Finding art in remission
By Mark Baylis - Staff Writer
5/12/05 Word at Cabrillo High School was that Robert Rogers was dead.
Rogers, who turns 17 Friday, can laugh now about the rumors of his demise from cancer. He wasn't laughing in late 2003 when migraines led a doctor to discover a tumor in his pituitary gland.
Roger's memory of 2004 will primarily consist of views from his hospital room. Instead of memorizing football patterns - a sport Rogers loved - he was memorizing the dozen names of the hormone replacements and medicines he would be taking for life following the removal of the tumor and pituitary gland.
"In the beginning I didn't believe it," Rogers said of his diagnosis. "Until I woke up (from surgery) and was in such pain."
Without the pituitary gland's production, the kidneys can fail to process water correctly, leading to constant urination and rapid dehydration. The condition is called diabetes insipidus. Rogers drinks nearly two gallons of water a day to prevent dehydration, his mom said.
Despite the pituitary gland's tiny size, it affects nearly every part of the body. Its hormones help regulate important functions such as growth, blood pressure and reproduction.
The gland's absence also leaves Rogers prone to seizures should he get an adrenaline rush, Rogers said. That means no thrill rides and no sports, including football. He can also go into seizures should he have a fever.
"It was like the foundation fell under his feet," said soon-to-be stepfather Carmelo Escobedo.
With football in his rearview mirror, the introspective Rogers turned to art and had an epiphany: He was a natural.
He did his first painting at his uncle's cabin at Lake Orville near Chico. The realistic landscape rendering of the water framed between pine trees below a snow-drenched mountain range shocked his family. They didn't believe it was his.
Rogers also funneled the anger, frustration and struggle from his cancer fight through an ink pen, developing a love for writing and poetry. He's now exploring art school following his graduation in 2006.
"If his illness didn't happen, I don't think we would have known he was an artist," said Donna Kolish, Robert's mother. "Now it's all he thinks about."
Rogers rose from rumored death to return for his junior year at Cabrillo in January, though people may not have recognized him. He had shrunk from 240 pounds to 160.
He may show up next week a little tanner. Rogers is at Paradise Island in the Bahamas this week, thanks to a birthday gift from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. He is staying at the Atlantis Resort, which one guidebook calls "one of the most lavish properties in the entire Caribbean."
Wistful and illusive, Rogers still has his bad days, his parents say. Some days he quarantined himself in his room, brooding, isolated and angry at the world. It was his sense of humor that always popped up at the right times, his parents say.
"There were some days I could tell he's having a rough day, and I'd think 'Here it comes. I'm going to lose him,'" Kolish said at a recent birthday party before she, Escobedo and Rogers boarded a plane for their trip. "But he's always been the class clown. That's how he got through it."
With that, Robert picked up a slice of birthday cake and smashed it in his mother's face, then in his sister's.
