11/17/2025
Deep in the Oklahoma panhandle, Keyes sits like a quiet promise on Highway 56. Population: under 200. Amenities: a flower shop that refuses to wilt, two churches still calling folks to Sunday service, and a bar that finally shuttered its doors. No grocery store anymore. No traffic lights. Just wide sky, stubborn dirt, and people who know your name—and your struggles—before you even ask.
This is home for Doug Schwartz Sr., 51, who works inside the Boise City, Oklahoma weigh station. And for Kayla Burtram, 40, a dialysis nurse who makes the long drive to Amarillo for her shifts. They’ve been married 18 years, but their love story started with a simple cup of coffee.
Kayla was the regular—popping into the Elkhart, Kansas convenience store before work. Doug was behind the counter, pouring refills and cracking quiet jokes. Two months of small talk turned into a lifetime. They chased jobs through Amarillo, New Mexico prisons (where Doug worked corrections), and a brief, miserable stint in Tennessee before circling back to Keyes. They moved into Kayla’s grandmother’s house and never left. “We didn’t really like anywhere else anymore,” Doug says with a shrug. Twelve years later, it still feels right.
They have two kids. Jennifer, almost 21, is finding her way into adulthood. And then there’s DJ, 14—the heart of this story.
As a baby, DJ was perfect. “He slept through the entire night,” Kayla remembers, smiling. “Nothing was ever really off with him.” That changed at age seven, right after a nasty case of strep throat. One ordinary afternoon, he walked up to Kayla in the kitchen. Face drained of color. Voice small:
“I don’t feel good.”
Then he collapsed—eyes wide open, but unreachable. Paramedics arrived, checked his ears, sent them home. An hour later: violent vomiting. Another ambulance. Heart monitors. Halter monitors. Nothing. But the episodes kept coming. Sudden pallor. Eyes locked to one side. Body limp, yet conscious. These weren’t the dramatic, convulsing seizures you see on TV. These were silent, invisible thefts—moments when DJ just… left.
For three years, no medical professional witnessed a single one. Diagnoses floated like rumors: PANDAS (a rare post-strep neurological reaction), Panayiotopoulos syndrome (occipital-lobe seizures), heart issues. Google became a nightly torment. “You search symptoms and end up at brain cancer in three clicks,” Kayla says. “As a parent, it’s horrible,” Doug adds. “You’re driving 80 down a back road, he seizes, and you’ve got seconds to decide: pull over or floor it to the hospital?”
They bounced between the tiny clinic in Boise City and ERs in Amarillo. Finally, a connection led them to Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth—a world-class pediatric neurology team. An epileptologist confirmed it: epilepsy. The seizures arrived like clockwork—every four to six weeks. A week before each one, DJ turned angry, irritable, snapping at his sister. “He’d become a little turd,” Kayla admits with a laugh. “We’d know: here it comes.”
School suffered. Grades dropped. Homework was war. Ten math problems could take four hours. He’d learn it, forget it, learn it again. An IEP helped, but not enough. Then, in February 2024, the storm broke: 11 seizures in 12 hours. They admitted DJ for a five-day EEG study—off all meds. The result? Full-blown grand mal seizures, captured on camera for the first time.
Advanced imaging—MEG scans, PET, high-res MRIs—revealed the truth. Two problems:
Cortical dysplasia in the right occipital lobe—the seizure generator.
A 7x8mm glioma buried deep in the left thalamus. Benign for now. No blood flow. No growth. But inoperable. “Too deep,” the surgeons said. “Remove it, and he loses quality of life. We monitor.”
The dysplasia? That they could fix.
August 19, 2024: Awake craniotomy. DJ was 13. Surgeons removed a piece of skull, used a robot-guided MRI to navigate, resected the malformed tissue, replaced the bone with titanium plates and screws. They warned: 4–7 days in hospital, maybe weeks. DJ walked out in two.
His last seizure? August 7, 2024—twelve days before surgery. Fourteen months seizure-free. Off all anti-epileptic meds since January 2025. The glioma? Stable. MRIs every six months now (down from three). Doctors say it appears slightly smaller—not growing, not enhancing, not cancerous. They’ve followed similar tumors for 20 years without change. Worst case? Growth, pressure, malignancy. But for now: quiet.
There are trade-offs. DJ lost vision in the lower-left quadrant of his left eye. “It’s not black,” Kayla explains. “His brain just… skips it. Fills in the blanks.” At first, he walked into walls. Now? He compensates. Runs. Plays. Adapts.
And school? A revelation. From failing grades and endless homework battles to A/B honor roll—twice in one year. He retains now. Focuses. They added ADHD medication—common in epilepsy kids, the doctor said. “The surgery took noise out of his brain,” Doug explains. “He can hear himself think.”
DJ used to cry if a fish got hurt. Now? He cracks seizure jokes. Tells classmates about his “robot brain.” He’s tougher. Funnier. More present.
The town helped. When DJ returned from surgery, his entire grade school class had made cards—dozens of them, stuffed in a gift bag. The school nurse trained his class: “One kid runs for help. One stays and talks to him. Keep him safe.” In a place with no grocery store, that’s community.
This isn’t Hollywood. No swelling music. No slow-motion hero walks. Just a mom googling at 2 a.m. A dad praying in a Fort Worth waiting room. A boy learning long division for the first time without tears. Everyday theater—raw, real, Midwest.
To everyone else living proud along Highway 56—from the wheat fields of Texas County to the elevators in Ho**er, from the diners in Guymon to the porches in Keyes—we see you. We are you. The flat horizons. The long drives. The small wins. The big fears. This is our script. No voting block. No agenda. Just people—trying to have a human experience, one seizure-free month at a time.
Keys to Resilience: The Schwartz Family's Fight for DJ
By Stephanie Releford
Gazette 56
(Actual Small Town Media is developing a web series following DJ and a handful of other Highway 56 neighbors through their real-life chapters. Binge-watch drop slated for late 2026—no Hollywood gloss, just the raw Midwest we’ve got.)
