Teen gets wish to spend a summer by the lake

Karrie Nichols got her wish this summer to spend every day looking out over Hartwell Lake and casting her rod into its waters.

The 17-year-old West Union resident has the most severe form of spina bifida, a disorder of the spinal cord that has paralyzed her from the waist down since birth.

Since mid-June, she has been living at a new campsite built just for her at the Coneross Campground in Oconee County. Her parents are with her, monitoring her medications and making sure she is comfortable — complications of the disease have caused several infections and kidney stones.

But like any teenager, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief ranger Zach Harkness said, Karrie wants a measure of independence.

“We built a concrete pad so she can get around by herself,” Harkness said. “Then there’s a sidewalk to go down to the shoreline. Then we built a fishing bulkhead with rails. She can take herself down there as she pleases.”

And she does.

Karrie is shy, choosing to speak only to those she’s known for a while — especially when she’s not feeling well. She offers an occasional smile and wry look to strangers. Jean Brown, a clinical nurse specialist at the Shriners Hospital of Greenville, said Karrie typically picks one person at the hospital to open up to.

“She’s a funny girl,” Brown said.

Karrie’s father, Ricky Nichols, vouched for his daughter’s catches this summer — mostly bream and a catfish or two.

“The first time she fished, there was something on the line, and she didn’t know it,” he said.

Family members helped net the fish.

Brown recommended Karrie for this special gift from the U.S. Corps of Engineers after the teen spent more than three months in the hospital last spring. She had been on life support after an infection made her ill and her temperature spiked to 105 degrees. Shortly thereafter, she had surgery for kidney stones.

“We didn’t know if we’d lose her,” said Karrie’s mother, Kathy Nichols.

“She didn’t want to eat or drink,” her father said.

The Atlanta-based Children’s Wish Foundation coordinated the details of Karrie’s gift, but the corps took on all the expenses, including giving the campsite free to the Nicholses all summer.

Karrie takes seizure medicines every six hours, and the frequency of her infections has rendered most antibiotics ineffective. She is on oxygen at night. She faces surgery for 11 more kidney stones again this fall, and her father said he knows it could be dangerous.

Spina bifida occurs during a baby’s early development in the womb. The material that will become the baby’s spine does not fully fuse, and the resulting hole exposes the enclosed nerves, said Amanda Darnley, spokeswoman for the Spina Bifida Association. No one knows the exact cause, though it has been linked to a deficiency of folic acid in the mother’s diet.

“We call them $1 million babies,” Darnley said. “The cost to a family or society is about $1 million by the time they reach the age of 10. The cost is overwhelming. Depending on actual conditions, they may face additional surgeries as they get older.”

When Karrie was born, several nerve endings protruded through her back, her father said, and she had a 50 percent chance of survival. Surgery within days of her birth closed the fist-sized wound, but the damage was already done. She’d lost the ability to control her legs.

“They took the feeding tubes off, and she ate. They took the breathing tube off, and she was still breathing,” her father said. “Her doctor couldn’t believe it.”

Her body’s response to the exposed nerves was to create an excess of spinal fluid, which built up in her brain. Doctors inserted a shunt into her head that still drains fluid from her head down to her belly.