VIDEO CHAMPIONS
Two boys bonded over a love of gaming and their battle with cancer
With many people stuck self-isolating amid the COVID-19 pandemic, video games have become a welcome distraction for some. For others, like Zac Carter, they’re something more like a lifeline.
Zac’s mother, Amy, recalls a day in December 2017, when he was 12. Diagnosed with two separate cancers before his 11th birthday, Zac was being wheeled to the recovery room after yet another surgery. And just like after every other surgery, his parents, Amy and Jeff, knew what he would want to do rights afterward: play video games.
They had his Nintendo Switch in hand — he had been playing it right up until the anesthesia kicked in. Coming out of the surgery, he was at it again. He even declined anti-anxiety medication before the operation, because he found it made him too groggy to play.
“It helps me take my mind off of everything. It does distract me a lot,” says Zac, at home in southwest Virginia during a recent video interview. His mother says she can tell how much it helps him as she watches him play.
“I’ve seen him sit and play videos games with gritted teeth and a clenched jaw,” Amy says. “I just knew, as a nurse and as his mother, that he was hurting and he was just playing his game to distract himself.”
Gaming has given Zac more than a distraction in his cancer fight. In a way, it’s also given him his best friend. Zac was playing his Switch in the recovery room at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., a few years ago, when eight-year-old Carson Dimsdale was wheeled in. The two boys’ parents had just met in the waiting room, a meeting Amy says she believes was orchestrated by God. The two boys bonded over gaming and a shared sense of living with so much adversity at such a young age.
At his home in Oklahoma, Carson beams when discussing his friend Zac.
“I feel like we’re brothers from two different families,” Carson, now 10, said in a video interview. The feeling is mutual, Zac says.
“He’s really nice and I love playing games with him,” Zac says, sitting next to his parents in Memphis,
adding later he thinks of Carson as his little brother.
“We call him our other son,” Zac’s mother says about Carson. “They’re best buds,” says Carson’s father, Will.
Two years apart in age and living across the country from one another, the friends would seem to make an unlikely pair. Carson is gregarious and outspoken, while Zac has a more shy, laid-back style, filled with easy smiles and a keen sense of humour. But congruences, beyond a love of gaming, do emerge. Most evidently, the boys have a strength and determination as they battle cancer, a spirit that belies their age as elementary and middle school kids.
Zac’s mother recalls a story from when he was fighting tumours in his legs that puts her son’s mentality in perspective.
“They had hoped to save his legs, they were going to do limb-salvage treatment. But during the first block of treatment, the tumour grew and another tumour showed up in his other leg,” she says. “They felt the best option at that point was amputation.”
After assessing all their options, the family decided to proceed with the amputation. After informing the doctor, the family was leaving the appointment when Amy remembered her son looking up at her and her husband.
“At least it’s not my arms, so I can still play my video games,” she recalled Zac saying. Today, his prosthetic legs are adorned with characters from the worlds of Mario and Pokémon.
For the families, games have been a way to keep the boys connected socially. Even before the pandemic began, social distancing was a common practice given their compromised immune systems. Carson was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in 2016 and has been fighting it ever since. There have been the several rounds of chemotherapy, more treatments, infusions and cancer recurrences. He has spent the past three Christmases at St. Jude.
Their joy is sparked by gaming. Once, talking about their favourite games (in no particular order: Animal Crossing, Roblox, Minecraft, Super Mario Maker, Smash Bros., Zelda, Pokémon, Fortnite) the two boys lit up and spoke animatedly about strategies, favourite characters, and how they support each other. They often play together for stretches of six hours or so.
Of course, this being video games, it sometimes gets competitive.
“I’m better at Mario Maker, he’s better at Smash Bros.,” Carson says diplomatically. “I do like winning,” Zac admits.
But the two friends mentioned a penchant for games where they work together.
“There have been a couple of levels in some games that I haven’t been able to get through and then Zac just teaches me a trick and — boom! — I was able to get through it,” Carson says.
While Zac is in Memphis receiving treatment, Carson is in Oklahoma, where he has been forced to miss appointments for treatment on account of the pandemic. The Dimsdales are scheduled to go to the hospital in a couple weeks, while Zac is there, though the boys won’t be able to play together in person, due to social distancing protocols. They’ve already got a workaround in place there, though.
“Whenever me and my friend play video games, we like to Facetime each other as well,” Carson says, which he hopes might help bridge the disappointment of missing his usual routine in Memphis with Zac.
“It’s the only real interaction he usually has is Facetime-ing and video games,” Carson’s father says.
The video games, combined with video calls, have expanded the social lives of the two boys, as each has met the other’s hometown friends and befriended them as well.
While they are waiting, Carson, like many during this quarantine-era, has taken to backyard sports — in his case, soccer — and gardening. He recently established a backyard garden.
“The way the pandemic is going, we are kind of used to living this way anyways,” says Carson’s mother, Kori. “The online gaming and staying isolated was normal for us because of Carson’s immune system being so low.”
Amy agreed social distancing and other new realities of everyday life are old hat for her and her family. The biggest change to their daily lives, she says — aside from travel difficulties and not seeing as many kids playing together in the hospital — is that they are not able to go out into the local Memphis community to grab Zac’s favourite foods: pizza and chicken.
“It’s a little bit harder not seeing people face to face,” Zac says. But there are still moments of happiness in the boys’ daily routine.
“When they’re playing, there’s always a lot of laughter, lots of joy,” Zac’s mother says.
As the days progress, both boys are leaning into that joy as they continue to fight. Carson, Zac and their families says they are going forward buoyed by faith and gratitude.
“It’s a choice if we look for things to be thankful for and look for the good, and some days you have to look really, really hard but they’re there,” Amy says. “If we focus on our blessings and the things we have to be thankful for, it makes a big difference. We are still blessed we’re all together.”
“Just be positive and distract yourself,” Zac says of his current mindset. “I like playing games,” he concludes with a laugh.
His friend echoes that message. “Never give up hope and no matter what, always believe in God and he will help you get through anything,” Carson says about how he has stayed strong.
Animal Crossing had been their most anticipated game for months. They are currently looking for their next target, even as they continue their real-life fight with unwavering determination.
“I’ll never give up and surrender,” Carson says.
Never give up hope and no matter what, always believe in God and he will help you get through anything.