by Jessica Noll
513-556-1823

Sept. 12, 2016

The full student section looks like a blizzard hit the ‘Nati a bit early this year. Everyone in Nippert Stadium is decked out in white for the first home game of the season — a flurry of student spirit.

Freshman Mitch Stone, donning a white Bearcats T-shirt, stands on the sidelines in front of a crowd of cheering UC students. He looks over his shoulder at the massive, lush green football field with freshly painted white numbers illuminated by the field’s brilliant lights. The 18-year-old takes it all in, turns back to the rowdy student section and begins to lead, the notable “Down the Drive” cheer.

Cheerleaders grip their black and red pompoms and their massive megaphones, repping the Bearcat C-paw logo, ready to join in on the spirit.

The swarm of students’ in-sync clapping commences into, “Ohhhhhhh!”

Everyone leans in, bounces and rolls their fisted arms to the right. Then, “Ohhhhhh!” as they roll to the left. And back to the right, “Ohhhhhhhhh!” ending with four hearty claps.

Clap!
Clap!
Clap!
Clap!


A collective and enthusiastic, “U-C!” is yelled as the stands are filled with fans on their feet who create the "U" with their arms above their heads and the "C" the left.

“Yea! Hey! Cats! Let’s go U-C!”

The University of Tennessee at Martin Skyhawks were no match for the Bearcats, with a final score of 28-7 on Thursday, Sept. 1 during the home opener. Seems like UC’s good luck charm was back and this time, he too was an official Bearcat.
 
It’s a moment, Stone wasn’t sure he’d get to see come to fruition.

In 2008, the Stones were living their lives like so many others. School, sports, juggling schedules for four kids.

 
But in September, the Anderson Township, Ohio, family would never be the same.
 
Mitch, 11, started complaining of headaches. He was vomiting, and his vision was impaired during the worst of his headaches. Dee didn’t think too much of it since his older sister suffered from migraines. So, she took Mitch in for treatment. That worked for a while.
 
In February 2009, he came home from school and his left eyeball was turned inward. He looked at Dee, but his left eye looked like he was crossing his eyes. Scared, she looked at her son, hoping that he was joking with her and said, “Mitch, stop doing that. That’s not funny.”
 
He said, “No, mom. I’m not doing it on purpose.”
 
“And that’s when we knew,” she says. “It was the worst day of my life. It’s like someone kicks you in the gut,and you can’t believe it’s actually happening to your kid and your family — because it is the family. It turns into a family disease.”

Then the question became, “OK, what do we do now?” she remembers.
 
She rushed her son to his pediatrician, who told them to get to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center immediately.
 
“Luckily, we have Cincinnati Children’s here. I mean that made all the difference,” Dee says. “I count it as one of the biggest blessings to our family.”
 
Turns out, he had a PNET (primitive neuroctodermal tumor), which is a tumor that’s usually in the back of the brain and is the most common malignant brain tumor in children, says Dr. Maryam Fouladi, medical director of the Brain Tumor Center at Children’s and a professor with UC Department of Pediatrics. However, in Mitch’s case, the tumor was in the upper part of his brain instead of the back, which made his a supratentorial PNET.
 
It was cancer.
 
Within four days of being admitted, Mitch had his fist-sized tumor removed. And didn’t leave Children’s for the next few months.
 
“I was confused. I didn’t really know what a brain tumor was when they told me,” Mitch recalls. “All I knew is that I had to get through it. I was just looking toward the end; how can I get over this and move on back to my regular life in the fifth grade.”
 
“[But] things totally changed after that. It’ll never be the same,” he recalls thinking.

While his type of tumor was typically responsive to both radiation and chemotherapy, his doctor had to strike the right balance to make sure that he wasn’t just surviving, Fouladi says, but that they were also preserving the life he once had and would have again after Children’s.

 While undergoing treatment, he had an allergic reaction to one of the drugs he was given during chemotherapy, and he ended up in the ICU.

“That’s when you could really see what he was made of,” Fouladi remembers. “He had eye swelling, lips swelling, difficulty breathing so that’s why we took him to the ICU to monitor him there. Things settled down, and we managed to get him through the cycles of chemotherapy, but he had a rough road of it. But I remember always going in and asking him, ‘Mitch, are you OK?’ He responded, ‘Yes, I’ll be fine. I’m fine.’”

 
“I think the beauty of Mitch and his family is that they always looked at the goal. Even though there were bad days, there were great days, and on those great days they savored it. They appreciated it. It’s almost like they built up a bank of faith and time and everything for the bad days. And they just got through it."

— Dr. Maryam Fouladi, medical director of the Brain Tumor Center at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

Good luck charm

Even though Mitch was able to leave Children’s after a few months, the treatments were far from over. In fact, he was out of school for a year. But while he was still admitted to Children’s, something incredible happened, that would again, change his life and lift his and his family’s spirits.
 
He was selected by Friends of Jaclyn, a foundation that sets up children with brain tumors with a sports team.
 
At first, he didn’t want to do it, says Dee. But with a little coaxing from his family, he gave it a shot and talked to them. Sitting in the hospital day in and day out, his mom really wanted him to get out and try something that could help raise his spirits and give him some much-needed inspiration.
 
In July 2009, the UC Bearcats football team adopted Mitch, giving them a season they’d never forget.
 
Bearcat No. 76, the left guard on the offensive line, Austen Bujnoch remembers his team’s good luck charm that season and the day they officially adopted him. They held a ceremony in their team room, and they all stood up, giving Mitch a standing ovation to welcome him to their team.
 
“You could tell he was so happy to have big brothers who had his back throughout his battle,” says Bujnoch, now 25, and working at UC coaching as a graduate assistant working with the offensive line
 
And in a way, Mitch adopted them. He started going to their summer practices, gearing up for the fall 2009 season. He unwittingly gave them the inspiration they needed to push a little harder.
 
“Even when Mitch couldn’t attend practice he was always in our hearts, especially when things became difficult for our team. If he can fight for his life every single moment of his life, we can push that extra inch,” says Bujnoch.
 
Mitch was a symbol of determination for the entire team.
 
“We knew Mitch would never give up hope as he fought through his battle, and we knew we had to do the same for Mitch. When things seemed to be falling out of our hands we would regain ourselves and remember that Mitch was fighting for his life. We were competing on the field to win games while Mitch was battling his illness. We knew that we as a team could not take any moment for granted.”

Mitch didn’t take his time with the team for granted either. They protected his blindside.  
 
“The football team always had my back, like on the days that I was having chemo,” says Mitch. “It was amazing. Before, I was going through the treatment, just trying to get this over with. It was a break from going to the hospital.”
                        
They were his good luck charm, says Dee, who started to see the joy coming back into her son’s eyes.
 
The rush of their ever-growing winning streak took Mitch’s mind off of his treatments and pain.
 
“They were giving me support, calling me, texting me, sending me videos,” he remembers, with a phone they got for him.
 
From the sidelines, he and Nick watched their team go on to win game after game — and they watched Mitch’s unbelievable season of radiation, chemotherapy and stem cell rescues also come to a winning end: cancer-free.
 
“It changed everything — as far as our family and his recovery, it just changed it all. I mean we were just going through the chemo, going through being in the hospital, being at Children’s and all of sudden there was something to look forward to,” says Dee.
 
These days Mitch still keeps up with the players on Facebook. And they continue to cheer him on.
 
Bujnoch says Mitch and his outlook on life changed him for the better.
 
“Every moment is precious, and we have to enjoy every day we are given. Each day we have a decision to make on our attitude and how we are going to approach the day, preferably a positive attitude. When I thought I was having a ‘bad’ day I quickly thought of Mitch fighting for life every single day, and immediately my attitude changed,” says Bujnoch.
 
“Mitch could’ve been angry about his situation, but he chose a positive attitude. He chose to be happy and enjoy every moment of his life and that was portrayed through his facial expressions. Mitch was always smiling and enjoying his time he had with his big brothers.”

Mitch didn’t take his time with the team for granted either. They protected his blindside. 

“The football team always had my back, like on the days that I was having chemo,” says Mitch. “It was amazing. Before, I was going through the treatment, just trying to get this over with. It was a break from going to the hospital.”

They were his good luck charm, says Dee, who started to see the joy coming back into her son’s eyes.
 
The rush of their ever-growing winning streak took Mitch’s mind off of his treatments and pain.
 
“They were giving me support, calling me, texting me, sending me videos,” he remembers, with a phone they got for him.

Cancer-free and at UC

Mitch stands next to his twin brother these days, with a noticeable 7-inch height difference due to the radiation treatment that stunted his growth — but they still share their identical smile. Over the last seven years, they’ve also shared homecomings, proms, track and cross country meets, movie nights, family portraits, senior night and high school graduation. Together, they filled photo albums chock full of memories that the Stones, at times, weren’t sure they would have with Mitch.
 
But not Dee. Her faith has been unshakeable.
 
“I always had a lot of faith that he’d get better. I just always thought, ‘He’s going to get better. We’re going to do what they tell us, and he’s going to get better.’”
 
Beyond her faith and all the events that they have shared as a family, comes his biggest new beginning. College.
 
One word that describes his first semester at UC: Opportunities.
 
“[There’s] a lot of new doors,” says Mitch.  
 
While Mitch still has annual checkups, he’s been done with treatment and cancer-free since Halloween 2009. And now, he’s back at UC to begin a new journey toward his future.
 
“[UC] is a place where my whole family has gone and I am soon to be. It has a long history with the Stone family. It’s a place of support, where I can go to the games and see a lot of people I know. A lot of my friends go here too.”

The now-18-year-old, who has served on the patient advisory counsel at Children’s since his freshman year of high school, will major in operations management and hopes to be a hospital administrator.