Howell mom seeks birthday wishes for ostracized son

A small sliver of skin shimmers on David Deaton’s upper lip.

It’s a scar from one of the many surgeries the 13-year-old from Howell has had to repair a cleft lip and palate.

Though it’s a tiny visible reminder of all David has been through, the scars you can’t see are harder to heal.

They’re those left by kids who exclude David because he’s different, the ones who walk by him in the hallway at school without a glance. Those are the most hurtful, said his mother, Heather Deaton.

“It absolutely breaks my heart,” Deaton said. “But I can’t shelter him from the world. It’s such a mean place. I just want him to have friends. These other kids don’t know what they’re missing out on by not being friends with him because he’s such a good, loving kid.”

Deaton wants to make David’s 14th birthday really special this year, particularly because he’ll soon have yet another surgery at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, where doctors will use a bone graft to repair the hole in his ear that’s causing partial hearing loss on his left side.

She’s asking people to send cards and notes to David to wish him a happy birthday. Deaton plans to boost David’s spirits and surprise him with the cards the day after his Aug. 11 surgery.

“The thought came actually from one of the nurses I had met who said, ‘Oh, we should do a card party for him to surprise him’ because he’s been dealing with a lot of self-esteem issues and a little bit of depression. It’s just from some bullying that was going on at his school.

“He’s had really bad anxiety about going to school,” Deaton said, explaining that David missed about 20 days of classes last year. “It was to the point where every morning he would say he had a stomachache. … He wasn’t telling me what was going on. I just figured it out. He doesn’t feel like he has any friends.”

To meet some kids who’ve been through the same experiences he has, and to offer support and encouragement to other children with cleft lip and palate, David created an organization he named Cleft Warriors. His mother helped him make a website, www.davidssmile.net, and start a Facebook page.

“We’ve actually sent out little care packages” to other children struggling to find acceptance, and coping with anxiety about their upcoming surgeries, Deaton said. “It was David’s idea to do this. We had someone actually mail us an anonymous $25 gift card, and David wanted to turn around and donate it to another child. He’s got the biggest heart in the world. He is just amazing. … We don’t have a lot of money, and it doesn’t seem to faze him. He’s just so humble. He’s a really good kid.”

Exclusion, bullying and self-esteem problems are common among kids like David, said Dr. Steven Buchman, director of the craniofacial anomalies program at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and a professor of plastic surgery at the University of Michigan.

It’s why Mott uses a team approach to treating kids with cleft lip and palate.

“There are so many other things besides the surgery that it impacts — breathing, eating, speaking,” Buchman said. “They see a speech pathologist because even after we put the palate in the right place, we have to ask does it work right? It doesn’t mean that all the wiring and nerves work right.

“Then there’s the dental impact, so we need pediatric dentists and orthodontists. … We get social workers involved to make sure the child has the appropriate insurance, the means to get them to appointments, psychologists who help them deal with being different than other children. Educating them, the parents, the schools so they get the proper support. We try to be a resource, and get in touch with their speech pathologist, their orthodontist to make their lives a little bit easier.”

Buchman said that the deformity is probably the most common craniofacial anomaly in children. It occurs among 1 in every 700-1,000 white infants, in 1 in every 2,000 black babies, and in 1 in every 500 Asian infants. But even if it isn’t rare, he noted that given those odds, there rarely are more than one or two children in a school with cleft lip and palate.

But during their treatment at Mott, Buchman said: “They meet a lot of other kids who have their own deformity. We have picnics. We show these kids they are not alone.”

And that’s important, said Dawn Evoe-Danowski, 52, of Rochester Hills, who also was born with cleft lip and palate. She donated to David’s treatment and care through a GoFundMe page his mother created to help cover the costs of his medical expenses.

She said she donated because she recalls how expensive her own treatment was as a girl, and she also can’t forget how it felt to be different from the other kids in school.

“That was before the days of people trying to protect kids from bullies,” Evoe-Danowski said. “They like to pick on kids who can’t talk back. It was not fun. ... I know kids are still always looking for a good target, so to speak.”

She was impressed by David’s efforts to help other kids through his Cleft Warriors program.

But David’s work had a setback earlier this summer, when someone stole the handmade signs and donated items he’d collected for a fund-raising garage sale.

“We were going to use the money to send packages to kids, gift cards, and stuff like that," he said.

“It all started because other people were having panic attacks and were panicking. The same thing happened to me when I got my surgery done to repair my cleft lip. Afterward, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. So I decided to make something to tell them it’s not as bad as they would think.”

Deaton said she hopes people step up by sending notes and cards to David to bring a smile to the face of a boy who is so kind to others.

“We just really really need help getting the word out about this event. We’re running out of time,” she said. “He is so worried that if he were to have a birthday party this year, that nobody would come. That’s why I thought, I’ve got to do something for him that doesn’t cost me money but that will be special.”

Contact Kristen Jordan Shamus: 313-222-5997 or kshamus@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @kristenshamus.

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