Positive perseverance

At their final regular season practice, the 100-plus members of the Oak Mountain High School cross-country team made their way around the Heardmont Park track, jogging and singing in unison. 

Positioned in the middle of the pack was the jubilant leader of the Eagles’ chorus, team captain Cole Callahan. He ran barefoot while crooning the pace-setting tune.

“He is a bundle of life-giving energy that he pours into everyone else around him,” said Oak Mountain head coach Jim Moore. “He has a 100 percent cheerful attitude.”

It’s doesn’t only surface at cross-country practice, either. Cole Callahan, a senior, brings the same charisma to show choir rehearsals, student government meetings and the Heardmont Park bleachers. 

This fall, he led the “roller coaster” chant at Oak Mountain football games, pantomiming the ride’s back-and-forth movements in front of the student section. 

“He’s everyone’s friend,” said Olivia Hannum, Cole Callahan’s cross-country teammate and fellow show choir performer. 

His joyfulness hasn’t wavered over the past year and a half. For most, it would have. 

Losing glee seems like the natural result of spending countless nights curled up on the bathroom floor, puking until the wee hours of the morning from chemotherapy-induced nausea. 

“It was very comfortable, actually,” said Cole Callahan, the eternal optimist. “I have a nice bathroom.”

That is not a natural reaction, but it is what sets him apart. Since being diagnosed with fibromatosis six years ago — and amid his 12-month chemotherapy treatment that engulfed his junior year — Cole Callahan has followed through on his decision to persevere with positivity. 

He has taken the challenge in stride. 

Pranked

The doctors at Children’s of Alabama originally thought it was a million different things. But, eventually, they identified the tumor that had been growing in the left side of Callahan’s back, a few inches below his shoulder blade. 

His sixth-grade swim coach was the first one to recognize an issue. It appeared that something was awry when Callahan could no longer lift his left arm out of the water at practice. 

Doctors initially decided the best course of treatment involved surgically removing the tumor, so that’s what they did. As a result, Callahan spent his 2011 winter break recovering from the successful operation. 

Then, the tumor grew back.

“It pranked me,” Callahan said, poignantly. 

Pranking is what fibromatosis does best, pulling its patients through an endless cycle of giving and stealing hope. The disorder causes Callahan’s body to grow benign tumors, specifically in and around soft tissue. The chances of developing fibromatosis are one in a million; there is no known cure. 

“What’s tough about this is it wasn’t just one time,” said Cole’s mother, Leslie Callahan, the cross-country coach at the Westminster School at Oak Mountain. “It’s the day in and day out. He knows it’s not going away.”

Cole Callahan underwent subsequent operations in 2013 and 2015 to remove tumors that had regrown in the same area of his back. Each surgery further restricted his ability to move his left arm, due to the amount of muscle that had been cut out. 

The tumor, of course, mounted another comeback in 2016. This time, doctors prescribed chemotherapy as an alternate treatment. 

“This is when they say, ‘If we remove it again, you’ll probably not be able to move your left arm anymore because we’ve already taken out so much muscle,’” Cole Callahan recalled. 

Chemotherapy had its own ramifications, including a near mandatory school transfer.

Cole Callahan had attended Westminster-Oak Mountain since middle school, but he switched to Oak Mountain in advance of his junior year. The public school system possessed the resources to make need-based teaching accommodations through a 504 disability plan.

“Even if Cole were homebound, they would send someone to teach him,” Leslie Callahan said. 

The Callahans didn’t know how much the chemotherapy would affect Cole. But beginning Aug. 11, 2016, one week into his junior year, they started to find out. 

Time trial

It started with headaches. 

But, quickly, those were compounded by nausea, vomiting and an uncontrollable gastrointestinal system. Cole Callahan would throw up his breakfast frequently, his lunch occasionally and his dinner more often than not. 

The bathroom floor, therefore, became his second bunk. 

He didn’t see a point of laying in bed at night because he knew the urge to expel his last meal could surface at any moment.  

“It was a doozy,” he said. 

He lost close to 20 pounds within a couple months, and strands of his dark hair bleached white. 

Still, he refused to let the side effects of chemo consume his life. 

Cole Callahan trained all fall with the Oak Mountain cross-country team, and he would have competed had it not been for a state policy requiring transfer students to sit out the first year at their new school. Teammates like Cooper Gray, one of Cole Callahan’s best friends, grew accustomed to his mid-run puking spells. He would stop, vomit and then resume his pace. 

“Resilient,” said Gray, when asked to describe his pal. 

Cole Callahan also joined the Oak Mountain show choir, landed a spot in the school musical and remained steadfast to his studies. The straight-A student wasn’t going to allow chemotherapy to taint his pristine academic ledger, even as the absences piled up. 

He missed nearly 80 school days during the 2016-17 school year — and still earned all A’s.

“I would never let myself fall too far behind,” he said. “But oh, yeah, there was a lot of makeup work happening.”

Cole Callahan ingested his chemotherapy treatment orally instead of intravenously, gulping down a few pills each day from Aug. 11, 2016, to Aug. 11, 2017. And it appeared to be working. 

He went for an MRI scan last January, and there was no sign of the tumor. But its banishment came at a cost. The chemotherapy depleted his immune system, making chest infections, fevers and other ailments a routine part of his life. 

Cole Callahan had always seasoned his diagnosis with a sense of humor, keeping the mood light and outlook bright. That became more difficult as the chemo took its toll. 

“It was very easy to do the first semester,” he said. “The second semester I still did it, but it was a little harder. But, by that point, I’d made it so far, I might as well keep going.”

Gray and Hannum, Cole Callahan’s cross-country teammates, said that any fluctuation in his attitude went undetected. The only major difference they noticed in him pre- and post-chemo was that he stopped throwing up. 

“He tried to keep everything as normal as possible,” Leslie Callahan said. 

Pressing on

Cole and Leslie Callahan attended the Alabama NF Walk in early November, nearly a week and a half after Cole Callahan’s final high school cross-country meet. He completed the 5K course at the Oct. 26 Scottsboro Invitational in 18 minutes, 1 second —  his fastest time of the season. 

The Callahans arrived at the NF Walk both to show support and find solace. Another area cross-country coach, Jamie Rediker of the Altamont School, has a 6-year-old daughter with neurofibromatosis. NF is more common than fibromatosis, and it causes tumors to grow on nerves as opposed to soft tissue. 

Leslie Callahan met Rediker at a 2016 cross-country meet. Their shared experiences established an immediate connection. 

“We’re all a part of something that there’s not a known cure for, so that’s what we share, Leslie Callahan said. “It’s tumors that you don’t want in your body.”

At the time of the walk, three monthshad passed since her son downed his last dose of chemo. 

The side effects had largely subsided, save for the abiding consequences of a weakened immune system. He contracted walking pneumonia, an eye infection and vitiligo, a skin disease, since weaning off his treatment.

Still, it had been a good stretch. 

Cole Callahan, tumor free, started the college application process and enjoyed a season running under Moore. Leslie Callahan and Moore formerly coached together at Oak Mountain before she made the move to Westminster. Moore, meanwhile, had concentrated exclusively on teaching the past few years. This fall was his first season back on the course. 

“For Jim to have left, and the year he comes back is Cole’s one year to run there, I mean, that’s a God thing,” Leslie Callahan said. 

But she has always recognized God’s sovereignty amid her son’s circumstances. She saw it in the smooth transition between schools, when the Oak Mountain community embraced Cole Callahan, and felt it through the countless prayers that have enveloped her family. 

Moving forward, she’ll continue leaning on her faith. 

Cole Callahan sensed the tumor’s reemergence in his back one week after his last cross-country meet. He had an MRI scheduled for Nov. 14 that would either confirm or quell his suspicion. 

He has never been wrong before. Each time the tumor has regrown, he knew it. 

“That’s nerve-racking a little bit,” he said. 

The Callahans are not sure what the future holds, or what it will look like if a second round of chemotherapy is required. Cole Callahan has sights set on going to college, majoring in biomedical sciences and applying to medical school. 

Over the years, he’s learned how impactful a  good-natured doctor can be. He also has discovered through his various trials the value of humility and the necessity of perseverance.

The latter lesson was initially ingrained in Cole Callahan’s character by his first cross-country coach, his mom. 

It hasn’t failed him yet. 

“From day one, she’s instilled in me, ‘You never quit. You never give up,’” he said.