WINLOCK — When 11-year-old Taylor Rehmeyer was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2005, her family expected a seemingly never-ending litany of tests and treatments and surgery. But nobody expected the taunting.
The tumor pressing against her left lobe caused her to have a half dozen seizures per day. Surgery to remove the tumor damaged her brain and hampered her ability to learn in class. And the school district, deciding that her seizures posed a threat if she had one on the bus, made special trips for her to and from school. Set apart from others, Rehmeyer quickly became an outsider in Winlock.
“I thought witch hunts for epileptics ended years ago,” said her mother Karen Owen from their home Tuesday as she recalled the teasing and bullying classmates doled out to Rehmeyer over the years.
So when she was given a wish this year from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Rehmeyer passed on a chance to meet Taylor Lautner, the teenage wolf-boy heartthrob from the Twilight movies. She decided instead to improve her refuge away from the taunting that has hurt her for the past several years.
“If I’m going to make a wish, it’s going to be something I can have,” she said.
What she has now is a custom playhouse for her and those friends who have stayed by her side.
Volunteers from the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Coast Cabins of Marysville connected a new 10-foot-by-12-foot log cabin playhouse to an existing playhouse in her back yard Tuesday afternoon. The old playhouse will also get a makeover.
Owen said doctors found Rehmeyer’s tumor — known as a ganglioglioma — almost by accident. It showed up on test results when Rehmeyer was being examined following an accidental head injury.
“You won’t ever convince me that it wasn’t God telling us to look at this spot (of her head),” she said.
Doctors removed the tumor soon after it was discovered, but Owen found out in April that it has since returned. She said that doctors are unsure how this new tumor will progress.
Rehmeyer, who was all smiles Tuesday, broke in the new log cabin that night by having a sleepover with 18 friends and supporters.
“It’s just a place for me to get away,” she said.
But for her mother, Rehmeyer’s new hideaway is something more.
“She’s been ‘the kid with the tumor’ since she was 6,” Owen said as she wiped away tears. “I just want her to feel normal.”
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Brandon Swanson: 807-8232
