Mother helps 11 children through adversity

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Ann Yurcek frequently refers to herself as ``just a mom.''

Talk about understatement.

``Just a mom'' was a mother of five who suddenly found herself with Becca, a critically ill newborn, her sixth child, whom doctors did not think would survive. She was a woman who became so consumed by Becca's care that she was able to advise medical experts about it.

She also was a woman who encouraged her husband, Jim, to work through his depression, which he did by returning to college and eventually becoming a surgeon.

``Just a mom,'' along with her husband, who are both white, also took in six black special-needs siblings -- just as she and her husband and their six other children were leaving Minnesota for a new life in the Kalamazoo area. A year later, the couple adopted five of the children.

Yurcek, 48, who has called the Portage area home since she and her brood of 11 moved here nine years ago, has written about her experiences -- nothing short of an adventure -- in a 480-page book titled ``Tiny Titan'' (Better Endings New Beginnings, $15.95), being released Thursday. The book makes it clear how much more than ``just a mom'' she has been.

The title of her book comes from a name that one of Becca's doctors bestowed on her, a name that came from a tiny ear tube the now 16-year-old girl started wearing two years ago.

Becca was born with weak heart muscles and several other complications and couldn't leave the hospital until she was almost 4 months old. She had to be fed intravenously and didn't eat by mouth until she was 8. Becca can now eat by mouth but, because she chokes easily, also receives nutrition through a feeding tube.

The little girl was eventually diagnosed with a severe form of Noonan syndrome, a condition that is often associated with congenital heart disease and short stature. She's the size of a 9-year-old, wears leg braces, reads at a fifth-grade level, and is taught three to four hours a week at home by a Portage Public Schools teacher.

Financial, emotional woes

When Becca was born into the Yurcek family, her father was supporting all eight of them on his carpet-store manager's salary of $25,000. Her medical bills have surpassed $1 million, $200,000 of that cost coming in the first year alone for at-home nursing care.

Because of insurance problems, Becca eventually had to be covered by Medicaid and now receives her services through a Michigan program called Children's Special Health Care. Still, the family has about $500 to $1,000 a month in out-of-pocket medical costs. And a nutritional formula that they hope to get for Becca, which costs $3,000 a month, would not be covered by insurance, Ann Yurcek said.

In her book, Yurcek writes about how Becca's illness and resulting medical care pushed the family closer to poverty and created stresses in her marriage -- especially when her husband slumped into depression.

Jim Yurcek, 49, credits his wife with inspiring him to work through his depression and become more active in helping manage his family. Although he already had a college degree in business, he returned to college in the fall of 1991, when he was 35, initially intending to become a physical therapist.

But along the way his plans changed and he decided to go to medical school. He finished up in 1997, when he was 40, and was accepted into a five-year residency in general surgery at Michigan State University/Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies, which brought the Yurceks to this area. He now works as a self-employed surgeon on assignments throughout the country.

Ann Yurcek recounts in her book how, for the seven years her husband attended school, the children pitched in to work a newspaper route and how she bargain-hunted for food and clothes and sewed clothing as well. She said she still bargain-hunts and shops with coupons.

Before Jim Yurcek became a surgeon, the family qualified for food stamps and frequently benefited from the charity of others: a supportive church, for example, and the anonymous ``Santa'' or ``Santas'' who one Christmas Eve left the family trash bags filled with Christmas toys for Becca's first Christmas.

``The second family (of adopted children) came about,'' Ann Yurcek said, ``because I made a promise'' to give something back after receiving so much support for Becca and the rest of the family. ``We had a lot to make up for, we felt.''

`We all went through it'

Last Wednesday, six of the Yurcek children -- Becca; Shay, 21; Ian, 23; Portage Central High junior Deangelo, 17; sophomore Delonzo, 16; and seventh-grader Detamara, 13 -- gathered with their parents in their Texas Township family room to discuss their family's experiences and their mother's book.

The eldest daughter, Kristy, 27, works for 3M in Texas; the eldest son, Nathan, 25, just married last month and now lives in his grandparents' home in Minnesota; D.J., 23, the eldest adopted child, lives on his own in Kalamazoo; Marissa, 21, lives in Los Angeles, where she is pursuing an acting career; and Matthew, 19, and Ian, live in the family's former home in Portage.

Ian is now a U.S. Marine and returned last March from Iraq. He said his mother's book ``was inspirational ... because we all went through it.

``The Marine Corps was the easy part of my life,'' he said.

His mother's book talks about the struggles she and her husband faced in trying to mix two families and deal with adopted children who were emotionally and mentally damaged by mothers who drank alcohol while pregnant.

One child -- the adopted children's youngest sibling -- moved to Michigan with the Yurceks, who intended to adopt him, but he was returned to Minnesota's foster-care system because of sexually inappropriate behavior. Ann Yurcek said she heard he was eventually adopted by a black couple.

She writes about how the newly adopted children at first hoarded food and seemed to gorge themselves because of their history of food deprivation and near starvation. Delonzo, for example, would steal food and stuff it into his pillowcase and bedclothes, then deny he had taken food even though his bed was full of crumbs. And one time the family had to visit a local doctor to get treatment for the young boy when he became severely constipated after eating a whole box of dried Quaker Oats oatmeal.

There were also episodes of violence, including one in which an angry Shay pushed her mother down a flight of stairs, causing her to break her right arm. Ann Yurcek, though, decided to persevere and had the girl temporarily placed in residential treatment.

Shay and her brother, Delonzo, both said the book depicts them and the other adopted children in their early years as much different from who they are now.

For the past four years, the whole family has gotten involved in Backpacks for Kids, a project they started that has provided backpacks filled with school supplies to needy area children. Their project won the top prize in the Disney Adventure All-Stars Volunteer Program for Kids and a 2005 profile in People magazine.

`An incredible lady'

Peggy Malnight, a family friend who met Ann Yurcek six years ago through Advocacy Services for Kids, a support group for parents of emotionally impaired children, said Yurcek's sharing of her experiences will greatly help others in similar situations. Malnight herself has a 35-year-old son and is an adoptive mother to a black 14-year-old boy whose mother consumed alcohol during her pregnancy.

``She's an incredible lady,'' Malnight said of Yurcek. ``I've taken on one child and she's taken on five. One is an incredible load, and five is just (unbelievable). Thank God there are people like her because those (children) would have been lost. But now they stand a chance of having a good life and being contributing members of society. Without her, that wouldn't have happened.''

In her typically humble way, Ann Yurcek said she just did what she had to do to raise her 11 children.

``You have to do things you never believed you could do, and you have no choice. You're capable of anything that you have to do for your kids.''

And in the midst of all the challenges, she remains grateful.

``I get to hug a miracle every day,'' she said of her daughter, Becca. ``How many people are that lucky? And you don't take them (the miracles) for granted -- every milestone, every moment -- they're not taken for granted.''