• By ELLYN COUVILLION
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 4, 2009 - Page: 1D

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GONZALES — Grant Theriot, 13, sat patiently at his home recently, while his 6-year-old sister, Hannah, rearranged his bangs and fiddled with his hair.

His patient endurance might not be typical of a teenage brother, but, then, the last few years of his and Hannah’s lives have not been typical either.

In 2006, Hannah received a bone-marrow transplant, following chemotherapy, at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., to treat a rare genetic disorder of the immune system, called chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis (CMC), said her parents, Kevin and Kristen Theriot.

The transplant procedure and a quarantine period afterward meant that the Theriot family — mom and daughter in North Carolina and dad and son in Gonzales — were apart for much of two years, except for monthly and summertime visits and holidays.

“I was always worried here when I was down here,” Grant said. “I wanted to quit school. I didn’t want her to die. I wanted to be with her the whole time.”

The siblings of children who are ill face their own unique pressures.

In 2006, after Hannah’s transplant procedure, Grant joined a national organization, SuperSibs!, which is designed to help siblings through difficult times when their sister or brother is seriously ill.

Grant gets special monthly gifts and cards from the organization. He once got a trophy that reads “You’re a Great Sibling,” he said.

“Everyone sends the sick child something,” said Hannah and Grant’s mother, Kristen, adding that this program makes sure the well ones are not left out.

Inevitably, said their father, Kevin, the sibling of a sick child doesn’t get as much of their parents’ attention as their brother or sister despite the best intentions.

“We tried, we went out of our way,” to provide special times for Grant, Kevin said.

“Some days, we’d go to the skate park in North Carolina,” added Grant, who will be in the eighth grade at Central Middle School in Gonzales this year.

SuperSibs!, a nonprofit organization based in Illinois, provides “mailed comfort and care services” to children between the ages of 4 to 18, who are siblings of children with cancer.