Patrick McGill will tell you straight up, it's an awful ordeal.
At age 2, he was diagnosed with the disease and spent four years in and out of Missoula doctors' offices getting poked, probed and pumped full of prednisone.
Moon-faced and bald from the painful treatments, he didn't even look like a normal child. When he entered first grade, his muscle coordination was so delayed, he barely knew his left hand from his right, said McGill's mother, Pamela Guth.
There were times when his death seemed imminent, but always, the boy managed to keep it at bay.
By the time McGill was in eighth grade, his struggle manifested itself physically and emotionally. Doctors deemed him clear of the cancer, but he weighed 255 pounds and his self-esteem had plummeted.
“I was incredibly overweight and depressed,” McGill said. “I spent most of my time sitting on the couch playing video games.”
Attempts to join a football team or learn kayaking were quickly abandoned, he said. “I was just too self-conscious to wear a uniform or put on those tight-fitting wetsuits.”
It would have been a cruel joke had anyone suggested that McGill, just a few years hence, would have the chiseled body of a professional athlete, have achieved status as a rising dance star, and at 18 would spend his senior year in high school at the prestigious North Carolina School of the Arts - and be invited to audition at Juilliard, the famed New York City performing arts school.
Back then, such suggestions would have seemed less likely even than beating back leukemia, McGill said with a knowing grin during a visit to Missoula this week.
McGill's father, Michael, said he would never wish the disease upon any child or family. But somewhere, somehow during the battle, his son forged a will of steel.
“He is the result of what he experienced, and that courage has continued,” Michael McGill said. “He lost his passion there for a while, not knowing what to do with himself, but he's found his way.”
At age 3, when doctors needed to take bone marrow samples from his spine, little Patrick McGill would bravely curl into a fetal position for the necessary, painful procedure and not twitch a muscle until it was over.
At 15, he braved a dance class at the urging of his aunt, Sherri Wagner, and cousin Brenna.
One day, Sherri saw him lift the family's golden retriever with one arm. “You should come to Brenna's dance class,” she said. “They always need strong guys to lift the girls.”
It took some doing, but she finally convinced McGill to go with his cousin to On Center Performing Arts.
“They had to drag me to dance class,” McGill said, “and I wasn't easy to convince. Dance just wasn't something a teenage boy did. I wasn't happy about it, but I hadn't yet learned to say no to my aunt.”
McGill went, but vowed never to return. His aunt kept on him, though, as did On Center's owner, Lisa Jourdonnais, who encouraged him to try again.
Reluctantly, he signed up for a jazz class and then got talked into a partnering class. Dancing two times a week for 90 minutes per session, McGill's weight began to melt off and his depression started to lift.
With the movement and sweat came a growing confidence and sense of freedom he had never felt before.
It was such a compelling force, during McGill's freshman year of high school he finally told friends where he was spending all of his time. To his surprise, no one harassed him about it.
In fact, when Jourdonnais suggested he and Brenna enter a swing-dance competition, McGill found himself taking dance classes four times a week to prepare. He was among the rare guys who danced at the studio, though, so didn't really have any male role models or understanding of men's contributions to the art.
“When I got to the competition, I saw all these other guys who were incredibly good, and it made me see dance in a way that was far more than I ever thought it was.
“I came away from that thinking, ‘I want to do that. I want to be that good.' ”
When McGill got home, he attacked his classes with single-minded determination - living and breathing not just dance, but fitness, diet and nutrition. By the time sophomore year rolled around, he was taking six dance classes a week, and at one point in the year, 21 classes a week.
With the support of teachers at Hellgate High School, McGill left early in the day during his junior year so he could take dance classes at the University of Montana before ending his day with more classes at On Center.
At Hellgate, he didn't become the oddity he once feared. Now toned and fit, he became “the guy who dances.”
In Seattle, McGill auditioned for a five-week summer intensive dance workshop at the North Carolina School of the Arts, which has a high school and a college. He was accepted, and this past summer found himself dancing eight or nine hours a day.
“I had the time of my life,” McGill said. “And I knew I had to get out of Missoula to get the instruction I need to become a professional dancer.
“As a male dancer, there isn't anyone in Missoula who can teach me because men have different movements to learn.”
So while in North Carolina, McGill filled out an application to the center's high school and was immediately accepted as a senior. The news was greeted with great joy and awe by his parents.
“Patrick told me, ‘Dad, this is what I want to do. I want to be a professional dancer. This kind of opportunity isn't going to come find me. I have to go find it,' ” Michael said. “You don't hear most 18-year-olds saying that. I asked myself, ‘Why is he so courageous?' But then I understood it was his force of will, that amazing force of will he's always had since he was a little guy.
“He's a rare combination of a kid. He's lived through leukemia and all that comes with it, and he's lived with his mortality in a way most people don't. Now that he knows what he wants in life, I think he's more aggressive than most in reaching out and making it happen.”
After the holidays, when McGill's classes resume in North Carolina, he'll dedicate himself to his college plans by polishing his dance moves for a March audition at Juilliard.
“It would be wonderful to be accepted, but if I'm not, I will be accepted at the performing arts school in North Carolina, and that's wonderful, too,” he said. “It's considered the second best performing arts school after Juilliard.”
Best of all, McGill said, there's nothing to stop him from realizing his dreams.
All that remains - physically - of Patrick McGill's leukemia is a small scar on his chest where a catheter was once imbedded, and a few mental snapshots of that time, like the purple stuffed Barney dinosaur he looked at during treatments.
That time is behind him, and fully forgotten in dance. That's what gives him the greatest release and the greatest hope.
He's bent his will these days on improving as much as he can.
“I want to be the best that I can,” McGill said, “and finally have the opportunity to work as hard as I can and have teachers throw it right back at me and help me get there.”
McGill said he appreciates the discipline of ballet, but loves the freedom of movement found in modern dance, so is looking to a career with a modern dance company.
“I used to be a kid who hated himself and wore baggy clothing all of the time and never took my shirt off to go swimming,” he said. “It makes me really proud to know how far I've come.
“Since I've been dancing, I've seen myself as a dancer, and that's where my confidence comes from. But now, I'm working toward a place where I know dancing is what I do, not who I am.
“I don't know what my future is. I hope it's dancing. But I want to be that confident person even without the dancing.”
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