McKaila Josephine Steffes, who died at age 10 on Oct. 21, regarded her cancer with a child’s impatient perspective, discussing with equal enthusiasm her distaste for chemotherapy, her elation at personally befriending a professional basketball player, her fondness for softball and her ongoing exasperation with her little brother.
The thoughts she contributed on her website, www.caringbridge.org/co/mckaila, revealed a tomboy who was a kid and a softball player first. Her status as a cancer patient ran an extremely distant second.
“Hi Everybody! It’s me, McKaila,” began her June 9, 2005, entry, written a few months after she was diagnosed with a malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor, an aggressive form of cancer that attacks the protective covering that surrounds nerves.
“Well, I have to get chemo. I really don’t like it. Today, I had to get three needles. … I was thinking about my brother the whole time,” she added, in an enigmatic aside.
Like many big sisters, she viewed her little brother, Wyatt Steffes, with affection and irritation, not always in that order. Nearly all of her Web journal comments mentioned Wyatt, routinely describing him as “annoying” and “still getting on my last nerves.”
Wyatt, about 5 1/2 years her junior, reveled in the role of pest. He enjoyed introducing himself as “McKaila’s annoying brother,” said their mother, Sandy Steffes, who was proud and relieved to observe McKaila’s increasingly maternal attitude toward Wyatt recently.
McKaila established herself as a singular presence even in her name, a compromise between “Michaela,” which her mother, Sandy, liked, and “Kaila,” which her father, Dan, preferred. She proved a natural athlete, as softball coach Brad Uyemura discovered when he met McKaila, then 8, the first year she played softball.
That year, she was the first girl on the team to catch a flyball. Uyemura marked such milestones – first home run, first pop fly, first double play – by presenting the player with a memorial token. He called the team together after practice the day McKaila caught the flyball, and presented her with a T-shirt.
“I remember the look of surprise on her face, and then a very genuine smile,” Uyemura said.
“It was just a T-shirt, nothing to write home about, but I can still see her face.”
When Sandy Steffes took Uyemura aside before the first softball meeting last spring and told him about McKaila’s diagnosis, Uyemura encouraged McKaila to suit up and play whenever she wished, and she did.
“You could tell that all she wanted was to come to the ballpark for an hour, an hour and a half, three or four times a week, because it was a sanctuary for her,” Uyemura said.
“She could leave everything else behind, and just be one of the gang. All she wanted to do was be one of us – eat sunflower seeds, and sing those ridiculous songs they sing in the dugout.”
McKaila stopped writing in the online journal about a year ago. When her mother tried to coax her into a comment, she resisted. What was she supposed to write about, besides her annoying little brother? She said she didn’t know what else to write.
“I’d say, ‘Tell ’em how you feel,’ and she’d say, ‘I’d really rather go and play, Mom. Can’t you write it?’ and so I would,” Sandy Steffes said.
“Then I’d tell her what I wrote, and she’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s fine.’ Even at the end, she didn’t let the cancer dominate her.”
McKaila discussed cancer with other young oncology patients, including her young cousin Gracie Steffes, recently diagnosed with leukemia. They traded notes on their portacaths, the implant designed to efficiently deliver chemotherapy chemicals and other liquids, and their requests to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a benevolent organization that focuses on children with life-threatening medical conditions.
McKaila’s first Make-A-Wish request was a visit to the sunken carcass of the RMS Titanic, via submarine, which proved too logistically complicated. (Instead, she visited the set and stars of a popular Disney TV show.)
She cherished her friendship with NBA star Earl Watson, who noticed McKaila during a 2005 visit to her class at St. Vincent De Paul School. He gave the Steffes season tickets, chatted with McKaila after home games and occasionally called her for a pep talk.
As her prognosis grew worse, her energy persisted. She made a painting for her father’s birthday, a video for her mother’s birthday and collaborated with local artist Rodney Wallace on a self-portrait.
Until recently, McKaila continued to attend school, where she belonged to a Destination ImagiNation team that placed third at the 2006 state tournament, following a performance the other team members dedicated to McKaila.
“Even though she wasn’t at every practice, she was the anchor of our team,” they said.
Survivors include parents Dan and Sandy Steffes and brother Wyatt Steffes, all of Denver; grandparents Roman and Arlene Steffes of Carroll, Iowa, and Leonard and Judie Savage of Omaha.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
