With faith and hope, Mikey dreams big

From: Hampton Roads Daily Press, VA - Oct 6, 2003

12-year-old wants to be astronaut or first deaf president

By Michael D. Wamble
Daily Press

Jerry Sprouse Sr.'s green pickup pulls around the back of West Hampton Baptist Church on a September Sunday morning to bring his grandson, Mikey, a few steps closer to the door.

Mikey doesn't like missing service in the chapel. But the 12-year-old hasn't walked inside in a couple of weeks. And he won't this day.

Mikey, who has cerebral palsy, has been stuck in a black wheelchair that dwarfs his slender frame since he had surgery on his legs at Shriners Hospital in Greenville, S.C. After Mikey's 12th week of recovery, the blue casts that seal his legs from his thighs to the balls of his feet will finally come off.

Because of his faith in Jesus, Mikey is sure he'll soon walk tall and pain-free.

For now, he waits as his grandfather and his father, Michael Sprouse, unload and unfold his wheelchair. They cradle him into the seat and push him through the church doors. Mikey's grandmother, Sue, and stepmother, Sherry, flank his sides.

It's Mikey's first Sunday morning back at church since his surgery, and he's to give the opening prayer and even sign a song.

Before Mikey reaches the chapel ramp, Jeannie Griffith, an assistant choir director, spots him. Griffin rushes toward the Sprouse caravan, waving her fingers frantically.

Mikey smiles. He knows what it means.

It's the deaf version of applause.

The other thing that Mikey Sprouse can't do is hear.

The first 15 days of Mikey Sprouse's life were spent in a hospital: seven at Riverside Regional Medical Center in Newport News, eight at The Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk.

His grandmother explains that Mikey was born with an IV tube inside. It's only a slight exaggeration. His 36-hour delivery was the first signal that something was wrong. Mikey's doctors ordered tests.

So he had blood tests. And more blood tests. Then he caught a fever that soared above 104 degrees that he couldn't fight.

Finally, a urinalysis at age 2 led to a diagnosis of cytomegalovirus. Commonly called CMV, the condition is difficult to pin down because few symptoms exist. But it can lead to a protracted fever and complications in children, including hearing loss.

While the Sprouses never had a doctor tell them definitively that CMV stole Mikey's ability to hear, they believe it's the culprit. The nerves in his ears that should enable him to hear haven't been severed - they just don't work. To learn to talk to Mikey, his family checked out as many library books on American Sign Language as they could.

At age 4, Mikey's medical trips sent him to Children's Hospital in Richmond. One of his first surgeries kept him in the hospital for 28 days.

Flipping through her Mikey photo albums, Sue Sprouse traces her finger along a red surgical scar along his backbone.

"It runs all the way up his spine," she says. The surgery quelled major spasms and allowed him to stand.

But Mikey's physical limitations never stopped him from being a kid. From ages 3 to 8, he played tee-ball on a baseball diamond in a challenge league in Newport News. He would swing at a ball from his wheelchair, later from a walker. Eventually, he stood on his own.

"I dropped out of baseball because I'd get tired running," Mikey signed. Mikey just isn't patient, his grandfather says.

"Now that I've had the surgery," he signs, "I'm going to be faster than my friends."

Mikey's frustration over running was only part of the reason he stopped playing ball.

At that same time, his dad says, he decided he wanted to go to church on Wednesdays for Bible study at West Hampton.

Since the early 1970s, the Hampton church has worked to meet the spiritual needs of students and families at the nearby school for the deaf, blind and multi-disabled. In 1974, the church launched an interpreted adult deaf ministry.

Fifteen years later, the church hired the Rev. Eugene Hughes, a deaf minister. When Hughes retired in 1998, the Rev. Brad Hill, a hearing minister, took charge of the ministry as associate pastor for the deaf. Hill signs during services, while church member Barry Speares voices Hill's messages for the hearing congregation.

West Hampton Baptist is one of a handful of churches in Virginia where deaf and hearing communication is integrated into a single Sunday service. The Sprouses learned about it from neighbors. It didn't just have an interpreter who signed the pastor's sermon, but a small congregation of deaf and hearing Christians who used English as a second language to ASL.

Mikey has a nightmare scenario: being the only deaf person in the room. At church, he knows that won't happen.

In the hearing world, Mikey knows the drill. When mouths start moving, hands slow down.

Then the signing stops.

He tries to read lips, but heads turn out of his eyesight. Conversations shift from A to B. He's shut out.

"It feels like the world is turned off when you're deaf," Mikey signs.

Mikey's hearing loss isn't total. He can hear a tiny group of sounds, like fire truck sirens. When tractor-trailers rumble down the street or F-15s roar overhead, he can feel their vibrations. That's it.

Being deaf, Mikey says, means more than not being able to hear.

"Sometimes people hurt you, just by looking at you," he signs. "They see me as just being deaf.

"But then some Americans may identify the deaf with..."

Mikey struggles to recall the name, then rapidly "finger-spells" it.

His stepmother, Sherry, tries to keep up: "H-E-A-T-H-E-R-W-H-I-T-E ... White? Heather White?"

"Heather Whitestone," his grandmother shouts from across the room, as if she'd won a game of charades.

"He's talking about the deaf Miss America," his grandfather says of Heather Whitestone McCallum, who in 1994 became the first woman with a disability to win that title. Whitestone McCallum used her reign as Miss America to teach the public that the biggest handicap in life is "negative thinking."

In 2002, the former Miss America had cochlear implant surgery to hear sounds in her right ear for the first time. The implant electrically stimulates the hearing nerve in the cochlea, or inner ear.

Right now, the Sprouses aren't pursuing that option. To install the implant, surgeons would have to sever nerves in Mikey's ear, meaning he could never hear someday without the device, should a miracle happen and the nerves regenerate. Instead, Mikey's focus is to learn more about deaf culture.

For now, his only handicap is not being able to walk.

Deafness as a source of pride - not a deformity - is central to what institutions from Gallaudet University in Washington to magazines such as Deaf Life and Deaf Nation call "deaf culture."

"Deafness is not a handicap," says Deandra Wood, who teaches at Saunders Elementary in Newport News, one of three schools Mikey has attended. Though she was never Mikey's teacher, the two would often discuss his goals for the future.

Wood said she supports his decision to immerse himself in an environment where ASL is the lingua franca.

"Deaf culture is rich with unity and a sense of pride," she says. "People support one another."

She says experience in both mainstreaming and a school geared for the deaf will enrich Mikey's life.

Wood should know. As the only deaf teacher in the Newport News School Division, Wood has served as a mentor to Mikey. And like Mikey, Wood was mainstreamed before she decided to attend a school for deaf students.

In making the transition, Wood says, it helps that Mikey can read at a 12th-grade level and has an unquenchable thirst for books.

Because Mikey is deaf - not to mention his cerebral palsy - people often assume he's a poor student. But his Institutional Action Plan, or IAP, is designed by his parents and teachers to give him work at his grade level.

Educators and advocates for deaf students such as Wood and Lynn Sawyer, Mikey's home-school teacher, say that students such as Mikey need to be challenged. Sawyer has also taught at the Virginia School for the Deaf, Blind and Multi-Disabled in Hampton.

Mikey wants to go to the Staunton school to learn more about deaf culture. It's a choice he can make. For now, at least.

The fate of both schools for the deaf is under review by a state task force, which could recommend closing them to build one centralized school, combining resources at one site or changing the curricula at each. The task force was supposed to make a recommendation Thursday but failed to reach a consensus. It's scheduled to meet again Oct. 30.

Sawyer and Wood say families of deaf children should have the option of mainstreaming them or sending them to specialized schools for the deaf.

Once at public school, when the ASL interpreter didn't show up, Mikey had to spend the day in class with the only person who understood sign language - the special education teacher. Though he liked being able to talk to someone who understood him, Mikey said he considers those days wasted.

"Why can't I learn just like the other kids?" Mikey's hands sign fiercely, eyes glaring. "I have the right to learn on the level my IAP says."

Being deaf hasn't stopped Mikey from dreaming big. He wants to become a lawyer or an astronaut or the first deaf president of the United States. He sees the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind as a passport to new worlds within reach on his own two feet.

Before that can happen, he'll need at least two years of physical therapy to teach him, in essence, how to walk again.

"I think he can do it," Wood says. "Mikey's already overcome a lot of obstacles."

On the Sunday that Mikey was baptized three years ago, the Rev. Brad Hill said, about 30 family members and friends came to see him join the church.

Among that group were Mikey's grandparents, Jerry and Sue Sprouse.

Afterward, the couple started attending West Hampton Baptist to support their grandson. Still members at Orcutt Baptist Church, too, the Sprouses bounced from church to church for 10 years.

That meant only they didn't have a church home, Jerry Sprouse says, not that they'd ever lost faith in God. At West Hampton Baptist, they found a network of families and friends of deaf children and adults.

There, the Sprouses are so at home that, minutes after Mikey's dad walks in, he adjusts the thermostat. "Too cold," he announces.

When the service begins, Mikey's father and grandfather raise him up onto the altar.

"I'm glad to be here," Mikey signs. "Jesus has set up this church for us. We, who believe."

Michael D. Wamble can be reached at 247-4737 or by e-mail at mwamble@dailypress.com

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