INSTRUCTIONAL GOOSE HUNTING
	THOMAS' WISH Affliction, anguish, courage, and a dauntless young waterfowler’s hunt of a lifetime By Chuck Petrie

"Still five minutes to shooting time," Darrel Wise observed, peering at his watch. "I guess we timed it just right."

We had. I looked over the lip of our field blind across the central Alberta landscape, now growing increasingly distinguishable in the pale morning light. The gently rolling country unfolded as a checkerboard of raw sienna wheat fields, isolated woodlots, and scattered ponds and potholes.

We’d just completed setting up 12 dozen silhouette goose decoys and dressing four two-man blinds with combine-withered pea vines. We had discovered the harvested pea field during a scouting trip the previous evening when the site bore semblance to a goose food convention. Lentils, peas highly preferred by geese and which appear similar to ripened soybeans, lay on the field like hailstones strewn by a summer storm, so we had little doubt the birds would return this morning, opening day of Alberta’s 1996 goose season.

Darrel and I each poured a cup of hot coffee from a thermos to ward off the chill of the mid-September morning. Momentarily, he left the blind to check on the six other hunters in our group, inspecting their blinds, correcting camouflage imperfections with handfuls of pea vines, and giving last-minute instructions, the most imperative being that no one shoot until he called the shot. "Be patient. I like ‘em close when the blind lids roll back," he told us, "real close. In your face." Little did we know that within minutes this veteran goose hunting guide would push our patience to the limit.

He had no sooner stepped back into our hide than the muted calls of airborne geese drifted toward the field, portending a first hint of action.

"Get down, everybody," Darrel warned us, "and slide your blind's top shut. Geese coming from 12 o’clock."

I closed the pivoting lid of the round, hay-bale-shaped blind I shared with Darrel and his Lab, Jess. Peering out the front viewing port, I first eyeballed the Real Geese decoys on the ground, then looked to the air. A growing din of goose song accompanied what looked like an aerial flotilla approaching us from the north.

After blowing a string of seductive notes to the approaching horde on his flute call, Darrel looked my way and grinned like a Cheshire cat. "It looks like every goose we saw here last evening is coming at the same time," he whispered.

Indeed, it did appear that way, and they’d brought additional company. Small flocks of lesser Canadas were strung out to the north, east, and west, and all seemed focused on arriving at a common destination: the field of food we were waiting in. Behind and above the Canadas to the north, two large flights of Ross’ geese had begun descending, wings locked, and in the bedlam of goose sounds around us the high-pitched yelps of specklebellies punctuated the already strident chorus of goose babble.

The Canadas and specks began circling our set, dropping closer with each revolution. As the tiny white Ross’ geese dropped their feet on final approach, the Canadas, intermingled with specks and a handful of blue- and white-phased snow geese, sensing they’d be beaten to the waiting vittles, also started to put on their air brakes. Excitedly glancing through the blind’s front, side, and overhead viewing ports, I could see geese, some only a yard away, coasting into the decoys. Some birds already stood or walked among the silhouette dekes. More birds coursed immediately above our heads, so close we could hear the soft, guttural "lay down" call grunted by dozens of unsuspecting, hungry geese. By now there had to be 200 geese on the ground, a few hundred more locked up and gliding in—well within gun range—and another half thousand higher up but spiraling down on us. In more than 30 years of goose hunting across Canada and the U.S., I’d never witnessed a event like this.

And still Darrel didn’t call the shot. He must have felt my anxiety because he finally looked at me and smiled through his neatly trimmed white beard. "This is the best part. Why screw it up with shooting? Three of the six hunters in the other blinds have never hunted geese before. The shooting will come, but a spectacle like this, even for me, is something to remember for a lifetime."

For the contemporary hunter, social scientists tells us, anticipation is 90 percent of the enjoyment of hunting. That is, the pre-hunt planning, preparation, and contemplation, and the sights, sounds, and smells we perceive while afield are more significant to our appreciation of hunting experiences than is the climactic act of killing.

Of course, although this goose melee was proving their thesis, social scientists aren’t telling hunters anything they don’t already know. And if this awesome sight unfolding before us was exciting for Darrel and me, it had to be thrilling a young man, Thomas Balling, two blinds to our left.

Thomas was literally living out a dream come true.

I’d first met the 19-year-old on my arrival at Darrel’s lodge the day before. The unpretentious youngster stood in the yard, tossing a foam rubber football for Jess, who spiritedly retrieved the missile after each arching throw.

"Kid's got a good arm," I said as I introduced myself to Thomas' father, Chris, who is director of professional education at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Chris and I chatted as we walked into the lodge and past his and Thomas’ room, the door of which was open, revealing an open suitcase full of medical paraphernalia sitting on one of the beds.

"What’s all that?" I inquired.

"Thomas' traveling medical kit," Chris matter-of-factly replied. "Without it, he couldn’t leave home. It’s a miracle he’s here to go hunting at all, but waterfowling is something that has literally kept Thomas alive."

We made our way to the lodge dining room and sat down over a cup of coffee. Curious about Chris’ comments about his son, I prodded him for more information. Over the next half hour, he related Thomas’ amazing story.

At the time of Thomas’ birth in 1976, Chris was a career U.S. Navy officer stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. He and his wife, Karla, were already in the process of raising Thomas’ siblings, Emily, 8, and Todd, 6, and pretested by the usual demands of parenthood.

But their experience as normal parents changed dramatically the day Thomas was born—with a dysfunctional small intestine—at Tripler Army Hospital in Honolulu.

"The doctors surgically removed almost the entire shriveled small intestine, attached his stomach directly to his large intestine," Chris related, "and then told us to prepare to mourn our son’s death. He wouldn’t live long without a small intestine, they told us, and there was little they could do for him.

"Fortunately, a young army doctor at the hospital was aware of a new, highly experimental supplemental feeding procedure used on cancer patients. We decided to submit Thomas to the treatments. It was our only hope."

Thomas responded favorably to the treatments, and spent all but six weeks of the next three years of his life in the hospital. During that stressful period, Chris was reassigned to duty on the East Coast. He moved the family back to the mainland, where Thomas was admitted to Boston Children’s Hospital.

Since that time, Thomas had been able to eat but had lived only because of supplemental intravenous feedings. His stomach is functional and, like anyone else’s, breaks down foods into fluids. However, the function of the small intestine is to further break down those fluids and absorb their nutrients, which are then circulated throughout the body. Since Thomas’ digestive system couldn’t absorb nutrients, which in his case were instead passed directly to the bowel and eliminated, normal food accorded him no benefit. His nutrients had to be introduced directly to his bloodstream via intravenous feeding.

Since that time, too, Thomas had spent most of his life in hospitals, undergoing countless operations and procedures, suffering severe abdominal pains, and basically living a poor quality existence. Nor was his prognosis good. Living with his condition, existing on IVs and painkillers, he was destined to suffer severe liver damage.

Meanwhile, Thomas’ parents had worked hard to give their son as normal a life as possible. They obtained and were trained in the use of a special hospital feeding unit, which allowed them to keep Thomas’ under home care, often for weeks at a time, between lengthy hospital stays.

When the Navy transferred Chris to Utah, as professor of naval science at the University of Utah, Thomas was transferred too, this time to Utah University Hospital. Doctors there eventually suggested that Thomas, then 16, undergo an unusual intestinal transplant operation. Karla, then attending nursing school at University of Utah in order to give Thomas the specialized home care he needed, discussed the matter at length with Chris, Thomas, and Thomas’ doctors.

The operation recommended was potentially perilous, the statistics not promising. Fewer than 25 such transplants had been performed nationwide, there was an 80 percent chance the new organ might be rejected, and, over a three-year period, the operation had an 85 percent survival rate. Furthermore, only two hospitals in the nation, the University of Pittsburgh Hospital and the University of Wisconsin Hospital, were capable of performing the intricate surgery.

Realizing the risks, the family decided to go ahead with the operation, and Thomas was put on a nationwide list of priority organ-recipients. It would take a year, however, before an acceptable organ, from a 10-year-old Minnesota donor, became available.

Throughout the two years prior to the life-threatening operation, Thomas’ fascination with waterfowling developed and grew stronger. On an autumn family trip to Yellowstone National Park, shortly after moving to Utah, Thomas had the opportunity to view large concentrations of migrant Canada geese loafing on the park’s waterways. Chris, who comes from a hunting family but had few opportunities to hunt while serving in the navy, seeing Thomas’ enthusiasm, suggested they take a father and son hunting trip together.

Thomas' initial foray for geese was a guided goose hunt the following fall in Washington State with his dad. Thomas was 15, and his mentor on that trip was none other than Darrel Wise, who also guides goose hunters on Washington’s Columbia River basin.

After that hunt, according to his father, Thomas became a fervent waterfowl hunter. "He was on every outdoor catalog mailing list, read all the magazines and books on waterfowling, joined Ducks Unlimited, and literally lived and breathed for the opportunity to go hunting again."

Before that opportunity presented itself, though, the Ballings received a call informing them that an acceptable organ had been donated, and that a medical team at the University of Wisconsin Hospital at Madison was preparing for Thomas’ surgery.

"That evening, as we prepared to have Thomas and Karla fly to Wisconsin on a flight-for-life Lear jet, we received a last-minute call from the surgeon who would perform the operation. He talked to Thomas and reminded him of the risks and potential complications from the procedure, and inquired if Thomas was certain he wanted to go ahead with the operation. The last thing Thomas said to the doctor was ‘I’ll see you in a couple of hours.’"

The nine-hour operation, Wisconsin’s first small intestine transplant, was performed on July 5, 1994, by Dr. Anthony D’Alessandro. Thomas remained at the hospital for three months following the surgery so that he could be kept under observation, receive antirejection medication, and have follow-up operations as necessary. His mother stayed at his side throughout that time, tirelessly providing him love, solace, and inspiration, and offering nursing services when the hospital staff was otherwise occupied.

When Thomas came out of anesthesia following the transplant operation, his mother was waiting for him. She asked him if there was anything she could get for him. He made a single request. By that evening, Karla had purchased and placed a single Big Foot Canada goose decoy in her son’s hospital room. A week later he received another companion, but one he couldn’t keep in his hospital room—a female black Lab puppy named Kali, from the Salt Lake City chapter of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

"Thomas came through the ordeal with his usual optimism," Chris recounted. "Toward the end of his stay at the hospital, when he needed a nurse," his dad chuckled, "Thomas would summon them from his bed with a goose flute call—until the nurses put the kibosh on that. He even became something of a celebrity because of the rare operation he’d undergone, and was interviewed on local and national television news shows."

Thomas' operation and lengthy convalescence completed, he and his mom returned to Salt Lake City that fall. His new intestine was functional. For the first time in his life he was able to eat food and gain nourishment from it, but he remained on a variety of medications.

The day after Thanksgiving, Chris took Thomas goose hunting on the Utah prairie outside Salt Lake. Shortly after they’d set up their decoys, however, Thomas advised his dad that he wasn’t feeling well. To their dismay, they discovered Thomas was bleeding internally. In fact, his body had begun a massive rejection of the transplanted intestine. Chris drove Thomas from the field directly to the airport, where Karla was waiting, for an emergency return trip to Madison.

A new regime of antirejection medications and new surgeries stabilized the emergency, but not without another long-term hospitalization. Realizing Thomas needed to remain near UW Hospital, and at the suggestion of his doctors, Karla moved to Madison to live.

"We're still close," Chris told me, "but my job requires me to live in Salt Lake City, and Thomas’ condition requires that he and his mom live in Madison. It’s a tough way for us to exist, but we get together as often as we can.

"Now that Thomas is stabilized again, and able to travel, we’re finally taking this trip to Canada that he’d been so much looking forward to. You know, when he was interviewed in the hospital a few weeks after his transplant operation—and by the way, he was wearing a DU T-shirt during the filming—the last thing the TV reporter asked him was ‘Now that you’re recovering, what’s the next thing you want to do?’ And do you know what Thomas said?" Chris’ voice quavered slightly as he looked away, recalling the moment, his eyes a little watery. "He said, ‘I want to go goose hunting with my dad.’"

Remembering all Chris told me the day before, and now, beholding the throng of geese herded around our blinds, some birds so close you could touch them with a broom handle, and hearing the racket of their calling and the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of wings overhead, I finally figured out why Darrel had yet to call the shot. A social scientist in his own right, and one who knew the story long before I did, he was fulfilling 90 percent of Thomas’ wish.

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