Tess at Eight: "I Have the Best Life"
By Kevin Simpson, The Denver Post
Dec. 24, 2007
In Tess Clark's pink-bathed bedroom with the fairy mural on the wall, two dolls named Michael and Mikayla — delivered by Santa a couple of years ago — rest in cradles near the window.
She swaddles them with blankets and surrounds them with toys. But in a nearby bin, she keeps plastic syringes, feeding tubes and medical charts — real-life artifacts of her own experience converted to an 8-year-old's play world.
When Tess announced that one doll has cerebral palsy, the other Down syndrome, make-believe mirrored reality — she has friends with both conditions. But it also signaled a transformation.
"I think she likes to be the caretaker," says Heather Clark, her mom. "She doesn't always have to be on the receiving end; she can be on the giving end. It takes her out of the position of being the one in need."
Four years ago, The Denver Post introduced readers to a girl who had just emerged from the most difficult stretch of what doctors called the "surgery track."
Born with a unique genetic disorder, Tess spent her first four years in and out of Children's Hospital, breathing through a tracheotomy tube and getting nourishment through a gastric feeding tube. But the past four years have been, by comparison, an exercise in normalcy and stunning personal growth.
"She's taking off," says Kent Clark, her dad. "Her activities are things other third-graders talk about. Instead of surgery, it's sleepovers, sports, music."
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