‘He’s not afraid’

Conway child fights fourth brain tumor

Keagan Provost, 5, of Conway pauses to give two thumbs up after he comes down from the crow’s nest of the pirate ship in his backyard. The ship was built in two days by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Keagan was diagnosed with an ependymoma brain tumor when he was 13 months old, and he has had three recurrences of the disease. He also has a tumor on his spine, and he undergoes daily radiation treatments. His mother said he is always positive. “I hope one day I can be as strong as him because he’s awesome,” she said.
Keagan Provost, 5, of Conway pauses to give two thumbs up after he comes down from the crow’s nest of the pirate ship in his backyard. The ship was built in two days by the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Keagan was diagnosed with an ependymoma brain tumor when he was 13 months old, and he has had three recurrences of the disease. He also has a tumor on his spine, and he undergoes daily radiation treatments. His mother said he is always positive. “I hope one day I can be as strong as him because he’s awesome,” she said.

The first year of 5-year-old Keagan Provost’s life was almost perfect — and now he’s fighting to live.

Robin Unwer of Conway said her son is undergoing radiation for the third recurrence of a brain tumor, which has metastasized to his spine.

No one would know it by Keagan’s energy, just hours after he received a radiation treatment at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center. After sharing popcorn with his 1-year-old brother, Jaxson, Keagan put on his Batman beanie and ran out into the backyard to show visitors his wooden pirate ship, a gift from Make-A-Wish Mid-South.

He got such a cool gift because, as he puts it, “I have buggies in my head.”

Keagan was born in Little Rock on Feb. 11, 2010, weighing a healthy 9 pounds, 8 ounces.

“He went the first year without a having a cough, without having a fever, a sneeze,” Unwer said. “He was as happy as could be. He walked early, talked early.”

When Keagan was 10 months old, Unwer and his father, Mike Provost, moved to a small town in New York for Provost’s job with Kenney Oil Field Services, which is based in Vilonia. Unwer had just finished cosmetology school in Little Rock.

On New Year’s Eve in 2010, Keagan had a fever, and his parents took him to the emergency room. He was diagnosed with an ear infection, so the couple weren’t worried.

“From that day, small things started happening, where we didn’t really notice it until we looked back at it,” Unwer said.

On Keagan’s first birthday, Feb. 11, 2011, they took him back to the emergency room because he was throwing up, and they were told again it was an inner-ear infection. Unwer said he probably did have an ear infection, but things got worse.

“He started walking around, and he was holding his head to the side,” Unwer said. “He would get blocks and hold them there, or a cellphone and hold it there.” Unwer said. They thought he was imitating the grown-ups holding their cellphones.

“He’d gotten to the point where he wasn’t holding anything down and was throwing up, getting dehydrated,” she said. “It was almost like he had a really bad case of vertigo. He’d walked since 9 months — he had almost lost the ability to walk.”

Keagan’s condition worsened, and after an ER trip and being admitted to a small hospital for a week, the couple took him to Children’s Hospital in Rochester, New York.

“They worked nonstop doing blood work, doing tests, getting family history,” she said. Doctors told her they wanted to start from the top of Keagan’s head and work their way down to find out what was wrong. Neurologists watched him walk, “maybe 2 feet,” and ordered an MRI.

Unwer said doctors found a baseball-size mass in his fourth ventricle, brain stem and cerebellum — “just one big mass that had taken up the entire area. It had completely embedded itself. It looked like spider webbing — it was just huge,” she said. “I just felt like I’d been punched in the stomach; he was 13 months old.”

Keagan underwent an 11 1/2-hour surgery early the next morning, and Unwer said a neurosurgeon told her they were going to pray it was one of two types of tumors: the one that would be easier to handle medically. It was what they’d hoped for — an ependymoma.

The doctor said there was “an extremely strong possibility that he was not going to walk again, he was not going to talk again, and he would probably be on a ventilator. Three days later, he got off the vent,” she said. However, “he’s had lots of issues since then.”

He was in the intensive-care unit for four months in 2011, from March until June, and he had to have a shunt inserted to remove fluid from his brain. In July 2011, after Keagan received radiation treatments, the family moved back to Conway.

“He went into remission in September,” Unwer said. “He could crawl, and he was starting to talk. He was alive. I was happy.”

By October 2011, Keagan was walking again.

Doctors told the couple that with an ependymoma, “the chances of it coming back were one in a million,” Unwer said. However, “if it did come back, the possibility of it coming back again and again was very high.”

Keagan was in remission for almost 1 1/2 years, and life was good.

“We were just ecstatic. For us, it felt like forever; it was just awesome,” she said.

He had to go every three months to Arkansas Children’s Hospital for an MRI, and the scan was clear in January 2013. He was doing so well that the MRIs were stretched to every six months, she said.

The family’s relief didn’t last long.

In February, Keagan started having increased seizures and shunt malfunctions.

In March, he had a seizure on the way to his school, Helping Hand in North Little Rock. Unwer was working at a salon in Maumelle at the time.

“He was in the middle of talking. It sounded like a record was skipping,” she said.

She took him to the emergency room at Children’s, and the neurosurgeon who came to see Keagan said he needed another MRI. Keagan had the MRI at the end of March and waited six weeks to have a second scan, which confirmed the tumor was back.

“It had grown 75 percent in size in just six weeks,” Unwer said. Keagan had surgery on May 30, 2013, and again the next day to remove it all. It had grown another 50 percent in just two weeks, she said.

“He did really good. I love his neurosurgeon here in Arkansas — Dr. Greg Albert at Children’s. He is phenomenal,” she said. “It was like a gift from God that they ended up together.”

Keagan had another round of radiation, which he finished Aug. 7, 2013, his dad’s birthday. Once again, he went into remission.

In October 2013, he started back to school and was doing great, Unwer said. “He was golden.”

When he went in for an MRI in July 2014, the news was bad. “It was back, but it was in a new place, right between his eyes, basically — the center of his forehead.”

He had surgery again — the incision going from ear to ear. Provost said they call it his Charlie Brown incision because it’s jagged.

Unwer said “the most amazing part” of Keagan’s surgery in July was that he is usually on a ventilator for two or three days after surgery.

“They called me from the OR, and we knew they were closing him up … and you get that sinking feeling,” she said. “And we heard, ‘Momma, I want to play with your hair.’ He loves to play with my hair,” she said, laughing.

“He just did phenomenal,” she said. As per the routine, he had more radiation in July, “but he did amazing,” she said.

His MRI in October 2014 was clear.

In January, the couple were optimistic that Keagan would have another clear scan. Doctors also asked to scan his spine, and Unwer said she had a bad feeling.

Sure enough, Unwer said, Keagan’s oncologist, Dr. Suzanne Saccente, had to give the couple the terrible news.

“In less than three months, the cancer had grown back. There was a quarter-size tumor on his brain, on the front of his brain, not in the same place, basically up from his ear. Now there’s one on his spine. They don’t even want to remove the one on his spine because it could paralyze him for life. It’s hard making that decision on a 5-year-old.”

She said doctors conferred and decided to “hit him really, really hard with radiation.”

Keagan is receiving full spinal and cranial radiation in the hope of shrinking the tumors and killing off other microscopic cancer cells in the spinal fluid.

“That’s the only real option we have right now,” she said.

Keagan started radiation a week before his 5th birthday last month, and by the time he finishes, he will have had 145 radiation treatments since he was 13 months old, Unwer said.

“It’s our fourth time,” Mike Provost said. “It’s crazy what you get used to; that’s the sad part.” He said they have received overwhelming support from friends, family and even strangers.

For Keagan’s recent birthday, a church group bought him a motorized Polaris RZR, which he showed to visitors.

“What’s the first thing we do?” his mother asked. “Put our seat belts on!” he said before zooming off.

Keagan has two sets of grandparents nearby, Bob and Nancy Provost of Heber Springs and Robbie and Mona Unwer of Maumelle. Provost’s sister, Chanin Slisz, lives just three blocks from the family.

“She’s a lifeline,” Provost said. Rachel Roisen-Avant of Maumelle, a friend of Robin’s, organized the sale of Keagan’s Krew T-shirts, which can be ordered at www.booster.com/keaganskrew3. Provost said the motorcycle club he’s belonged to for eight years, A-State Boys M/C, has 50 members. “They’ve really helped us a lot,” he said.

“I try to be the rock for the family,” Provost said.

It’s hard not to be optimistic, the couple both said, when Keagan is so happy and full of life. He loves Batman, Ninja Turtles, Transformers, his drums, the Pittsburgh Steelers and pirates. Unwer said that often when Keagan goes to the hospital for a treatment, he sings a song from Jake and the Never Land Pirates.

“The bittersweet of the situation is he talks to anyone,” Provost said. “He has such an outgoing personality. He’s not afraid of the hospital. It’s just part of the routine.”

Unwer said Keagan feeds off their energy. “He’ll say, ‘No, no, don’t get upset, don’t cry.’ He’s so positive. He doesn’t know anything other than to fight. He just doesn’t stop. He’s awesome.

“It’s just one day at a time. I guess if we all sat around and were negative about it and didn’t think positive … it would be a lot harder, but we know how strong he is. We’ve seen how strong he is, and he has so many people praying for him. It makes a difference knowing how many people you have supporting this awesome kid.”

Provost said he’s optimistic that the treatment will work. “You have to be,” he said. “Once we’re finally done, 16 more days, they’ll wait two weeks and do a follow-up MRI, and we’ll know what we’re looking at.”

Keagan’s not letting it slow him down. He ran up the ramp of his pirate ship, telling the photographer who wanted him to pose, “Hold on! Hold on!” When he got to the crow’s nest, he turned around, smiled and gave two thumbs up.

Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.

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Haircuts for Keagan

CABOT — In an effort to support Keagan Provost, Avant-Garde Salon in Cabot will donate all proceeds from children’s haircuts on March 8 to Keagan and his family.

Keagan was 5 years old on Feb. 11, but the young boy has already been through four craniotomies to remove tumors, 10 emergency brain surgeries as the result of a VP shunt malfunction, three medical ports and hundreds of CTs and MRIs because of his cancer diagnosis.

Avant-Garde stylist Angel Crosby has known Keagan’s family for years, and she said she has seen how Keagan and his family have been impacted by his disease. Crosby has already been donating some of her proceeds to Keagan’s family and their recovery fund, and next week, the whole salon will be pitching in for the cause.

The salon will have special treats and chances to meet superheroes at the event on Sunday. Haircuts for Keagan will occur from 1-4 p.m. at 3065 Arkansas 367 S., Suite 3, in Cabot.

For more information, call (501) 605-1272.

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