In early April, Pacific Palisades teenager Tae-Leon Butler flew to New York to record two songs in the Downtown Music Studios. As the Windward eighth grader sang, her parents, Lisa and Mitchell, and older sister Brittany watched and listened. They all shared in Tae-Leon’s heartwarming triumph over adversity. The Make-a-Wish Foundation, whose mission is to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions, paid for family’s airfare, hotel room and expenses, and found a songwriter, Sylvia Gordon, to write Tae’s songs. The trip was a celebration for Tae, who after battling acute myeloid leukemia as a 9-year-old and spending almost a year of her life in UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, had survived the cancer, is in remission, and is thriving. She plays on a club volleyball team, runs track for her school, and is a member of Girl Scout Troop 7435 (Marquez); her favorite subject is Spanish. The nightmare began before Labor Day 2006, when Tae noticed her gums were swollen. Lisa took her to the orthodontist and was told her daughter, who had braces, needed to do a better job of brushing. Almost immediately after, Tae started complaining of fatigue and Lisa said she watched as her daughter walked up the stairs and then immediately took a nap. Lisa remembers thinking, ‘She is so out of shape.’ A few days afterwards, just before starting fourth grade at Marquez, Tae found a little nodule in her neck. ‘I hurt so bad,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t even turn my head.’ Lisa took Tae to see the family pediatrician, Dr. Alisa Bromberg at Palisades Pediatrics. Bromberg did blood work while the mother and daughter waited, and then told them, ‘You need to go the emergency room at UCLA’now.’ ‘I think Dr. Bromberg saved her life because she reacted so quickly,’ Lisa said. Two hours later, Lisa learned her daughter had leukemia and that doctors were starting chemotherapy immediately. Tae’s white cell count had soared to 120,000, when normally it should have been 4,000. ‘Ninety-eight percent of her blood was cancerous,’ Lisa said. ‘I was told it was an aggressive cancer and the treatment was aggressive.’ Tae was given high doses of chemotherapy, including Intrathecal, which delivers chemicals to the brain. ‘Am I going to die?’ Tae asked. ‘No,’ Lisa told her, and then ‘after that, my daughter was amazing’she was upbeat. Tae’s doctors thought her attitude was one of the reasons she made it through.’ For seven months, Tae was confined to a hospital room and not allowed visitors. To keep her spirits up, the family would decorate the hospital room monthly with different themes: one month was a penguin-theme with paper snowflakes hung from the ceiling, and December featured a Christmas tree hung with Sponge Bob ornaments. At the end of that time, she was then sequestered at home for another three months to allow her immune system to bounce back. ‘I missed my entire fourth grade year,’ said Tae, who is tested every six months and whose heart is monitored yearly. In 2008, Dr. Pamela Kempert and long-term patient care manager La Vette Bowels asked Tae, ‘What did you do for your Make-a-Wish?’ Once they realized Tae’s name had never gone to the organization, they sent it immediately. In 2009, Tae was contacted by Make-a-Wish and she gave them her top three choices: a speaking part on the ‘Hannah Montana’ television show, record a song written by a famous songwriter or take a trip to Australia. At the beginning of 2010, she was told the first wish wouldn’t work because the show was being cancelled, but that wish coordinator Jeni Ayers would start working on the second. In March this year, the family received a call that Tae would be able to record in New York City. Tae, who sang in the Palisades Presbyterian children’s choir and as a sixth grader at Paul Revere, received singing lessons from Palisadian Beth Anderson as a Christmas present last December. Staying at the Roosevelt Hotel, the family took a subway to the Soho studio where they met the songwriter (who was co-writer for ‘Meet Me Halfway,’ a hit for the group Black Eyed Peas) and the engineers. Over the next three days, Tae recorded two songs, ‘We’re Here to Party’ and ‘Crush on U.’ ’She seemed comfortable and not intimidated,’ Lisa said. ‘It’s a long process and it was full days, so we didn’t do a lot of sightseeing.’ They did watch the Knicks play a game at Madison Square Garden, where Tae’s father played numerous times during his 10-”year NBA career with Washington, Portland and Cleveland. He earlier played at UCLA, and is now a sports agent. Tae’s songs are available on iTunes and she is donating all the proceeds from sales to the Make-a-Wish Foundation. ‘I wanted to give back,’ she said. Said Lisa, reflecting on her daughter’s triumph over cancer: ‘It gives you a different perspective. When something difficult comes up you know you can handle it, because if Tae can make it through what she went through, nothing is harder than that.’ NBC Evening News featured Tae-Leon on April 19.
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