BELLVUE — Sarah Bailey had one thought in the sterile hospital room where the doctors were going over her daughter’s diagnosis, using words like hemoglobin and neutrophils and allopurinol: We need to get out of here.
It was March 2023 and the beginning of a battle she knew she was willing to fight with 5-year-old Bellamy Korn, the youngest of her four kids. She knew she would be there for every step of the treatment that she hoped would wipe out the leukemia sickening her child.
But as she looked through the windows of the hospital, she just wanted to be out there, away from the big, scary words and talk about chemotherapy. The expansive, beautiful trails of Larimer County helped heal her during her divorce. She thought that being outside could do the same for Bellamy.
Hers in an outdoor family and she imagined skiing and hiking, and even the baseball games her sons played, would be as much a part of their life as the disease and the cure. That would not change.
“The leukemia wasn’t going to stop us from doing the things we loved,” Bailey said.
She took out her daughter’s IV and walked with her outside. Sitting there, among all the trees and sunshine, even as spring’s frigid air bit at them, she came up with an idea: The treatment would take 2½ years, and during that time, she and Bellamy would do 100 hikes. The rules were loose: They could repeat them, and they didn’t have to make the destination for it to count. The journey was the point.
Their first walk was a trip to the mailbox, a tenth of a mile, and Bellamy barely made it. That’s OK, honey, Sarah told her. Tomorrow we will go farther.
On an unseasonably warm day in April, Bellamy started hike No. 44 by dashing off and up to the trail to Arthur’s Rock in Lory State Park in Bellvue. It’s a 3.5-mile hike with 1,100 feet of elevation gain that Colorado Parks and Wildlife calls “moderate.”
It’s not a hike for those who can barely make it to the mailbox. But that was Bellamy a year ago.
“Hi Mommy,” Bellamy chirped from 75 yards away.”‘I’m way ahead of you.”
“Watch the trippy rocks,” Bailey yelled in response.
After a few more walks around their neighborhood, the 100-hike journey began in the Pineridge Natural Area in Fort Collins near Dixon Reservoir. It felt flat and close to a hospital. Bailey carried everything in a huge backpack, including, after a while, Bellamy.
100 hikes seemed like a lot at first, and at times it still does. Bailey had to learn early on how hard to push Bellamy. She was used to telling her boys to suck it up, but the only repercussions from that was some whining.
“With Bellamy,” Bailey said, “it’s a trip to the hospital.”
Bellamy collapsed on one trip to Red Feather Lakes, still early in the 100 Hikes adventure. She wouldn’t move, and Bailey didn’t have the backpack. Instead, she carried Bellamy in her arms and drove straight to the hospital. Her hemoglobin levels had dropped. After a blood transfusion, she was fine.
Bellamy learned after that hike how to advocate for herself, which is a good skill for a young girl to have, Bailey said. Bellamy tells her mother when she’s thirsty or hot or when she needs a break.
Red Feather was the only time they’ve had real complications from a hike. Hiking is the easy part.
Lately the dog struggles more on the hikes than Bellamy does
Bellamy had not taken so much as a pill in her five years before she began a heartbreaking course of chemotherapy that made her lose her hair. Bailey had to learn the warning signs when Bellamy’s hemoglobin was low, which was tricky, as the hike demonstrated, and she had to know what to do when it was. She had to know what to do when Bellamy reacted badly to steroids, or if she spiked a fever, and what medications to give her and when and how much. She had to know where the hospitals were and the fastest routes to them.
Still, the knowledge empowered her to take Bellamy into the wild because these are things she would have to know anyway.
After the first month, when doctors bombed her body, the leukemia went into remission. Now it’s more maintenance. Bellamy gets a pill once a day, with some steroids and more chemo pumped into her spinal fluid every 3 months.
The rest is just hiking with a 6-year-old, one who is stronger than most — their golden retriever, Rafi, struggles more than she does. She doesn’t whine, but she does get distracted by creeks and sticks and other people on the trail and Rafi and maybe the dried fruit in her mother’s pack. She needs the occasional game, like she and her mom being buns on a sandwich and the dog being the ham. She also talks a lot, which Bailey sees mostly as a positive.
“We don’t have to worry about animals coming up on us,” she said and laughed.
After demanding a password from some confused hikers so they could pass through her “gate” — it was something like “I love golden retrievers” — Bellamy comes across a narrow portion of the trail, which makes her a little nervous.
“Hug the mountain, lovebug,” Bailey tells her.
Bellamy carefully walks across and then asks her mother for Blippi. “Oh, man, not Blippi,” Bailey responds. “We have guests.”
Blippi is a cartoon, a kid’s show that Bellamy loves. Bailey doesn’t love it and doesn’t want to do the helium voice. Bellamy begs her. Bailey eventually caves.
“Helllooooo,” Bailey says, in a tone that sounds exactly like you’d expect a character named Blippi to sound like, and Bellamy giggles.
Bailey knows the hiking helps Bellamy the way a mother knows her children’s favorite foods or that thunderstorms upset them at night. There are studies that back her up regarding exposing kids to nature, such as the Last Child in the Woods movement, and you’d be hard pressed to find a doctor who would tell you exercise isn’t beneficial. There is little doubt Bellamy is stronger and fitter since she was diagnosed a year ago. They’ve hiked as far as 7 miles, or nearly 7 miles longer than that first trip to the mailbox.
Bailey believes the hiking, along with a good diet, helps Bellamy with her cancer treatments, too. Chemotherapy, for instance, causes neuropathy, Bailey said, and the hiking helps Bellamy move through the weakness in her legs.
“I don’t want to make claims. But last August, she had a weird gait, and we went on a hike,” Bailey said, “and I gave her a hiking stick, and she powered through it. She’s been lucky as far as any side effects go, and I know what’s helping her.”
Bailey is sometimes frustrated by Bellamy’s treatment, as are many parents in her situation. She recounts wanting to speak to a nutritionist, and the person told her to feed Bellamy whatever she wanted. Calories are calories, she told Bailey. Bellamy ate so many chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast that doctors thought she was pre-diabetic after one of her usual blood draws and wanted to put her on insulin. Bailey rolled her eyes and put her back on her healthy eating plan, something she believed in before the cancer. Bellamy was fine in a week.
Bailey also understands that Bellamy’s doctors are there to kill the cancer without killing her. Bailey knows that telling every leukemia patient to go hike wouldn’t work. She just wishes, in a moment of candor, that she was praised more for her effort, and that doctors would try to learn something from it.
Amanda Honeyman works as a child life specialist for Children’s Hospital, where Bellamy is being treated, and it’s her job to help children cope with long hospital stays. It’s been her job for 20 years to ensure the sick patients don’t forget how to be kids. Honeyman laughs when she’s asked if the hiking helps Bellamy, even if she can’t endorse it for every patient.
“I think anybody could answer that,” Honeyman said. “We know the more active you are the more mentally strong and physically strong you are. We focus on their coping skills, and being outside and being alive and active is a great coping skill for Bellamy.”
Bailey’s approach especially works well in Colorado, Honeyman said, because it’s a part of our culture. Hiking is a normal activity, and those are the kinds of activities that provide breaks from the chaos of a cancer diagnosis.
Honeyman, though, wouldn’t say hiking was the key for every kid. There are many keys, and it’s her job to help parents find them.
“That’s why we are here, to empower the families,” Honeyman said.
Supplementing medicine with alternatives, including exercise
Some doctors do say movement is medicine. Jessica Rychel is a veterinarian and the owner of Red Sage Vet Partners in Fort Collins. Rychel practices integrative medicine. She does not believe in using “alternatives” to traditional medicine, but she also believes in supplementing it with acupuncture, natural elements or exercise.
Rychel met Bailey because her daughter attends the same Fort Collins private school as Bellamy. Rychel liked Bailey’s approach so much that her clinic hosted a fundraiser for her.
“It’s scary to have a kid with cancer, so if you’ve got something that works a little bit, you’re afraid to move in any other direction,” Rychel said. “But the reality is that many of the protocols for treating it are pretty outdated, and what gets lost is there are things that can help families and they get pooh-poohed.”
Rychel, in fact, encourages exercise to alleviate the side effects of chemo for her dog patients, and there’s “cool research” to back her up, including a study that showed exercise reduces nausea. The fact that Bellamy hasn’t felt sick much from the chemo doesn’t surprise Bailey or Rychel.
Rychel agrees that treating dogs is different than treating humans, but at the same time, she argues it’s not as different as you might think. She’s attending a conference for human medicine in South Korea this fall because doctors are interested in how vets manage certain conditions.
“I hope someday we can get to the point where vet medicine does share more knowledge with human medicine,” Rychel said. “Medicine is medicine, and when we put our heads together, we can come up with some cool stuff.”
Ultimately, Bailey will keep hiking with Bellamy because she can see the results.
“After every hike,” Bailey said, “we always feel better.”
Near the end of the hike, it’s hot, and Bellamy convinces Bailey to turn around just before they reach the top of the rock. As they walk down the trail, Bellamy spots a creek, and she asks to put her feet in it. She’s asked this before, and Bailey, this time, agrees.
The water is as cold as the snow that feeds it.
“Oooo,” Bellamy says. “This is fun!”
Bailey believes in what she’s doing so much that she wants other families to have the same opportunity to get outside. Getting outside, not necessarily hiking, is what Bailey wants to promote.
“We realize that not every kid and family won’t be us,” she said. “Maybe it’s like fishing.”
To that end, she hopes to start a nonprofit that would provide resources for families with kids with cancer. Her big idea is to give them county and state park passes.
“This seems like a very easy thing to get done,” Bailey said, “and it’s not just about the kid. It’s about the parents and the caregivers. I want to make some healing happen for the whole family.”
There are organizations that work to get kids outside, Bailey said, and she looked into folding her own idea into them. But she wants to focus on kids with cancer and hasn’t found a good fit.
“I think I’m finally at a place where I’m just like, ‘Sarah, you gotta just do it on your own,’” Bailey said. “There’s a part of me too who wants control to make it what it needs to be. I’ve done it and lived it.”
When Bellamy’s treatment ends in a year, Bailey thinks they will have the last 40 or so hikes done. That’s the goal. She thinks the last hike, number 100, should be something big, with all the people who supported Bellamy. She thinks, maybe, it should be a 14er.
Bailey considers herself lucky. Bellamy has handled the treatments so well. Bailey thinks the hiking has something to do with that, but Bellamy’s been so strong on her own too, so much so that Bailey calls her daughter a hero. And what better place for a hero to stand than on the roof of Colorado?
