One love story to another

The Wichita Eagle

March 14, 2008

BURRTON UNITES FOR FAMILY

Sam and Mike Baumann are the center of one big love story. A couple of kids from the same town, they didn't really know each other -- he's four years older -- until she graduated from high school and they started dating.

Their life is full of the details that small towns such as Burrton, 30 miles northwest of Wichita, seem to produce: They've been married for 17 years. They live a quarter-mile from his folks. He farms part time with his dad. She stays home with their two daughters.

And that's where their love story starts getting bigger.

Sam, who still holds Burrton High School's record for the 800-meter and two-mile runs, is a stay-at-home mom because her multiple sclerosis doesn't allow her to work anymore.

Her disease, which affects the central nervous system, was diagnosed in 1998, just before she turned 27. She's 36 now and said she should use a cane all the time but is too vain to do so.

For all those years, Mike, who is 40, would come home from his job at Agco Corp. in Hesston 'and cook and do the 'honey-do' stuff and still help his dad with the farm,' Sam said.

But about a year ago, he started losing weight. Then in October, 'he started feeling like food would get stuck in his esophagus,' she said.

In January, they found out he had esophageal cancer. 'It was rated at a 3, but then because it has spread to his lymph nodes and his pancreas, they staged it to a 4,' Sam said. Stage 3 is an advanced cancer; stage 4 means it has spread beyond its original site.

Now, Mike's not able to work either. His chemotherapy takes too much out of him.

And that's where the love story gets really big.

'The outpouring of care from friends and family and community has been enormous,' Sam said.

'It's humbling. It's indescribable. The word 'thank you' is just not a strong enough word. It's hard to talk about without crying, because I'm just a normal person here, and these people are helping us just above and beyond what I ever would have expected.'

Leslie Holmgren, a classmate since kindergarten but one Sam hadn't talked to since their 10-year reunion, has told her of all sorts of plans to help.

A benefit fund for donations has been set up.

Another classmate, Bobbie Friesen, has organized a fundraising auction for Saturday. A sloppy joe lunch that day is being served by parishioners from the Baumanns' church, Pleasant Grove United Methodist. The senior center is providing baked goods.

Members of the church have supplied meals and cards and, especially, prayers. 'I can feel that,' Sam says of the prayer support.

That support, plus her faith and Mike's strengthened faith, are helping her endure an unsure future.

Daughter Hannah, who will be 4 on Monday, 'knows that Mommy has trouble walking and Mommy can't do certain things. She knows that Daddy is sick and has to have medicine,' Sam said.

Dakotah, at 10, knows that her Dad's illness is cancer. 'She cried at first. But then she said, 'Mom, Daddy's going to get better.' '

Sam isn't saying otherwise at this point, waiting to see what a PET scan at the end of the month shows, waiting to see what the doctors say should be done next, and waiting to see what chapter of this love story will come next.

'I don't know what I would do without my husband, because he's my rock,' she said. 'I don't know where I'm getting my strength, except through God.'

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