Youngest survivor of bombing wants lung surgery

OKLAHOMA CITY -- P.J. Allen wants more than anything to swim, to wrestle with his friends without worrying the tracheotomy in his throat will get dislodged.

The 9-year-old, one of the youngest survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing, is hoping a specialist in Cincinnati can fix his scorched lungs so he can act more like a normal kid.

P.J. has long looked forward to his 10th birthday -- doctors have been telling him for years that he'd have to wait about that long to get his tracheotomy removed. His grandmother says one of the best pulmonary pediatric specialists in the country is willing to remove the tube in the little boy's throat.

But there's a holdup.

A foundation set up to help bombing survivors with medical expenses isn't willing to pay for the surgery in Cincinnati unless four Oklahoma surgeons peer inside the boy's lungs and decide they can't help him, said his grandmother, Deloris Watson. The foundation also wants referrals from two other doctors.

His grandmother refuses to put him through that.

"That generates scar tissue," she said Thursday. "After four surgeries, his lungs are going to be in worse shape than they are now."

Officials who dole out the money in the survivors' fund would not comment on P.J.'s case because of privacy laws. But they said they must make sure other avenues of funding have been exhausted and that survivors seeking money for medical treatment have been referred to specialists by their primary doctors.

P.J.'s primary doctor has not recommended the surgery.

Battling for her grandson

Watson isn't about to give up. It's not the first battle she's fought for P.J.

She is fighting the Oklahoma City school district to get a teacher sent to their home. P.J. can't go to school because his lungs are too prone to infection.

As they await a hearing on the issue, about a dozen volunteers -- mostly retired teachers -- teach P.J. reading, writing, math, art and music.

P.J. was 18 months old when his daycare center at the federal building in downtown Oklahoma City was blown up by a truck bomb. He was one of six children to survive.

The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children.

P.J.'s breathing is raspy, and he sometimes has to give himself saline treatments to clear his airway.

Springtime is the roughest for him because of allergies. This Easter will be the second one he's spent outside a hospital since his lungs were burned, Watson said.

On Saturday, the eighth anniversary of the bombing, Watson doesn't plan to bring P.J. to a ceremony at the memorial. Instead, she'll probably buy him ice cream and let him spend the day playing.

"People see him and come up to him and cry," she said.

Watson says it was easier when he didn't understand what happened to him April 19, 1995, when he knew a "bad man" hurt him but didn't know the name Timothy McVeigh.

"He realizes this year all the hassles he's had because of it," Watson said. "I was hoping that was something he would never have to discover."