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55 °F Forecast | Road Cams Friday, September 10, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Prime Times Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Rogue Valley's Finest EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend July 16, 2004 A.J. Palazzolo will play catcher for the Medford 14-15-year-old all-stars that will face Upper Rogue Saturday at 9 a.m. at North Mountain Park in Ashland. Time to play A.J. Palazzolo, a Babe Ruth baseball all-star catcher is catching up on his youth after a three-year fight with leukemia and a recent setback that required six hours of surgery By TIM TROWER Mail Tribune "Down time." The words spat from A.J. Palazzolo’s mouth with the speed of a rotten sunflower seed. He sat in the baseball dugout and stared out, mulling a concept as foreign to a 14-year-old boy as oldies radio, Bermuda shorts and canasta. His blank gaze traveled over the infield dirt on which he would play a doubleheader that afternoon, toward the expanse of grass on which he would practice football the moment he was freed from this interview. It’s a summer day. Not long before, the sun stretched and blinked awake. Palazzolo wasn’t far behind, beaten to this patch of playland only by the wee-morning sprinklers, their puddles a dead giveaway. Advertisement In time, the day’s heat would get them. Palazzolo wasn’t likely to sit still and watch. "Because of who I am," he says, "I don’t know what down time is." It’s something doctors have tried unsuccessfully to instill in him. The restlessness of youth? Maybe. It might also be that he has a life to live, voids to fill. Leukemia took a three-year chunk of it away, starting when he was 8. Then, so did an adverse reaction to medication. That episode, still fresh, required six hours of spleen and stomach surgery that left a scar the width of home plate across his belly. "Basically," says his father, Jim, the former football coach at Southern Oregon University, "they took him apart and put him back together again." That was on March 28. After three days in intensive care and three more in another hospital room, he was sent home with instructions to take it easy. No lifting of anything more than five pounds. No school for a week. No sports until he’d gone through his three-week checkup. The doctors told Palazzolo it would be easier on them if he didn’t play sports. Usually coachable, this time he was not. "I said, ‘You know what, I’m gonna have to play sports," he says. And play he did. Saturday, Palazzolo will take the field with his Babe Ruth baseball team. Not just any team, mind you. The Medford 14-15-year-old all-stars. A catcher, he was chosen to the team that will face Upper Rogue at 9 a.m. at North Mountain Park in Ashland. It’s a seeding game, and both teams will advance to the state tournament next week in Eagle Point. Palazzolo might be the first one there. He has some catching up to do. Young Andrew Palazzolo didn’t know what hit him. He was only 8, after all. "They kept saying ‘leukemia,’" says the freshman-to-be at South Medford High, "and I didn’t know it was a type of cancer. When they said it was cancer, I thought, wow, this is real here." He was shocked and scared and felt "weird." His longtime doctor, Diane Williams, a pediatric heme-oncologist in Ashland, noticed leukemic symptoms — fever, swollen glands — and had a blood-count test done. A low number of red blood cells led to a bone marrow aspirate, the definitive test for leukemia, at Doernbecher’s Children Hospital in Portland. The adults knew what hit him. "You definitely get thrown off your horse," says Jim Palazzolo. "You really don’t have time to contemplate or go ‘Woe is me,’ or anything like that. There’s no time for it. You have to put your faith in medical technology and prayer, and that’s all you can do." A.J. Palazzolo had acute lymphocytic leukemia. Successful treatment occurs, on average, in 70 to 80 percent of the cases, says Williams. But it’s no picnic: spinal taps, bone marrow and blood draws, chemotherapy. When Palazzolo lost his hair to the latter, Williams volunteered to go to his school and explain to his classmates "why we altered his hair style," she says, adding that she uses such occasions to educate. "It’s better to meet them head on and say, ‘Here’s the deal, this is what he’s got.’ "A.J. was very resilient and positive. It’s not easy on any of these kids ... he came through some tough treatment." Thirty-seven months worth. It was bad early. He lost 30 pounds and "was skin and bones," he says, then gained 50 back, the result of steroids. He remembers running onto the football field when a friend got hurt, only to fall flat himself, his legs no longer used to such a pace. Palazzolo skipped only the flag football season immediately after being diagnosed, but other seasons were often interrupted. Sometimes, privately, he couldn’t help it: Why me? "I definitely thought about it," says Palazzolo, "when I couldn’t do something because I had a doctor’s appointment or I just had a spinal tap. Sometimes it felt like I was losing part of my childhood. "But I never said it out loud. That’s not who I am." He remembers getting word from his doctors that he was finally in remission, then delighting in the official letter that came days later. "We went to the cupboard where we kept all my pills and threw them all away," he says. "It was just an awesome feeling." It, too, would be interrupted. As part of his treatment, Palazzolo was placed in a children’s study group and given a drug, 6-thioguanine. After relatively extensive use, he had a toxic reaction that clogged and enlarged his liver and spleen. He was taken off the drug, but a chain reaction had begun: the enlarged organs caused a backup of blood, enlarging the veins around the esophagus and stomach and causing severe internal bleeding. His mother, Debbie, was driving A.J. to a sports camp when he began to vomit blood and clots. They detoured to the hospital. Again. "He became profoundly anemic very quickly with some massive bleeding," says Williams. "We knew he had a problem, but he had been doing very, very well." He underwent a splenectomy and stomach bypass surgery less than four months ago. Before the surgery, Palazzolo had been in the best shape of his life. He’d played on three basketball teams and was running track. That could explain his fast recovery — against doctor’s orders. "The love of his life is playing ball," Williams acknowledges, "and he’s not going to be kept off the field by these mere trifles." She chuckles at the thought. He was back in school the second day he was home. He had planned short visits with his teachers, then called home to say he would stay for the day. A day later, Jim Palazzolo found his son shooting baskets at sundown. "He asked me if it hurt," says A.J. "I said, ‘Nope.’ He said, ‘Keep shooting.’" Soon after, A.J. was hitting baseballs off a tee in the shop behind the house, then he was back with his Babe Ruth team, the Cardinals, practicing and scrimmaging in the preseason. Finally, the three-week checkup came. His surgeon, Dr. Marvin Harrison, was a former rower at Stanford. He was privy to the drive and stubbornness of the competitive athlete. Palazzolo recalls his first words: "He said, ‘I know I told you not to play any sports. I also know you did. How’d you do?’" Not bad, Palazzolo admitted, squeezing the words through a grin. Only the day before, he’d played all seven innings of a scrimmage, going 2-for-3 while playing first and third bases. Learning Palazzolo didn’t catch, the doctor told him to get back to it before he got rusty. "That was the whole meeting," says Palazzolo. They waited 45 minutes. They were out in five, if that. Later, in the season opener on May 17, Palazzolo, who initially tired quickly in his catcher’s crouch, caught all seven innings and made some highlight plays: a Willie Mays-type basket catch of a foul ball to the backstop and a diving grab down the third base line. As the 20-game season progressed, he had another defensive thrill, throwing out five runners in one game, and hit about .400 from the Nos. 3, 4 and 5 spots. Other players are now arriving for the morning football practice. They run lazy routes and catch soft passes, their way of stretching and blinking awake. Palazzolo has long since dismissed this cockamamie notion of down time. He’s instead pondering what he’s gained from his experience, the supreme feeling that he’s beaten back a nasty foe and can lead a normal life again. And perspective. It’s so nice to be on the field, playing. Football, basketball, baseball, hanging with friends, doesn’t matter. "It’s a blessing," says Palazzolo. In the distance, another lob, another catch. "A lot of people don’t think that way because they don’t know any better," he says. "A lot of times when I’m playing, I just think how cool it is I’m doing this." Soon, he’s off to join the others. The coach, in mock admonishment, tells Palazzolo: "A.J., get that stuff done in your off time!" Off time? Reach sports editor Tim Trower at 776-4479, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback ADVERTISERS A D V E R T I S E R S SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Opportunities