03/29/2008
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Staff photo by Travis Barrettfrom the Kennebec Journal
Officials seek OK to use surplus to finish road work
Many seek to vote before Election Day
Drivers do have choices
COUNTY TAX STILL UNPAID
Probe continues in fatal hit-and-run
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All of today's:
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from the Morning Sentinel
A total of 22 different surgeries have been performed on Albee's body over the years down at Boston Children's Hospital -- more than one for every year he's been alive. The procedures resulted in doctors handing over a glut of painkillers, piercing his skin with injections and attaching him to far too many tubes, wires and devices to count. All of it has come in an effort to keep the body of the 21-year-old from Vassalboro functioning for another hour, another week, another year.
Joe Albee has spina bifida, a birth defect affecting roughly eight of the babies born in the United States each day. It results from an incomplete closure of the spinal cord.
Albee is confined to a wheelchair, but the advances of modern medicine have been outstanding, to say the least. Where people suffering from spina bifida once struggled to live through childhood, they are now able to lead lives well into adulthood with the right treatment.
But there was only one treatment that Albee ever wanted, and last year he got that treatment. Today, its colors blend together every night -- refreshing and energizing him. And serving notice to the rest of us that Joe is not about to slow down.
Sunny days ahead
For a stretch during his high school days, Joe Albee tried living with his mother in Cape Elizabeth. That just didn't work. See, Albee is a central Mainer at heart. He loves to fish and hunt, loves to hit the rustic old logging cabin his family owns somewhere between Rangeley and Stratton.
And the ATV that the Make-A-Wish Foundation gave him seven years ago logged 300 miles its first weekend in use, as he and his older brother tore through the trails near that cabin.
But as long winters are made longer by the cumbersome travel in a wheelchair, Albee wasn't feeling himself in late spring of 2007. Just in time, a friend of his found out about Tina Pattison's organization: Hunt of a Lifetime.
"My friend, Julius, had been at the World Bow Competition, and he met Tina," Albee recalled, his memories of the trip as fresh as if it had happened last weekend. "He told her about me, and in two to three weeks, I was on a plane to Mexico."
Ah, Mexico!
As he and his father, Eric, prepared to touch down near Mazatlan last May 28, the pilot addressed the passengers. He informed them that it was 87 degrees under bright, sunny skies on the ground below. Joe Albee was like a kid at Christmas, presents wrapped neatly before him under the lights and glitter of the tree.
"I love the warm weather," Albee said. "It makes me feel good, so good. I think the entire time we were down there, it didn't get below 85. It makes me feel much more active."
For four days, the Albees joined another family from the midwest. Two of the days were spent on the deck of a fishing boat chasing striped marlin -- Albee's wish fulfilled by Hunt of a Lifetime. The other two days were filled with lounging by the pool at El Cid Castilla, soaking up the sun and some parasailing.
Yep, parasailing. From his wheelchair. Then again, that's just a drop in the bucket. As the saying goes, Joe may have spina bifida, but spina bifida doesn't have him -- he's a member of the Maine Handicapped Skiing race team in the winter and enjoys whitewater rafting on the Kennebec River in the spring.
"My dad was a little nervous about me doing it," Joe said of parasailing. "But they put all the harnesses on me and said they could lift me right out of my chair. It was amazing. They go up between 400-600 feet in the air. If you ever want to see a city, that's the way to do it."
The landing?
"They're so good, they dropped me right down in my chair from 400 feet," said Albee, noting that a group of people were ready to grab hold of his legs and nestle him into the chair as soon as he was within reach. "My dad, he didn't get much video of it -- he put that thing down and came running in case anything happened."
Nothing did. In fact, it was more harrowing for Albee when he was on the ground.
"Our tour guide said to us that in Mexico they don't have pedestrians, they have survivors," Albee said. "I'm looking at my wheelchair thinking, 'Uh-oh.' When I went to cross a four-way intersection, I'm waiting and waiting, and then this guy in a little red truck stops in the middle of the road and yells to me.
"'Senor! I'll help you!' He gets out, walks into the middle of traffic and stops everybody else. I go across, and I'm thinking, can you imagine something like that happening in any of the cities here?"
Helping Hand
Tina Pattison tried to imagine ways people could help, when in 1998 her son Matthew had Hodgkin's disease -- but found out that Make-A-Wish, under pressure from groups like PETA, couldn't fulfill his dream of a hunting trip for Alaskan moose.
So, the Erie, Pa., native founded Hunt of a Lifetime one year later, helping send people 21 and under with life-threatening illnesses on hunting and fishing trips across North and Central America.
Albee was a perfect candidate for Hunt of a Lifetime.
A shunt that carries spinal fluid to his abdomen has had to be replaced or repaired on 11 different occasions, and his most recent surgery was to take a piece of his stomach and use it to enlarge his bladder -- which received an inordinate amount of pressure resulting from his condition. Ten of his vertebrae have been fused because of his scoliosis.
But, it's been five years since his last procedure at Boston Children's Hospital -- and Albee flatly refuses to let his disease slow him down.
"That would suck, sitting around and moping all the time," said Albee, who hopes to have a job soon training dogs. "I have good people all around me, and they give me whatever help I need."
Wall of Fame
The fishing, punctuated by encounters with more than 200 dolphins, was fantastic. They caught several marlin, even ate some of the fresh fish back at the hotel in the evenings.
The action was so furious at times that the captain and first mate were yelling at Eric Albee -- in Spanish -- to huck is video camera aside. With fish on five separate lines at the same time, it was time to fish, they told him in a tone that superceded the language barrier. With only six inches of space in which to work along the edge of the boat, Joe admitted it wasn't easy reeling the fish in -- even with his strong arms and shoulders, he thought the fish were going to pull him in at times.
And though the marlin were what Joe Albee wanted to catch most, it was another variety that struck him most -- something that's returned to Maine with him, something that gets him through long, cold winters.
Mahi-mahi.
"When I saw that green, blue and yellow come out of the water," Albee said of the dolphin fish, "I said, 'That's the fish that's coming home with me.' It was amazing, like something you'd only ever see in an aquarium."
Albee and his father brought mahi-mahi steaks home with them, and now a 40-inch ceramic mount of the fish hangs on the wall over his bed. It is the best elixir Joe Albee has ever taken.
"I fall asleep every night looking at that fish," Albee said. "It was just an unbelievable experience. I called Tina up as soon as I got home and told her that the next thing they'd have to do for me was fly me to Pennsylvania.
"So I could give her a hug myself to thank her."
Travis Barrett -- 621-5648
tbarrett@centralmaine.com
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