Mirror images

Their baby pictures are almost identical. Dave and Nick Mlady share the same birthday and the resemblance starts around their eyes.

The father's slicked-back hair has turned silver along with his goatee. His face is tan. Prolonged exposure to sunlight - even while raking leaves in November - makes Dave look as if he had just chartered a fishing boat off the Florida coast. That's a side effect from the medication. Before every Naperville North game, the son would scan the crowd for his mirror image. His father and extended family would always sit near the 50-yard line. They would exchange a wave or a thumbs-up. It was a small yet relaxing gesture.

"It's really nice just seeing him there. One of my biggest fears was one day looking up there and him not being in the stands when I'm playing," Nick said. "I just enjoyed trying to absorb every second of it and every moment."

Right around the time Nick first started playing football, Dave was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. One day Dave woke up, got in the shower and noticed lumps all over his body. Cancer had invaded nearly 97 percent of his bone marrow. The husband to Linda and father of three was told he had six months to live.

"They said, 'Go home. Enjoy your family.' And that was it," Linda recalled. "And we're like, 'You're kidding.'"

That was October 2000.

Today Dave will celebrate his 46th birthday and Nick will turn 18. They will be flying back from Boston after a recruiting trip to watch Harvard play Yale for the 125th time. It's a New England tradition revered by the Kennedy dynasty and known in some patrician circles as "The Game." For the Mladys, it's a nice consolation prize.

The family had cleared out their schedule for another long playoff run by the Huskies. Maybe - if Marist hadn't upset North in the second round more than two weeks ago - they would be anticipating a return trip to Champaign and another Class 8A state title. But then again, Dave never thought he would be able to see his oldest son graduate from high school.

Nick has rewritten the North record book, breaking the all-time rushing mark once set by future NFL running back Chris Brown. This season alone the 6-foot 1-inch, 210-pound senior running back accounted for 1,681 all-purpose yards and 18 touchdowns.

First Nick filled up Dave's spiral notebook. From his perch in the bleachers, the father charted every play. He detailed blocking assignments and wrote descriptions like: Six-yard run right up the middle (NO PROBLEM).

It was a document to help his son remember the experience.

All the pills messed with Dave's memory. Lost, he would call his wife. At one point he drove to Mill Street Elementary School for Nick's wrestling match but forgot his son went to Jefferson Junior High School.

Dave still retains the stocky, compact build of a former Lemont High School wrestler. To an outsider, he seems healthy. He has endured three rounds of chemotherapy that decimated his immune system. He needs antibiotics just to fight off mosquito bites that can turn into huge welts. He says he feels good.

"It's something that's never gonna go away," Dave said. "It comes back 3 percent or 4 percent a little more."

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic and the University of Chicago Medical Center never had an explanation for why this happened. Linda floated her own theories as to how her husband has beaten the odds.

"We joke about things," Linda said. "We try to laugh about it (and) we try to keep looking forward. (It's like): 'If you lose your hair, I'll shine your head.'"

Dave and Linda own Mlady Maintenance and work out of their Naperville home. That only added to the urgency. Linda had to worry about running a business by herself and caring for two younger children - Kristin and Kevin, who are now 13 and 12 years old. The family stayed positive.

"It works, 'cause otherwise you cry a lot," Linda said. "Because I'm thinking, 'Oh, don't leave me with all this.'"

Even if there's no clear reason for the cause, there's no denying the effect. The oldest son had to mature quicker.

"I think when they first told me I was kind of at the age where I understood the concept but I didn't really know what it meant," Nick said. "I understood (that life is) on the line and everything but I didn't know where (it) went from there, what it meant. I had a lot of questions (that) needed to be answered. I got the main gist of it but there (were) so many things that confused me."

Nick became a hard worker for the maintenance company. He showed a good sense of humor. This was the kind of kid who dressed up as a French maid last month for Halloween.

The kids refused to let their father hide out in bed when he felt sick. They measured everything one season at a time, whether it was Dave coaching youth soccer or Nick emerging as a serious football prospect.

"It's a blessing," Dave said.

The recruiting process has formed another bonding ritual. Nick - who carries a 3.9 grade-point average on a 4.0 scale - is weighing an offer from Navy and has drawn interest from several Ivy League schools. Earlier this month Dave and Nick sat together in DeKalb and watched through the fog as Central Michigan beat Northern Illinois in overtime.

All this has been more than any leukemia patient could have asked for. Dave's father Richard was diagnosed with lung cancer and given a similar six-month window. They underwent chemotherapy together, but Richard lived one day past that estimate. Richard, one of Nick's biggest football fans, died two years ago on Nov. 16, 2006.

The Mladys' living room is filled with fish caught from lakes deep within Minnesota's Chippewa National Forest. Linda joked about the clutter on the wall, but the fish are a reminder of a father-son Memorial Day tradition that wasn't supposed to be.

The family that has gone through so much will soon need to find another way to cope. Nick could be leaving the house for one of the world's most prestigious universities. As Dave said, "It's gonna be lonely."