Gulfport community rallies around teenager fighting for his life

When Donny Faerber started complaining about a stomach ache, Clayton Faerber, thought maybe his son was having trouble with a girl or one of his friends.

The Gulfport High School teenager had always been healthy. But the stomach aches persisted.

Finally, a blood test produced such alarming results that Donny was rushed in December to the University of South Alabama Children’s and Women’s Hospital in Mobile. He was diagnosed with a rare type of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Chemotherapy began immediately.

Word of Donny’s diagnosis soon spread through his church family at St. James Catholic Church and friends at Gulfport High. Before he knew it, this young man with only his father as family support had a whole community rallying around him, including the mothers of children who had survived the same or similar cancers.

It was a good thing, too, because Clayton Faerber was trying to repair their home heating and cooling system when the unit fell on him and broke his neck only about a month after Donny’s diagnosis.

Terry Robinson, Donny’s Sunday School teacher, insisted the sick teenager move in with the Robinson family while Clay Faerber was hospitalized. Robinson said Donny is an extremely bright young man.

The Robinsons and their four children have become so close to Donny, they now consider him family. They continue to help with his care.

“Everybody just thinks very highly of him,” Robinson said. “He’s a man of few words. When he was in my class, he never said a lot. But he listened.”

“I feel like God put us in the right spot at the right time to make this OK for him.”

‘It changes you’

Clay Faerber is out of the hospital but far from recovered. He is currently on disability. Donny’s extended family at St. James and Gulfport High have held numerous fundraisers to help the family with expenses.

Donny, 15, has spent more time in the hospital than out. Chemotherapy is damaging his kidneys, but doctors fear the cancer will spread fast without it. He has not gone into remission, so his only hope is a bone marrow transplant.

Meanwhile, his immune system is so weak, an infection could be catastrophic. Because Donny has been running a low-grade fever, he’s currently hospitalized in Mobile.

If a bone marrow donor is found, he will have a transplant at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans.

Lucy Foster of Biloxi and Jennifer Myers of Gulfport, both mothers of sons who survived leukemia, have been two of Donny’s biggest supporters. They have taken him to chemotherapy and visit him in the hospital.

“He's being raised by a single dad,” Myers said. “Now there's this network of moms. We do what we can to help him through this.” Her son, Nick Myers, was diagnosed with leukemia when he was a sophomore at Gulfport High School. He’s now healthy and in his junior year at the University of Mississippi.

Families who dealt with childhood cancer also helped the Myers family through Nick’s illness.

“It changes you,” Myers said. “I feel like because we lived through this and came out the other side, it's just our job to help others.”

An unexpected message

All the support surprised Donny at first, he said from his hospital bed in Mobile.

He misses his dog, Precious, his Dad’s spaghetti and his friends, but Donny doesn’t complain. He says he’s feeling “OK.”

He believes his bone marrow transplant will work out. He would just like to be home and said: “Just being home makes me feel good.”

His determination to recover, and the support of his friends, has inspired others. Terry Robinson’s daughter and one of Donny’s biggest supporters, Emily Robinson, had T-shirts and arm bands made to sell for fundraisers. The arm bands say “#TeamDonnyFaerber, Philippians 4:13.”

A woman from Florida shared on the Team Donny Facebook page that she had been walking on the beach, praying for God’s guidance at a difficult time in her life, when she stopped at her favorite spot on the boardwalk but saw nothing. As she returned from her walk, she said she stopped again and there was a #TeamDonnyFaerber bracelet at her feet.

When she got home, she looked up the Bible verse. It says, “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.”

This story was originally published July 18, 2016 at 11:06 AM with the headline "Gulfport community rallies around teenager fighting for his life."