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New TV, maybe a new chance at life

A nonprofit grants a sick teen's wish, but his real dream is to be a normal kid like his friends.

By ERIN SULLIVAN
Published April 8, 2007

DADE CITY - He'll use the big screen television for date nights with his girlfriend, a pretty girl named Savannah, when he's too sick to take her to the movies.

Scott Mylin, an 18-year-old with chronic pancreatitis, a miserable disease where enzymes in the pancreas go haywire and attack themselves, will use the TV for comfort, when he can crawl from his bed to the couch. He'll use the TV - a 50-inch, high definition plasma screen Panasonic - to play video games with his dad.

He'll use the TV, given to him Wednesday by the Children's Dream Fund, to feel connected to a world outside his parents' house, which he can't leave much when he's really sick, which is most of the time.

His mother worries that Scott is depressed and overwhelmed with the reality of living like this forever. Scott says he's fine, that he deals with it okay.

He's been sick all his life, but it's gotten worse these past few years. Out of the past 12 months, he's spent more than four in the hospital.

He had to drop out of high school and get his GED. He enrolled in community college - spent a week there, loved it - and had to go to the hospital. He dropped out and doesn't know when or if he'll be healthy enough to return.

Scott is handsome, blond, with clear, intense blue eyes and a dimple in his right cheek, but gaunt. With his illness, he can't eat anything with fat. He's 5 foot 10 inches and weighs little more than 120 pounds. He'll never be able to drink alcohol. Scott's heard he's not missing much, but he'd at least like the chance to try things and make mistakes.

This week, Scott and his family are going to Ohio to see if he's a candidate for a new surgery that will remove his pancreas, harvest enzymes from it and inject them into his liver.

If all goes well, his liver will work as his pancreas did and give Scott a shot at a normal life, something he's never had.

He wishes he could be like his friends, who are out doing wild things they'll regret later. He wishes he could be young and carefree, like the kids you see on TV, ones who actually would be able to eat the celebratory cake brought with the new television - a chocolate cake with butter cream frosting with the words, "Dreams Come True."

Fast Facts:

Children's Dream Fund

The Children's Dream Fund is a St. Petersburg-based nonprofit organization that has granted wishes to seriously ill children in west central Florida since 1981. For information, call (727) 896-6390 or visit www.childrensdreamfund.org.

For more information about Scott Mylin, visit tiptopwebsite.com/scottmylin.

[Last modified April 7, 2007, 22:59:18]