Chatham boy the subject of film documentary
By Brian CleeveWednesday April 13, 2005
Myles and Susan McLellan were interviewed for a documentary film at Chatham's Ellis Park on Sunday. A Toronto company was in town for two days producing the film about the 12-year-old boy who has a brain tumour. Holding the sound boom is Alan Code, a co-producer and co-director, and Roger Singh, director of photography. Both men work for Athelas Productions.
Brian Cleeve / Chatham This Week
Myles McLellan isn't contagious.
"I want other kids to know that it's safe to play with me; they can't catch cancer."
The 12-year-old Chatham boy and his family are the subject of a film documentary by Artists Raising Consciousness (ARC) that could be shown as early as October.
Myles and his father Wayne and mother Susan spent time at their home in north Chatham and at a nearby park, as well as the Wheels Inn Wildzone, during two days of filming earlier this week.
Myles -- who was diagnosed with a brain tumour three years ago -- said he felt at ease in front of the camera.
"It's not difficult and I get to say stuff to people about my cancer. I can tell them how I got cancer and what it was like in the hospital.
"I want kids to know that it's alright to play with kids who have cancer. We're no different than they are. You can play with me; you don't have to be afraid of me."
Billie Mintz represents ARC, a non-profit institute that provides films for charities. Mintz said the filming in Chatham is designed to help build a proposal for two organizations, Princess Margaret Hospital and the Robert Brass Foundation for new drug research.
The group met Myles through the two organizations.
Mintz said ARC is making a dramatic film, "a fable for kids" and came to Chatham to do research on Myles.
"He is creating his own mythology as to why he is here and why this is happening to him."
Susan McLellan said the film will show "how the whole dynamic of the family changes when a child has cancer."
The film chronicles how Myles got the brain tumour.
"He was at a ninth birthday party and was swimming at the Y when he started complaining of head-aches. His father wrapped him up and took him to emergency (in Chatham)."
Doctors there at first diagnosed the headache as a migraine and sent Myles home. The next day, he could barely move and he returned to the hospital.
"We were told he had a brain tumour and needed a 20-hour operation in London."
Myles had been a healthy child before the onset of his cancer, enjoying baseball, basketball and bowling. Today, he can barely get around, has a lot of short-term memory loss because of his treatments, and faces another surgery on April 20 to repair a port that was put into his chest.
Susan explains how she and her husband Wayne, an engineer at the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance, had to make several trips to London for treatment for Myles.
And the worst may yet be ahead.
"Myles was given a 30 per cent chance to survive five years and we're coming up on three years."
Susan also hopes the film will help show how lonely life is for a child with a tumour.
Myles is a Grade 6 student at Our Lady of Fatima School and Susan says that everyone there has been supportive of him for the most part.
"But he still needs friends. He needs to get involved in things, not just look out through the glass."
The role of friend has also fallen on Susan and Wayne, and Susan admits that can lead to spoiling their child.
"We live with the fact our child may not be here tomorrow. So if we spoil him and he survives, that's just fine."
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