FRIENDS, KIN GATHER TO REMEMBER AMBER SMITH
Oregonian, The (Portland, OR) - Thursday, March 23, 1995
Author: COURTENAY THOMPSON - of the Oregonian Staff
Amber Ann Smith could kick a soccer ball so hard that her father called her ``Am-Bam,'' which friends shortened to ``Bammie.''
In softball and volleyball, she was a power hitter.
In life, the Reynolds High School honors student was an independent, strong-willed and caring young woman who tutored peers.
But her strength, her health and her stubbornness couldn't help the 18-year-old senior last week when an early morning headache ended in a coma and deadly brain swelling by late afternoon. Doctors believe a deadly strain of meningococcal disease is to blame.
More than 250 relatives, friends, students, school administrators and teachers crowded into pews at Rivercrest Commmunity Church in Portland on Wednesday to celebrate the life, and mourn the passing, of Amber Ann Smith.
``It's just so hard,'' said her close friend, Jennifer Stevens, 17, speaking quietly, sparingly, after a service filled with prayers, memories, some laughter and music from Garth Brooks, Eric Clapton and the Cranberries.
Other friends couldn't speak through their tears. A small group of young women gathered at the front of the church, sobbing, in front of Amber's senior pictures, taken two days before she became ill.
Just a week ago Wednesday, Amber had gone to school as usual, taking Tylenol to ease a steady headache. Friends said she looked a little pale but seemed fine. She then went to her work as a grocer's clerk, but when she came home at 2 p.m., her headache began to quickly worsen.
After checking in with a family doctor, Amber's father, Ronald J. Smith, rushed her to Providence Portland Medical Center, watching his daughter slip away into paralysis and pain as he drove.
Although doctors and nurses worked furiously to keep her alive over the next two nights, her family believed they lost Amber that Wednesday afternoon, just hours after she fell ill.
``It still doesn't seem like it's real,'' said Sheri A. Smith, Amber's mother.
``It's the shock, the suddenness,'' said Ronald Smith. ``She was literally here this afternoon, gone this evening.''
Family and friends remember a vibrant young woman who was looking forward to graduation and perhaps attending Mt. Hood Community College to study physical therapy.
Her parents and friends say she was a gregarious teen-ager who loved to listen to friends -- and to talk on the phone. Her parents got call-waiting to accommodate her.
She was a middle child who often hung out with cousins and friends of her older brother, Brandon, 19. She also had a little sister, Autumn, 12. Her friends say she was a storyteller, who loved to spin a tale in detail.
``She was everything,'' said her dad, leaning wearily against a sofa in Amber's grandparents' home Tuesday. ``She was well-liked by all of her friends, a strong-willed child.''
Ronald and Sheri Smith said they had been spending most of their time here, with their close-knit, extended family and friends. They said they can hardly bear to go home and see Amber's room, in its state of teen-age messiness.
``We cannot believe all the love and support people have given us,'' said Sheri Smith , who said the family won't ever be able to thank all the friends, doctors and nurses who helped them in this difficult time. ``She had such a short life, we want this to be as positive, as positive as you can make for an early death.''
The family wants others to be aware of the deadly fast disease, to learn its warning signs, to realize how quickly it can progress to death. ``If somehow by this happening we can save somebody,'' Sheri Smith said.
Doctors still have not been able to tell the Smiths where Amber contracted the disease. Nor do epidemiologists know exactly what strain killed her.
``We don't have all the answers to all aspects of living,'' said Fred Hoesly, an epidemiologist in the Oregon Health Division. ``We don't understand why certain people get meningitis. Why some die in four to six hours and why some recover in four to six days. A lot of things we don't understand.''
Amber's family is trying to prepare themselves to live with that uncertainty.
The only certainty is that she will be terribly missed by many people.
``She's got a big chunk of my heart that she took with her,'' said her grandfather, Robert Harms.
HEADACHE ONLY CLUE TO DEADLY BACTERIA
Oregonian, The (Portland, OR) - Sunday, March 19, 1995
Author: RICHARD N. COLBY - of the Oregonian Staff
The meningococcal disease that so abruptly attacked and killed 17-year-old Amber Smith last week started with a simple headache.
At first, Amber, a senior honors student at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, thought it might be the new dental retainer her orthodontist had given her the day before. She went to class as usual Wednesday morning, and then to her part-time job as a grocery clerk.
But the headache wouldn't go away.
Hours later, Amber was suffering excruciating head pain and partial paralysis as her father raced her to Providence Portland Medical Center following a quick visit to the family doctor's office.
And a short time later, said Ronald J. Smith, his daughter slipped into a coma in the center's intensive-care unit. By Friday morning, tests confirmed blood was no longer flowing to the girl's massively swollen brain, and she was disconnected from life-support systems.
Ronald Smith, a dockworker and driver for Consolidated Freightways, was in tears Saturday as he recounted the trauma that visited the Gresham family so swiftly last week.
Amber's death -- and the fatal speed of the bacteria that killed her -- stunned the girl's family, schoolmates and teachers. The word of meningococcal disease also caused concern at the Troutdale school and wherever else Amber had been in the days before her death, said her mother, Sheri A. Smith, an elementary school teacher.
- Antibiotics guard against infection
Among those places was a friend's wedding the previous Saturday evening. Her parents; her brother, Brandon, 19; her sister, Autumn, 13; close friends and some of the wedding guests have received doses of antibiotics to guard against being infected, Sheri Smith said.
At Reynolds, letters explaining the disease and prevention measures were handed to the school's 1,850 students Friday, and copies were mailed to their parents.
``What we're hearing from the (Multnomah County) health department is that it is safe to be there,'' Reynolds Principal John Deeder said Saturday. ``If it weren't safe, we would shut the school.''
Assuming laboratory tests at the Oregon Health Division confirm Amber had meningococcal disease, said Dr. Marion Diermayer, a division medical epidemiologist, the girl will be the 36th person in Oregon reported with the disease this year and the third to die from it.
The disease can cause inflammation of the brain and spinal cord or blood infections, she explained, and it can develop within two to 10 days of exposure.
Symptoms are often a high fever along with severe headaches, occasional nausea and vomiting, stiff neck, drowsiness and -- in about half of the cases -- a quickly spreading skin rash that does not disappear when the skin is squeezed.
But according to Ronald Smith, the severe headache was Amber's only apparent symptom before she reached the hospital.
He gathered with several relatives and friends at Amber's grandmother's house in Northeast Portland on Saturday. Many of the girl's friends were too grief-stricken to talk.
- `Profound sadness'
``I think there is a profound sadness,'' said Reggie Wardle, a Reynolds science teacher who coached Amber in volleyball and softball. Amber also worked as an assistant to Wardle, grading papers.
``I could leave a little note, and she'd figure out what to do, and do it with no questions,'' the teacher recalled. ``She was a sweet girl to have here.''
Amber was a National Honor Society member with a near-perfect grade point average, and she was considering a career in physical therapy.
Wardle said he had spent Friday teaching class as usual, but quietly mourning the death. ``I just kind of kept to myself,'' he said.
Amber's parents said funeral arrangements, under the direction of Rose City Funeral Home, were still incomplete. They suggested remembrances be contributions to help pay for the Margaret Scott Elementary School's covered play area, being built in honor of that school's longtime principal, Leroy Scott.
Scott died of cancer complications a year, almost to the day, before Amber did, her mother said.
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