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Fragile Lives at The Herald (Sorry - The Herald is having trouble with its archives, and this page will not display properly at its Web site. Dori does have an actual clip of this story)

Sunday
November 14, 1999
1,872 words
The Herald, Everett

Fragile Lives
Foster parent Bonnie Swinney handles with loving care children whose illnesses would overwhelm others

By DORI STUBBS 
Special to The Herald

SNOHOMISH -- At age 60, when most people are thinking about retiring, Bonnie Swinney of Snohomish looks at her three adopted and three foster children and wonders how many times she will have to drive to the hospital this month.

 

Five of Swinney's kids need more than the average mothering; they require constant medical attention because of kidney transplants, facial deformities or muscle deterioration. She meets that challenge by rigging up her home with lifesaving equipment and leaving her car in drive.

 

"My car just goes there automatically," Swinney said of her frequent emergency room trips and scheduled visits to Children's Hospital in Seattle.

 

Concern for kids runs in Swinney's family.

 

She grew up with parents who took care of foster children, and her energetic 87-year-old mother, Lois Prater, now manages an orphanage and school in the Philippines.

 

Fifteen years ago Swinney, then married with six children of her own and a nurse by trade, decided to follow in her mother's footsteps.

 

She applied for a foster parenting license.

 

The state Department of Social and Health Services granted her request but neglected to send her children for several months.

 

"I later found out they were waiting to give me handicapped kids," Swinney explained.

 

When DSHS found out she had a nursing background, she was offered children who could use her help the most.

 

Her Chevrolet Venture extended van faithfully makes the runs to Children's with young lives challenged by pain, high fevers and infections.

 

Like the day 15-year-old Katia doubled over with stomach pains and 4-year-old Anthony awoke with a high fever and 9-year-old DeAnna was already scheduled for an EKG. Swinney needed 13-year-old Natasha's help, so that meant baby Staycee squeezed in for the ride.

 

It's a usual day in the household of an unusual woman who cares for fragile kids.

 

"What she does for these children on a daily basis is beyond the imagination of most parents," said Bob McClintock, Everett area administrator for Child Protective Services. "She becomes the expert. She really knows how to take care of medically fragile children."

 

The more problems or disabilities, the quicker she invited these kids into her wide-spread arms and four-bedroom, two-bath mobile home resting on five wooded acres.

 

"It was something I wanted to do," Swinney said. "I like the challenge of the medical problems -- seeing what can be done and how much I can help. Especially kids who have been neglected in their own homes."

 

Her first foster baby, Katia, survived a collapsed lung and kidney failure before reaching Swinney's eager hands. Katia's mother, Nadene Robinson, was a 16-year-old American Indian of the Tulalip Tribes struggling with drugs and alcohol and unable to care for the baby.

 

Katia landed in Swinney's lap at age 10 months, her health as frail as a baby bird who has been tossed from the nest. She was in kidney failure. Doctors expected her to die.

 

Two months under Swinney's wing and Katia perked up.

 

Robinson, who speaks openly of her troubled past and her efforts to turn her life around, credits Swinney with saving her daughter's life.

 

"If it weren't for Bonnie, I don't think 'Tia would have made it," said Robinson, who maintains a relationship with Swinney, Katia and Staycee, another child of Robinson's in Swinney's care.

 

Though Katia's kidneys were not cured, 11 years passed before she needed dialysis, a procedure that removes impurities from the blood during kidney failure.

 

She spent two years on that lifesaving equipment before a kidney became available for a transplant. She suffered a series of serious setbacks, including the failure of the first anti-rejection drugs, before her condition finally stabilized.

 

"Since July of '98, she's only been to the hospital eight times," Swinney announced. "Which seems like only a little to us."

 

Katia turns 16 this month. She hopes to again enjoy the wind whipping her ink-black hair behind her as she traverses the jumps, bumps and dips of motorbike trail riding, now forbidden her because of the jarring to her kidneys.

 

Swinney wants to make Katia a permanent, legal family member, but the Tulalip Tribal Board will only permit legal guardianship. Under the Indian Child Welfare Act, tribes have authority over adoption decisions.

 

"She has begged the tribe," Swinney said of Katia. "The mother has begged the tribe. But culture is everything with the tribe."

 

On her 18th birthday, Katia can choose her own fate. She will make her last name Swinney, she said.

 

Swinney has adopted three of her foster kids, Natasha, DeAnna and Anthony.

 

"After awhile, you can't remember if you gave birth to a child or got them another way," said the grandmother of nine and great-grandmother of two, who walks with a cane and needs hip-replacement surgery. "Sometimes, you fall so in love with a child, it's hard to let go."

 

Staycee, Katia's 8-month-old brother, recently joined the four youths already living in the residence surrounded by mellow maples that coordinate with Swinney's early American decor. He was born addicted to cocaine.

 

Another family addition, a healthy 13-year-old girl who said she has found stability with Swinney, rounds out the foster mother's clan.

 

From the outside, casual observers would note the bicycles and Big Wheels that adorn Swinney's circular driveway. They would see the five older children laugh, play and squabble the same as any siblings. But if there's a crisis, the teen-age girls scatter into an organized scramble, one taking over dinner and another calming down excited youngsters.

 

"I'd never make it without Natasha," Swinney praised her daughter. "She's my mommy. She can pitch in and baby-sit."

 

With her jeans rolled up and T-shirt pulled down to her knees, the 13-year-old recited her accomplishments with pride.

 

"I cook for the little kids, put them to bed, give them medicine and get them up in the morning," she said.

 

"She has to," Swinney added, "because sometimes we're at the ER for 10 hours or more."

 

Natasha can only view her mother through her left eye. A facial tumor causes the right half of her face to swell, forcing that eye nearly shut. She said she would like physicians to remove some tumor tissue so she can see better.

 

"The doctors are skeptical of removing the tumor from her face because it can cause paralysis, and it just regrows," Swinney said.

 

Natasha takes comfort in helping her mother. One of her chores is bathing DeAnna.

 

Born with congenital myotonic dystrophy, a form of muscular dystrophy, DeAnna was never expected to walk or talk.

 

"Babies like her have not been kept alive long enough to know what they'll do," Swinney noted.

 

At 9, DeAnna is mentally delayed but not physically slow. She attends school and chats like a 3-year-old unwilling to give up her toy.

 

But her condition is fatal.

 

She has just started showing signs of heading downhill, Swinney said. In five years, she will need a wheelchair and will develop cardiac problems as her heart muscle fails. Swinney hopes DeAnna hangs on until her 20th birthday.

 

DeAnna just hopes Anthony will stop bugging her.

 

Active and tiny at age 4, Anthony sports an unexplainable large belly. He weighed just 4 pounds 8 ounces at his full-term birth and inherited his birth mother's kidney problems. He needed to be fed by a tube attached to his stomach until age 3.

 

When Anthony's kidneys failed him at 14 months, Swinney moved him and Katia into her own bedroom, which she arrayed with their two home portable dialysis kits. By 8 each night, the two were hooked up until the next morning, Katia for 10 hours and Anthony for 12.

 

Unlike Katia, Anthony did not have to wait for a kidney. He had one waiting for him.

 

Though the rambunctious toddler saw nothing of his biological father, the man did consent to donate a kidney to his 3-year-old son in 1998.

 

"It was the greatest gift he could've given him," Swinney said.

 

Anthony now bounds up steps and beseeches his mother with endless questions. She happily sends her son off to preschool every day.

 

Her exceptional parenting of special-needs children does not go unnoticed.

 

"Bonnie is amazing," said Dr. Ruth McDonald, medical director of solid organ transplants at Children's Hospital. "She not only does a good job of taking care of their medical needs, but their emotional needs. She loves them. She treats them as if they were her natural-born children. They are a part of her family."

 

Life eased for Swinney after the successful transplants, and she decided to concentrate on her four children and retire from foster parenting. Until Staycee.

 

The drug-addicted infant gasped once when he was born, then stopped breathing for six minutes. "When they said he's liable to have CP (cerebral palsy) and wasn't breathing, well, of course. I'm a sucker," Swinney explained of her change of heart.

 

To keep his limbs from stiffening, she must stretch his arms and legs several times a day and keep him curled in a ball at other times. Mild cerebral palsy will cause him to have tremors later in life.

 

"Otherwise, he's growing well," she said. "He's already 20 pounds. Unlike other drug babies, he doesn't like things quiet and dark. He's very social and makes good eye contact."

 

Despite the buzz generated by the constant motion of busy kids, the tranquility in the home resembles the peace of the goldfish that swim around in Swinney's front-yard pond.

 

"I never think about life being difficult," Swinney said of her coping strategy. "Once in a while, I wonder what it would be like just to be a grandmother. But I'd probably be bored to tears. I'd probably be a school or hospital volunteer."

 

Nine years ago she divorced her husband of 31 years and kept her children. She now single-handedly manages her responsibilities. To maintain sanity for them all, she extracts the positive from the extraordinary.

 

Swinney makes time each week to meet friends for lunch and attend Sunday church services with all her children.

 

She gives thanks for little conveniences.

 

For one, the school picks up and drops off her children at the front door.

 

For another, the older children help with the mountain of household tasks.

 

"I try to treat the kids as normal, healthy kids. So I don't think they go around thinking of themselves as sick. They don't normally spend time depressed. It's all just a way of life," she said.

 

But the trials are far from ending.

 

Natasha requires routine medical care to keep her deformity under control. DeAnna's health deteriorates progressively. Anthony and Katia suffer side effects from the transplant medication and will need new kidneys again in several years.

 

"I take it one day at a time," Swinney said of the distress and disappointments that come with single-parenting fragile children. "I sometimes get depressed if I look too far ahead and worry about my children's health."

 

Her days as a foster parent are numbered, she reported cautiously. A love of nursing and children keep her going, and she delights in her kids' successes. 

 

But she admitted to feeling a little tired and overwhelmed at times. She doubts her family will expand.

"But you never know," she added, "there's a great need for caring for medically fragile children."

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