaffner said. She mentioned the hospital’s staff of attending physicians and oncologists and social workers as being particularly understanding of childhood patients.

Also, she said, child-specific elements such as a CAT scan room designed to look like a castle and hand-held video games for children’s relaxation helped ease the initial tension, she said.

Jacob was put on a 20-week treatment regiment, with 14 treatments during that time, Elaine said.

He began those treatments at the Dana Farber-Jimmy Fund Clinic in Boston and has continued them at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, she said.

The availability of the Ronald McDonald House in Boston and David’s House in Lebanon have also eased the inconvenience of Jacob’s treatment, she said.

“To have a place to take a shower or do laundry might not seem like a big deal, but it really is when you have so much else going on,” she said.

As trying as the past few weeks have been, Jacob’s spirits have been brightened by phone calls from Maple Avenue Principal Marc Boyd and Jacob’s teacher, Nancy Ghelli.

The family has also made a large number of friends through hospitals and church connections, Elaine Schaffner said.

One such organization is the Childhood Cancer Lifeline of New Hampshire. That group, established in 1995, provides a number of financial and social support services to families with children battling cancer.

Often, the most important support can be friendship and understanding, said one organization official.

“We find that most of our families are joined by that moment when the doctor came in and asked us to sign a consent form for (cancer) treatment,” said Sylvia Pelletier, president of the Hillsborough-based group’s board of directors.

Elaine Schaffner said her family looks forward to attending Camp Winning Spirits, a camp run by the Childhood Cancer Lifeline near Grantham on Labor Day Weekend.

That weekend, attended by about 22 families of current and surviving cancer patients, offers children and parents to meet people who have experienced similar difficult circumstances.

The Schaffner family is also experiencing the kindness of longtime friends who have come to their aid since the announcement of Jacob’s cancer.

“Once we heard about this, the first thing we thought is: ‘We’ve got to help them any way we can,” said Angela Hughes, a friend of the Schaffner family through the local congregation of the Church of Latter-Day Saints.

Hughes, a Bedford resident, is president and co-founder of the humanitarian group, Color My World. That group has established a special fund for Jacob, and will hold a benefit dinner for him at Maple Avenue School on Monday, Nov. 6, from 5 to 8 p.m.

For more information about the benefit visit, www.colormy worldkids.org.

Elaine Schaffner said she has met many people in the short time since her son’s diagnosis, including several parents whose children have survived cancer.

She recalls asking one parents, whose child had fully recovered from cancer, “Does this nervous feeling in the pit of your stomach ever go away?”

“No,” the woman answered.