Young cancer survivor helps kids beat boredom while battling cancer

Bryce Newman was a 15-year-old star baseball player getting ready for the Under 15 World Series in Japan when worrisome symptoms began to emerge: he was dropping the ball, something unexpected for a player of his caliber, and he suffered from severe headaches.

When the diagnosis came, it was dire. Newman had a malignant brain tumor, a medulloblastoma, that required immediate surgery. He told the doctor to just finish and sew him up — he had a plane to catch.

It wasn't until the doctor told him that wasn't going to play ball in Japan that he began to cry, his father, Rick Newman, recalled.

Newman's family has deep ties in New Orleans and now live in Mandeville. The 23-year-old graduate student is studying sports management at Texas A&M. After four brain surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy, he is nearly seven years cancer free.

But instead of leaving his experience behind, Newman is determined to help other young cancer patients overcome the hardship he most remembers from his medical odyssey: boredom.

He's raising money through a nonprofit he launched in December that will buy Apple iPads for pediatric cancer patients. The 501(c)(3) is called Miracle at Manchester Foundation, a name that comes from the high school stadium in San Diego where he once played baseball. The month the nonprofit launched, an independent film based on his experience, also called "Miracle at Manchester," premiered.

The first iPads were distributed in January to young patients at Louisiana Children's Medical Center and Ochsner Hospital for Children. Bryce Newman and his father distributed another round to those hospitals in March.

The foundation has committed to donating 150 iPads every year, 110 to Children's Hospital and 40 to Ochsner. The iPads cost about $400 each, Bryce Newman said, and the foundation has an initial fundraising goal of $60,000.

The number of iPads is keyed to the average of new pediatric cancer cases the hospitals receive each year, his father said.

The iPads will be theirs to keep, and Newman's hope is that they will bring some fun to youngsters dealing with the tedium of treatment.

"I was a lot older than the other patients, one of the oldest ones in the oncology facility," Newman said. "I realized how boring it was for me — very boring. I wanted to make it easier for other kids."

The iPads aren't just fun and games. Each will come preloaded with links to information on nutrition, exercise and other help information keyed to recovery. They will also include a link to Cancer for College, a nonprofit launched by another cancer survivor that provides scholarships to cancer patients. Newman is a mentor in that program.

"You've got to have fun, even though it's a cruddy experience," Newman said, and he hopes that the foundation's gift will give patients moments of fun and distraction.

"Distraction is so important," said Dr. Craig Lotterman, a pediatric oncologist at Ochsner Hospital for Children. "You remember the first year of the pandemic, the fear, anxiety, detachment, staying at home? That is the life of a pediatric cancer patient, along with going to the clinic to get chemotherapy and getting sick."

For 5-year-old Addison Pitre, whose kidney cancer treatment at Ochsner began four months ago, the iPad has provided that escape, her mother, Lindsay Pitre, told Newman during his March visit. "We have to tell her, it's time to get off the tablet, it's bedtime," she said.

Newman also offered words of encouragement as he distributed the iPads during the March 3 visit, swapping baseball stories with 19-year-old Joshua Brown, who is being treated for bone cancer.

Brown told Newman that he hadn't wanted to tell anyone his leg was hurting because a big game was coming up. "I just didn't want to sit out," he said.

That's a story Newman could understand. The hardest part of cancer for him was the end of playing baseball, which he had hoped to pursue in college and beyond.

"I decided to hang up my cleats, because I realized that training to achieve the same level in baseball as I did before was almost unattainable, which made me angry at times," he said.

Lotterman said a cancer diagnosis is tough for adolescents because at the very time they are asserting their independence, the illness thrusts them back to dependency. "It's hard for a 15- to 16-year-old," he said. "It's harder for them than for a 2-year-old."

Parents of cancer patients also struggle, said Lotterman, who compared the stress level of cancer patient's mother with that of an Iraqi war veteran.

"Bryce's story is filled with hope. He's helping other people, providing kids with a lot of excitement and joy when there's not a lot of joy in where they are," Lotterman said. Their parents get to enjoy their children's happiness "and forget for a moment," he said.

Newman says that he never doubted he would beat cancer.

"My parents stayed strong," he said. "My mindset was that I was going to be fine. I leaned on whatever the advice was from the doctors. It was the same kind of life lessons I learned from playing ball."

Newman's goal now is to grow his foundation into a national effort. At the end of March, he'll give 20 iPads to Gosliano Children's Hospital in Fort Myers, Florida, and he plans to expand to Children's Hospital in Houston because of its ties to Texas A&M.

Lotterman says that it's not unusual for children who've had cancer, like Bryce Newman, to dedicate their lives to helping others.

"Cancer is a powerful life-changing experience … they take that experience and find a degree of meaning. It inspires me to continue doing what I do," Lotterman said.