Dec 26, 2006 By Christine Haines 7 min read

Editor’s note: This is the first installment of a two-part series about two Fairchance youths and their fights against cancer.FAIRCHANCE – Brett and Evan live about a mile apart from one another in Fairchance and most likely would have gone through life as passing acquaintances if it hadn’t been for July. That’s when they were both diagnosed with cancer. What the doctors found was a disease to be battled. What Brett and Evan found was a friendship unparalleled by any other.

Brett Pechatsko is 16. He became ill while camping with his mother and sister on July 4.

“We thought it was between the watermelon and the cabbage and noodles. He had a fever that was pretty high. Even then, I thought he was probably dehydrated and would be fine,” said Jenean DeLorenzo, Brett’s mother.

Brett’s father took him to the Uniontown Hospital emergency room and the preliminary diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma was made. Hodgkin’s involves irregular blood cells and strikes the lymph nodes. It generally affects people between the ages of 16 and 34, according to the Lymphoma Research Foundation. Brett’s lymphoma was confined to one side of his neck.

Evan Miller is 15. In May, he noticed a lump on his right forearm. At first he and his parents thought he had pulled a muscle while weightlifting, but the lump didn’t go away.

“It was bigger than a golf ball, but smaller than a lemon,” said Evan’s mother, Darcy Miller.

In July, after seeing several doctors and going through a number of tests, he was diagnosed as having rhabdomyosarcoma, an aggressive muscle cancer that affects children from birth through age 14. Evan was not quite 14 and a half when the lump appeared. By the time the cancer was diagnosed two months later, it was already a Stage 4 cancer, meaning that it had already spread beyond the original site and into a lymph node.

Both boys were stunned immediately following their diagnoses.

“I didn’t believe it. I was shocked,” Brett said. “You see other kids with it and you don’t think it can happen to you, but it does.”

“My brother came in with tears in his eyes and my parents were right behind him. I asked him, ‘Is it cancer?’ and he said ‘Yeah.’ My dad said it was real aggressive,” Evan said.

Evan said the medical team at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh told him he had a 60 percent chance of survival.

“You could tell they were real worried,” Evan said. “When I first found out, I was mad at the world. I told them I wasn’t going to do chemo.”

“He was told that within a couple of months he would have just gotten sicker and sicker. He wouldn’t have died from the cancer, he would have died from one of his organs just shutting down,” said Earl Miller, Evan’s father.

Brett said he kept his emotions inside after receiving the cancer diagnosis, though he did open up a little to his mother, sister and father. Evan went for a drive with his older brother, Eric, and they had a long talk before driving back home.

Evan opted to battle the disease and a short while later, found an unexpected ally in his battle against cancer when he learned about Brett.

“Not too many kids at Albert Gallatin have cancer, just us,” Evan said.

“We met in seventh grade, but we didn’t really hang out together,” Brett said.

“We just started hanging out in July. I had just been diagnosed and one of my friends told me that Brett had (cancer), so I called him and we just started hanging out,” Evan said.

Over the past four months, the boys have become inseparable. They joke that Evan’s attic recreation room is Brett’s bedroom. While the two are typical teens and spend time watching television or playing video games, they also discuss issues most teens never have to consider.

“We became close with him going to his treatments and me going to mine. We’d talk about losing our hair and things like that,” Brett said.

Evan said he welcomed the opportunity to talk to someone his own age in his own hometown who understood what it was like to deal with cancer.

“It was a blessing, a miracle. It would have been hard to go through it all alone,” Evan said.

Although their cancers are very different, both boys went through various types of chemotherapy and both eventually lost their hair. Brett had straight, blond hair, while Evan had dark, curly hair.

“My mom grabbed it one day, and it just fell out in clumps,” Brett said.

He immediately decided to get his head shaved, but the first two hair salons he went to were closed. DeLorenzo said they ended up at a salon in a shopping center. DeLorenzo took her camera with her, documenting another stage of her son’s life as she had in past years for more cheerful events like his first visit with Santa Claus.

Evan said he had hoped his hair wouldn’t fall out from the chemotherapy.

“It was like two weeks and it wasn’t coming out. The doctor said it should be out in about a week, so I thought maybe I’d gotten lucky. I went out riding dirt bikes with a friend and when I took my helmet off, big clumps fell out. I went two days without washing my hair,” Evan said.

He realized he would have to eventually wash his hair again and that his dark, Harpo Marx curls were going to come out. He went out on his dirt bike again, played a round of golf with his father and then went to get his head shaved.

“His chemo, he had to stay in the hospital for two to five days. For me, I’d have to go two days in a row, but only for three or four hours. I’d stop by to see him, but I’d have to leave. That was the hard part, because it’s lonely in the hospital,” Brett said.

While Brett’s hair had grown back to the length of a short buzz cut by Thanksgiving, Evan was still waiting for his to start growing. More important than the hair growth though was the shrinkage of the tumor in his arm.

Evan said his doctors told him not to expect anything noticeable after his first chemo treatment, that they would know the tumor was smaller but he wouldn’t.

“When I went back for my follow-up visit, we all knew it was smaller. The doctors were amazed,” Evan said.

Darcy Miller said that by Thanksgiving week, Evan’s doctors were ready to remove the tumor surgically.

“It had shrunk 90 percent and it was near the surface and didn’t affect the muscle,” Darcy Miller said.

Both boys are looking forward to the possibility of returning to school in January. Other than the first day of school at the high school, which Evan attended, the two have received homebound education so far this year.

Evan has a copy of cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong’s book “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life” in his attic recreation room. He and Brett have kicked around the possibility of writing their own book about their shared journey back to life.

“Next we’ll be going back to school and just living a normal life like the rest of the kids,” Brett said.

A normal life is something neither boy will ever take for granted again. In July both boys wondered if they would be alive at all. Brett is now thinking about becoming a chef. Evan is considering a career in medicine, possibly working with kids with cancer.

Tomorrow: The Children’s Hospital doctors treating Brett Pechatsko and Evan Miller discuss the treating of cancer in young people.