Weeki Wachee Springs and sheriff's employees reach out to a boy with a growth in his chest.
By BETH N. GRAY
Published September 10, 2004
BROOKSVILLE - A seriously ill 5-year-old is hoping to feel well enough this weekend to use his season pass at Weeki Wachee Springs. After all, it's Patrick Melton Weekend there.
On Saturday and Sunday, the attraction will donate $5 from every paid regular admission to the Patrick Melton Medical Fund. Patrick's family has no health insurance.
According to organizers of the event, Patrick was enrolled in a state health insurance program, but after the family moved there were some paperwork problems and he was dropped from the program. Janie Melton, who is from Brooksville, is appealing for her son to be reinstated.
The kindergarten student at Chocachatti Elementary School has been in and out of hospitals since last November as physicians tried to diagnose his illness, said his mother.
Mother and son have come to know the ins and outs of such hospitals as Spring Hill Regional, Oak Hill, All-Children's in Tampa and have been in consultations with physicians at St. Jude's Children's in Memphis.
At different times, doctors have said Patrick's intermittent high fever, vomiting and stomach pain was pneumonia, or a virus from food prepared by unwashed hands, or a fungus present in bird and bat droppings in the Mississippi Valley.
"I can't even comment on it," Janie Melton said about the various diagnoses and that no chest X-ray was ever performed. She said Patrick was sent home repeatedly with the advice to take children's Motrin for the pain. After arriving at an emergency room one afternoon, Patrick wasn't assigned a room until 4 the following morning.
"My kid is not an experiment, a guinea pig," Melton said. "I just think people really don't care."
Recently, however, the Meltons got some information that shed some light on Patrick's medical condition. A biopsy performed at All-Children's Hospital, during which Patrick's chest was opened, revealed "a growth all over his chest, heart, trachea, compressing the lungs," Janie Melton said.
The cause is still elusive. Nor has it been determined if the mass has gone dormant.
The Meltons don't know what's next.
But her co-workers in the Hernando County Sheriff's Office do. And so does Weeki Wachee Springs.
Deputy Rick Johnson, a training officer with the Sheriff's Office and vice president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 164, said the membership voted recently to help Melton, a road deputy, and her son. A Sheriff's Office employee described the family's plight to Robyn Anderson, general manager of the attraction, and its marketing director, John Athanason.
"Janie is a single mother without insurance and having to face the fact that her son is very ill. . . . We want to do the right thing by helping this family with Patrick's medical bills," Anderson said.
"(We) instantly knew we had to do something to help," said Athanason, who has met Melton and heard of her son's condition. "We hope that the community will learn of the importance of helping this family."
The weekend benefit has been some time in the planning. It was postponed last weekend because of Frances. And with Hurricane Ivan looming in the Caribbean, that could affect park attendance and the success of the benefit.
"If we have to do it again, we will," Athanason said.
Patrick is a devoted visitor to Weeki Wachee Springs and its Buccaneer Bay water park.
"He loves to swim," said his mother. "He loves the otters and the pelicans on the (river) cruise."
And he likes the snake encounters with interpreters at the discovery amphitheater.
Patrick is attending Chocachatti. He loves opera and karate.
"He wants to go to school," Melton said. "He can play a little bit, but then gets tired really easily."
Patrick's perseverance "is what keeps me smiling," she said.
After the Weeki Wachee benefit, the FOP is planning a major fundraiser for the Meltons on Oct. 16 at Sertoma Youth Ranch, 85 Myers Road, Brooksville: a big barbecue with pork, chicken, baked beans, coleslaw, rolls, beverage and $10 donation per plate, said Johnson.
The event will open at 11 a.m. with food service beginning at 1 p.m. "till whenever."
The benefit will include an auction and raffle of business-donated items including collectibles, tools, restaurant and auto service gift certificates, a flats fishing trip and wild hog hunts. Ticket information will be available as the date approaches.
"The FOP is an organization that tries to give back to the community," Johnson said. "So, we're not just out for our own. But when it's one of our own, we step to the plate as well."
