Published: October 26, 2009 11:53 am      

A Much Needed Wish

CADDO MILLS — The Buglehall family of Caddo Mills may have been hit with some misfortune, but they are still extremely blessed, and not just because Dallas-based Operation Once in a Lifetime and NFL football superstar Troy Palomalu granted their wish.

Two years ago, as Sgt. Matt Buglehall was training for his deployment to Iraq, his 9-year-old daughter McKayla was diagnosed with Fanconi Anemia (FA) May 25, 2007, which resulted in an emergency bone marrow transplant at the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis in March of 2008.

Fanconi Anemia is a rare blood disorder that often leads to shorter life spans. Though considered primarily a blood disease, it can affect all systems of the body and often leads to bone marrow failure.

The treatment options for this unpredictable disease are expensive and specialized. Patients who have had a successful bone marrow transplant — like McKayla — are cured of the blood problem associated with FA, but must still have regular examinations to watch for signs of cancer.

This is the situation the Buglehalls find themselves in. Since Sgt. Buglehall’s second deployment to Iraq, his wife has been traveling with McKayla between Caddo Mills and Minneapolis, where specialists can provide the best possible care for McKayla two years after her transplant.

The family, of which there are six, Matt, his wife Lisa and their children Matthew, McKayla, Mason and Garrett, are a close knit group who are blessed to be surrounded by family and a caring community in times of hardship.

The family lives on 50 acres in Caddo Mills where the kids spent many hours riding and grooming the family horses.

“That’s something we all do together,” said Matt Buglehall via phone from Afghanistan. “My father-in-law lives out there as well, so it’s a big family thing.”

Lisa’s sister also resides in Caddo Mills, no more than seven miles from their home, and the community is as close to a family as a town can get.

“That’s one reason we decided to move from Wolfe City,” said Buglehall. “That way she could be close to her family during times when she needed help or that I’m gone. Everybody really helps each other.”

The Caddo Mills community has done much to help the family as well, including hosting a fund-raiser for McKayla before she went for her bone marrow transplant.

The Caddo Mills Independent School District has also been invaluable to the family, even sending a teacher out once a week for four hours to make sure she has kept up on her schoolwork.

“It was an absolute surprise the way everything came about,” said Buglehall. “She went in for a routine school physical and the doctor noticed that her counts were low. He wanted to send her to a blood specialist, so we went to Dallas and the doctor there said, right away, that it was Fanconi Anemia and they wanted to do a bone marrow sample to be certain, and sure enough there it was.”

At the time Buglehall was at Camp Shelby in Mississippi training for his deployment to Iraq.

“It was such a shock because McKayla’s never been the sick one,” he said. “She’s always been healthy and never got hit with a bunch of colds, and then this happened and we’re like ‘Not her, she’s the healthy one.’”

After her transplant, McKayla went approximately six months before seeing her Minneapolis doctors again, as she’d been seeing doctors in Texas due to the expense of traveling back and forth to Minnesota.

“They questioned as to why she hadn’t come off her medications yet,” said Buglehall. “Not to say anything bad about her Texas doctors, but you go to the people that are writing the book on these conditions if you can, because you want the best for your child.”

Aside from being the most knowledgeable doctors available to treat McKayla, the staff at the University of Minnesota Medical Center have become like family to the Buglehalls.

“They’ve been great,” he said. “McKayla has made so many friends up there and the doctors and nurses are amazing. She’s more comfortable with them than with anyone else. We’ve made a whole new family up there. It was an overall wonderful experience. If you had to go through a bone marrow transplant, that’s the place to do it.”

According to Buglehall, being away from his family during this time was extremely difficult, but the support he received from his military family helped get him through.

“They’ve been tremendously receptive and helpful with everything my family and I have ever needed,” said Buglehall.

Buglehall’s unit even came together to help pay for one of his flights home to spend some time with his family. His unit also gets the credit for introducing Operation Once in a Lifetime to the Buglehalls.

“We’ve done some things to help Sgt. Patrick M. Sowers, the founder of the organization, with some of his fund raisers,” said Buglehall. “We go out in uniform and promote the organization because he’s helped so many people. We might as well help also, support our own if you will.”

Operation Once in a Lifetime was created by a soldier to help other soldiers, and most recently the organization has partnered with Head & Shoulders and two-time Super Bowl Champion, Troy Polamalu to grant the wishes of seven deserving soldiers, one of whom is Buglehall.

“We kept checking the Web site to see what was going on and saw that the organization would be granting the wishes of one worthy soldier a week for seven weeks, beginning Sept. 14 though Oct. 26,” said Buglehall. “All that was required to enter was a 250-word essay. We were in Minneapolis at the time and thought ‘Why not? It’s just 250 words and look what could happen.’ We never really thought that anything would come of it.”

Thanks to the organization, the Buglehalls now have a year’s worth of round-trip tickets to Minneapolis, along with hotel accommodations, for McKayla and her mother, but that’s not all the organization has provided.

To pay back Buglehall’s unit for raising the funds to get him to home to his family, the organization provided them a digital projector. They also, in an effort to keep McKayla’s mind on the important things in life — like being a kid — provided her with a PSP Playstation that she can use while in the hospital getting treatment.

Now, McKayla is 11-years old, and like most kids she loves animals both big and small, and thanks to her improved condition, she has less limitations to slow her down.

“She had limitations that she’d never had before and that was hard,” said Buglehall. “Horseback riding, gymnastics and the whole nine yards were out for a while.”

Now, McKayla can go horseback riding, as long as she wears a helmet, which she’s not overly fond of, but she does it.

“She finally got to go back to school this year and to look at her, to see her, to watch her interact at school, she’s so happy,” said Buglehall. “She doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her. She goes on like any other little kid.”



Readers can help support the Buglehall family and raise money for other servicemen and servicewomen and their families in need by visiting TroyTacklesMore.com. For every click that is made on the “donate” button, $1 will be given to families in need.