A last look back at '07

The year started with a column about one bully (former Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong) and ended with a column about bullying in the public schools.

One of the high points of the year was the column I wrote about my outrage over offensive T-shirts being sold at Wal-Mart. The cheapo T's said: "Some call it stalking, I call it love."

In response, Wal-Mart pulled the T-shirts from all of its stores.

The low point was my apology to the three players wrongly accused in the Duke lacrosse case. I'm glad I apologized for my earliest columns; I'm sorry I had to.

My mailbox has gotten lonely since that case fell off the front page.

But at the end of every year, I like to update a few of the stories that appeared in this column.

So as we get ready to plunge into '08, a few follow-ups from '07. This year, for some reason, all of them involve sick kids.

Ethan Benoit, the Zebulon baby whose family is struggling to cope with his rare and ultimately deadly birth defects, celebrated his first birthday and his first Christmas at home.

"We gave him a bath and put a party hat on his head," said his mother, Sheree Benoit.

Doctors hadn't held out much hope that Ethan would live to see his birthday, or the holidays.

Then again, the doctors haven't held out much hope for him from the start.

Ethan just keeps defying the odds.

Asher McGirt, the Raleigh eighth-grader whose lungs were nearly destroyed by a virulent form of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, received the new set of lungs he'd been waiting for -- and has made dramatic strides.

He and his mom returned to Raleigh from Texas, where he had the transplant surgery, in late October. According to his mother, Janet McGirt, Asher is back to school full time.

I've heard he has learned how to dance.

Sherilyn Adams, the 16-year-old who died last month following a long battle with a rare form of leukemia, left a special Christmas gift for her mother and siblings.

Unbeknownst to them, Sherilyn had given a neighbor detailed instructions for the construction of Build-a-Bear animals for her two sisters, her brother and her mom. She was too weak to make the bears herself, but she wrote each of them a personal note. The last line of each was the same: "I can't wait to see you in Heaven."

Finally, a personal note.

Last April, a few days before my family and I were supposed to go on a trip to Puerto Rico for spring break, my husband was scheduled for emergency open heart surgery. (His identical twin had had the same surgery a week and a half earlier.)

Four bypasses later, he was in ICU, and I was convinced 2007 would go down in the books as one of our worst ever.

I was wrong.

My husband bounced back from his surgery, lost 40 pounds and adopted a new lifestyle -- something I'd never dreamed possible. I consider it a gift every time he goes to the gym.

So here's to the end of '07 and the dawning of '08.

Happy New Year.