Resiliency in the face of a life-changing medical diagnosis takes courage, but as one Medina teenager demonstrated, it perhaps takes a sense of humor as well.

That is one of the messages Lyn Harter, a professor at Ohio University, wants to come across in a documentary she produced, “The Art of the Possible,” which follows five families’ struggles with a cancer diagnosis and treatment.

Logan Boyd, a senior at Medina High School, lost his three-year battle with bone cancer in March at the age of 18. His legacy is captured in Harter’s film, which will be screened at the Medina Center for Performing Arts on Wednesday.

Video diary

Harter’s crew filmed each patient receiving treatment, and she gave all of the families a high-definition camera to film a “video diary” of their daily experiences.

“It was actually very difficult to do,” said Logan’s mother, Michele Boyd, of her family’s experience shooting for the film over the course of 10 months. “Not everyone is ready for reality TV. With a teenager going through medical treatment, it’s difficult anyways,” she said.

“(The footage) was the plain and ugly truth.”

The family documented Logan as the cancer spread from his legs to his ribs and lungs.

The most difficult part, Boyd said, was “when you had all these scans and the doctor tells you (the treatments) aren’t working.”

But Boyd said they never stopped hoping for better news.

“You never know if the next drug could be the one to work,” she said. “You have to keep being hopeful.”

Boyd said living through a cancer diagnosis is “about quality of life for these kids. You have to keep living and hoping for the best.”

That is what she and her family tried to do for Logan.

“There’s one part in the movie that shows Logan zip-lining in January, and he passed in March,” Boyd said.

She described Logan as “very smart, very funny, with a quirky sense of humor,” and a “talented pianist and percussionist.”

“He played a lot of pranks and stuff like that. He had a lot of friends,” she said.

Normalcy

Logan’s friends tried to keep things “normal” for him.

Sean Firlotte, a senior at Medina High, said his relationship with Logan did not change “whatsoever” after he got his diagnosis.

“We still did the same stuff,” Firlotte said, like hang out at the Fox Meadows Country Club and play video games. Firlotte said using the personal camera was fun. “We’d goof around with it; we’d take it everywhere.”

“We definitely did a lot of things we shouldn’t have just to keep it normal,” added Tyler Fogel, a Medina High graduate and Logan’s friend.

However, it was not always easy to cope with Logan’s illness. Another friend and Medina High graduate, Matthew Barnhart, said the movie was “just another way of holding onto Logan.”

“For me, (Logan) was always just a best friend, Barnhart said. Whenever I needed to talk about something he was there. There was always an open door.”

Logan, who returned to school full time for the fall semester his senior year, was planning his senior prank with his friends, although he never got the chance to pull it off.

“They were going to bring three chickens into school and release them after the bell rang,” Boyd said. They were going to paint the chickens number one, two and four.

“(School officials) would have spent all day looking for chicken number three,” Boyd said, laughing.

Film’s goal

Harter, who studies doctor-patient relationships, said the goal of the film was not only to demonstrate “how patients and families can be resilient in dealing with cancer, its treatment and aftermath,” but also how “health care providers can be responsive to patients’ uncertainties, fears and life circumstances while officiating care.”

The common link between the five families featured in the film is that all received treatment at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which Harter thought demonstrated excellent family-centered care.

After seeing the patient relations in Houston, Harter said she believed capturing the families’ experiences would be a great opportunity to do “storytelling through film.”

All five patients had the same type of cancer as Logan, osteosarcoma.

Harter said the Boyds had a very important story to share in the film.

“The Boyds have a kind of grace that allows them to be optimistic and realistic at the same time,” Harter said. “They’re a humorous people. They invite the audience into what they call ‘cancer-land’… but they don’t lose their sense of humor.

“That’s what they have to teach us.”

Contact Kaitlin Bushinski at (330) 721-4050 or kbushinski@ohio.net.