Robin Barhydt, 14: Bracelets for cancer research (Catherine Dunphy obit)
Hyfler/Rosner
Robin Barhydt, 14: Bracelets for cancer research
Dec. 7, 2006. 01:27 PM
CATHERINE DUNPHY
OBITUARY WRITER
There can never be any answer as to why a young girl with
upturned eyes, a wide smile and a habit of throwing her head
back, as if she wanted to grab the light and draw the sun
closer to her lovely face, would die Oct. 25, one week after
her 14th birthday.
Robin Barhydt was a healthy, fit, athletic, loving, lively,
lifelong vegetarian.
She was a dancer, always in motion, always moving with a
delicacy and grace.
She was a soccer star and darned good with a basketball too.
She had style - wacky socks, outrageous earrings, shorn Ts,
armloads of bracelets and pink hair - when she moved from
the Beach to the Halton villlage of Terra Cotta halfway
through Grade 7 in 2004.
She also had rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare childhood cancer that
starts in the muscle tissue.
As she herself said, that was a real "drag." And that's
about all she said on the subject of her illness, because
all she wanted was to be a normal kid and for sure she
didn't want any of her friends feeling sorry for her.
She was diagnosed Aug. 11, 2005, just before she was to go
away to camp.
She'd been having some trouble getting her breath in her
soccer matches and had had to sit out part of some games -
plus there was that lump on her right hand.
Her doctors told her everything was probably fine, but to
get an X-ray just in case.
Her dad, Chuck Barhydt, a lawyer, took her to Georgetown
Hospital for the X-ray en route to a soccer match.
Her mother, Betty Ann McPherson, a former court support
worker for the Canadian Mental Health Association, was at
home when she got the call from the hospital while Robin was
still on the soccer field.
Her daughter should get down to the Hospital for Sick
Children right away.
Robin had cancer and it was in her lungs, bones and bone
marrow.
She never got to camp and she missed most of Grade 8,
spending the next 44 weeks undergoing chemotherapy and
radiation treatments.
At the end of her treatments, the family threw a huge
party - "we celebrated everything with Robin," her mom
said - but the results of her follow-up the next week were
devastating.
The cancer had not been vanquished; it had spread to her
brain.
Yet she went on the class trip to Quebec City and attended
her Grade 8 graduation last June, aglow and smiling, in a
funky dress. She played soccer again. And between blasts of
chemotherapy she participated in all four nights of
performances in the June recital of her dance school.
During the summer, she insisted on volunteering for the
local humane society, telling her mother she was not to
mention she had cancer to them. (The family's three dogs
often slept with her.) She did the training and put in a
couple of shifts, cleaning up cages and dishes.
She was determined to audition for Mayfield Secondary
School, the arts high school she yearned to attend, and
enlisted Allisson Pasma, her teacher at the Halton Hills
School of Dance, to coach her every Saturday morning.
"She had such spirit. Never once did she sit out or take a
break," Pasma said. "(The school) would be silly not to
accept her."
But Robin's ankles were no longer strong enough to support
certain jumps and because her balance was off, her spins
were curtailed. They worked out a number that highlighted
her grace and glow and heart.
"(The school) sent us a thank-you note for auditioning,"
said McPherson. "They were so moved by her dance. She walked
in there proud, with no hair, and danced her dance."
Her father wept when the family got the call that she had
been accepted.
But Robin got to have only 2 1/2 days in Grade 9; in
September doctors found a tumour the length of her spine
just as the family was to embark on the Caribbean cruise she
had chosen for her wish from the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
Instead, fuelled by sheer will, Robin found the strength to
take her family to a beach house in Malibu, Calif., a month
later. She and her brother Dale, 15, went on every ride in
Disneyland, took studio tours, visited Hollywood.
She gave it her all - and when she got home Oct. 11, her
health was rapidly declining. She was seeing double and she
couldn't - but only because she was unable to - smile any
more.
And yet, everyone who knew her thought she would beat the
cancer again.
"Back then we didn't consider that she wouldn't make it,"
said Christine Marr, a neighbour who co-ordinated the
production of lime-green Robin Rocks bracelets. Robin chose
the colour; her mother came up with the Robin Rocks slogan
and her father sold them everywhere he went.
They raised more than $5,000 for Sick Kids' oncology
department.
"She was the most original person I've ever met, so happy
and colourful," said Marr's daughter Maria. She started a
website for Robin - http://www.freewebs.com/robinbarhydt -
that has received hundreds of hits so far.
Robin's dance school classmates painted and decorated her
bedroom for her. When her cruise fell through, they showed
up at her bedside in hula skirts to make her feel better.
Friends of her parents scored front row tickets for a
Raptors game - and the opportunity to meet with the players.
For her early birthday, a limo with pink interior lights,
pink butterflies on the windows and flutes of faux pink
champagne took Robin and her friends to the Beach for a
backyard party attended by 100 people, including classmates
from Norway Public School. "Every memory I have of her makes
me laugh. I had so much hope," said Zenna Davis-Jones, her
best friend.
They met at Norway when they were 7 and Zenna has kept every
small or silly gift Robin has ever given her, including
Mickey Mouse ears and a wand that says Dream on it. "But you
know, I could never picture her when she's 20."
She visited Robin the night before she died. They talked
about travelling in Europe next summer and trick-or-treating
the next week.
Later that night, as her mother was lying alongside her on
the bed, Robin asked her what her greatest fear was. "Losing
you," McPherson replied.
Then Robin told her mother her fear had always been getting
cancer - that she had been afraid of that happening from the
time she was a young child.
"And you know, mom," she said, "it hasn't been that bad."
Betty Ann McPherson has ordered more green bracelets to help
fund research into rhabdomyosarcoma. They read "Robin Rocks
On ... Help beat childhood cancer."
Mayfield Secondary School is dedicating this year's
Nutcracker performance to Robin, and the Halton Hills School
of Dance will bestow an award in Robin's honour to a dancer
at the end of their holiday recital this year.