Seminole Boy with rare tumor gets pool

SEMINOLE — The Ohio family talked excitedly about getting a pool once they made the move to muggy Florida.

But life got in the way.

It started with a sharp pain on 15-year-old Nate Pietrangelo's right side. His mother took him to a pediatrician. And then to the emergency room. At first, doctors who found a mass near his kidney thought it might be an infection. He was given antibiotics.

Nate moved to Seminole with his mother, who married in April. Nate, however, wasn't getting better.

Surgery was ordered. Doctors removed Nate's right kidney and a mass as large as the organ itself. It was tested and the family learned horrific news.

The mass was a rare, potentially fatal malignancy called a Wilm's tumor.

Only about 500 cases of Wilm's are diagnosed each year in the United States, mostly in children. With proper treatment, Nate's doctors have told his parents, he has an 85 percent chance of survival.

But the treatment is brutal.

First radiation. Then Nate began chemotherapy about 10 weeks ago at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg.

Suddenly, the pool wasn't a priority. Nate's mother, Kari Yates, 41, a high school English teacher who hadn't been able to find work in Florida, felt helpless.

Parents kiss scraped knees and offer reassurance. "Now, you can't kiss anything away," Kari said.

For a teen already homesick for Ohio, chemotherapy became a depressing chore. Nate lost his hair, his appetite and 30 pounds. His legs ached. He threw up often. It was hard to exercise, to even ride a bike.

"I want it to stop," his mother recalled Nate saying. "I want to die."

"Don't say that," she answered.

It was going to be okay, she told him. But as she watched Nate retch or get depressed, retreating to the sanctuary of his bedroom, Kari wondered if she even believed her own words.

One day at the hospital, Kari heard about a nonprofit group in St. Petersburg, the Children's Dream Fund, that helps sick kids like Nate. She filled out some paperwork. She talked to some people. She waited, half expecting disappointment.

To Kari and her husband, Scott Yates, 45, a senior systems programmer for the city of Clearwater, it seems like Nate hadn't smiled in weeks.

On Saturday, he smiled broadly. And laughed. He was getting exercise again. He wasn't retreating to his room.

For a moment, the chemotherapy and the illness were forgotten. The Dream Fund's gift had been installed. Nate played like any other boy.

In his new pool.

William R. Levesque can be reached at levesque@sptimes.com or (813) 269-5306.