ILLINOIS -- Nick Foley is coolly approaching the milestone of starting high school, but the 8th grader knows his mother worries how he will handle the inevitable questions about the scars left from a pit bull attack.
"I really don't have fears about starting high school other than stress and stuff that every kid worries about," he said, turning to his mom, Polly, in the kitchen of their Cary home. "You're more nervous than me."
Nick was 10 years old in November of 2005 when he was dragged and his flesh ripped by a neighbor's three pit bulls as he and a friend were going door to door selling candy and magazines.
Initially, he was in critical condition with life-threatening injuries. He spent six weeks in a hospital. Since then he has had 17 surgeries, many of them plastic surgery. So much flesh was shredded from his right forearm that he could wrap a finger and thumb around it.
His mother said she is concerned about her 13-year-old son's first step toward adulthood. She and her husband, Brooks, will be in the background this fall as he navigates the turbulent social life of high school. He now attends Cary Junior High School.
Nick, she realizes, undoubtedly will be the subject of questions and maybe some stares as he forges relationships with a new group of boys and girls.
"In some ways, I feel like it will be his first challenge," Polly Foley said.
Nick will attend Marian Central Catholic High School in Woodstock, where his older sister and brother, Maureen and Alex, are students.
His siblings will help make the transition easier. But Nick understands that he will be leaving the comfort zone he found in Cary, where he rarely had to explain what happened because so many knew the story. The attack and his fight to recover were the subject of a series of articles in the Chicago Tribune.
"Now he's going to Marian, and most kids probably don't know what happened to him," Polly Foley said. "He's going to be undressing for gym, they'll see his arms and legs, and there will be questions."
Nick seems bemused by her concerns, showing flashes of his trademark resilience.
"You worry too much," he said.
These days the teen is more apt to chat with adults than he was in the months after the attack. He makes eye contact and is willing to listen and reflect. He has grown expert at fending off questions about what happened with a wise-cracking "shark attack" response.
At 5-feet-7, Nick now is almost as tall as his parents.
"I have a little anxiety, but it's not as much as I had," he said of the fears that haunted him after the attack. "If I see a pit bull or another dog and I feel anxious, I calm myself down and tell myself the chances of it happening again are really slim to none."
His childhood dreams have changed, too. Once he envisioned himself as a professional baseball player. Now he dreams of becoming a plastic surgeon, perhaps a nod to the surgeon who helped reconstruct his body.
"I just think it's interesting," he said. "I want to know what it's like to be on the other side of the operating table."
Nick is almost fully recovered. He has difficulty jumping because the dogs tore his hamstring muscles. His right fingers were bent because of nerve damage, but surgery has straightened them, which has helped him sharpen his basketball skills.
On Sunday, he scored four points in a tight basketball game that his team won by one point.
"He just has this amazing resilience to everything he has been through," said his coach, Scott Hamann. "He doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for him, and he doesn't feel sorry for himself."
Now that their focus has turned away from helping him heal, his parents are trying to draw attention to the danger of vicious dogs.
Nick was invited to tell his story before the Chicago City Council last year to help champion a spay and neuter proposal that would require dogs and cats to be fixed by the time they are 6 months old.
But after talking it over with their son, Polly and Brooks Foley thought he was too young. Nick said he would be willing to speak to aldermen privately if the proposal resurfaces.
"Nick has a story to tell, and we can use it for advocacy without exploiting him," Polly Foley said.
Each time a pit bull attack is reported, the Foleys say they feel the urgency to tell their story.
They have connected with several animal welfare groups to help focus the issue on vicious dogs, not necessarily on a specific breed.
When Polly Foley learned that the pit bulls of former NFL quarterback Michael Vick were being rehabilitated, she canceled her subscription to the magazine that featured them on the cover.
Vick, who played with the Atlanta Falcons, was sentenced to 23 months in prison in December 2007 for operating a dogfighting compound in Virginia and lying about it to authorities. Four pit bulls, which were abused, were seized by authorities.
Polly Foley said she thinks often about the damage the pit bulls did to Nick, dogs that were the beloved pets of a neighbor and were not abused.
Police shot all three of the animals during the attack.
"I just don't know how anyone could be comfortable with rehabilitating them," Polly Foley said. "Look at Nick. Is it worth the risk?"
As for her son, he's focusing on what's in front of him: homework, friends, basketball, and spring break.
Asked how he'll handle whatever challenges might come his way in high school, he calmly said, "I just like to wing it."
(Chicago Tribune - January 30, 2009)
