Students hope hops help their classmate

 By Heidi Fallon
 Staff Reporter

   NORTH COLLEGE HILL - Children rarely require a good reason to jump up and down. Except at St. Paul's Nursery School.

   Once a year, the 3- to 5-year-olds select a charitable cause and proceed to hop 100 times to raise money through pledges. Except this year.

   Instead of a charity, students decided to hop for one of their classmates, 4-year-old Caroline Blandford. The spirited tot suffers from transverse myelitis, a neurologic syndrome caused by the inflammation of the spinal cord. All the money collected this year will go to the Transverse Myelitis Association for research.

   Except for the rigid braces wedged into her bright pink tennis shoes to support her legs, Blandford's condition is undetectable. She wobbles a bit when she walks, but it doesn't slow her down.

   "We've never treated her any differently," said her dad, Steve Blandford. "We've never let her say she can't do something."

   Blandford said he and his wife, Colleen, consider themselves blessed their daughter's condition was caught early enough for treatment to be effective.

   The disease is not age specific, but Caroline was diagnosed at the age of 6 months. What her parents thought was a common cold, then a summer virus, was later determined to be transverse myelitis.

   She had a high fever and the telling symptom of limp legs and arms, her father said. If those affected don't show signs of improvement within a short time of available treatments, chances are they never will, Blandford said.

   "After we brought her home from the hospital, she moved a toe. It wasn't much," he said, "but it was everything."

   Caroline will require braces the rest of her life and may have continued bladder complications, neither of which seem to bother the busy preschooler.

   With deliberate, tottering steps, Caroline makes her way to a classroom where students are forming a circle getting ready to hop. Their teachers remind them they're hopping for healthy muscles and for Caroline.

   With a shy smile and big brown eyes, Caroline stands in the center of the room listening as the students shout out each hop on their way to 100.

   With a helping hand from her teacher, Sue Jackson, Caroline tries to join. Except she can't. Her pink tennis shoes never leave the carpeted floor.

   St. Paul's Director Karen Rieman said she's amazed almost daily by Caroline.

   "She never lets anything get in her way and her parents are just wonderful," Rieman said. "We've raised money for leukemia and other diseases, but this year is really special." It's for Caroline.

 Published April 18, 2001