Canzano: A gift, a kid, and a lesson for us all

"How is this not nationwide news?"

Jan 06, 2026

Reegan Dean is seven years old. He’s in the second grade. He loves animals. His elementary school teachers in North Bend would tell you he’s smart and kind. And his mother said on Tuesday, “He’ll stick up for other kids until his face is blue.”

Reegan is a huge University of Oregon football fan.

On Friday, he’ll watch his Ducks play Indiana in a semifinal of the College Football Playoff from his bed in the pediatric unit of the Legacy Oregon Burn Center.

Life or death game?

Biggest game of the year?

Tell me how big the stakes feel for the two teams, then tell Reegan’s parents. Their son was burned so badly on Christmas afternoon that doctors said the third-degree burns cut deep into the muscles on his chest, arms, and legs.

His hands blistered.

He burned his toes, too.

Surgeons worked for nearly three hours sewing skin grafts into place. The pain is excruciating at times. Somehow, the kid keeps smiling from that hospital bed.

Reegan has two older sisters, ages 10 and 13. His mother, Hayley, recently got a promotion at her medical records job, making a couple of bucks more an hour. His dad, Seth, the family breadwinner, works to help maintain logging roads in Coos Bay.

Money has been tight.

Said Dad: “We didn’t do a fancy Christmas.”

Among the gifts for all three kids was something called a Needoh Nice Cube. It’s a squishy sensory toy. It’s marketed as “Fun to squeeze, squish, and stretch in your hands.” It comes in a variety of bright colors.

Retail price: $12.

Reegan was thrilled to get one for Christmas. So were his sisters. They noted that holding the cube close to their bare skin made it warmer and more pliable. Some social media accounts boast a “hack” in which an influencer used a microwave to warm it up.

“We specifically told the kids nope,” Hayley said. “We literally said, ‘Kids, don’t do that.’”

The bottom of the box includes a warning not to microwave the toy, albeit in very tiny letters. And right about here is where you should stop reading and remind the children in your household to never, ever microwave a toy.

Then, remind them twice.

Decide for yourself whether you blame the toy manufacturer, the social media influencers, or the curiosity of a 7-year-old for what happened midday on Christmas in the Dean household. But Reegan decided to take the cube to the kitchen and place it in the microwave for 60 seconds.

His parents heard a curdling scream down the hallway.

I’ll let his father explain.

“It wasn’t the normal scream a kid lets out,” Seth told me. “It was very different. I rushed into the hallway, and he had panic on his face and just looked at me and said, ‘Dad, get this off me! It’s burning my skin. Get it off me!’

“At first, I didn’t see it. It was a clear gel stuck to his skin. He’d pulled it out of the microwave and squeezed it, and it exploded all over him. He was freaking out and panicking, and it was hurting him so bad.”

Seth carried his son into the bathtub and rinsed his chest and arms with water. Then, Reegan’s parents took him to the car and sped to the emergency room. Later, they were transported to Portland, where they’ve been posted up in one of the 16 patient rooms at the burn center ever since.

Life has taken a turn for the family. It’s filled with doctors, nurses, procedures, and medication. Meals are consumed on the go. Family laundry is done at a laundromat. The family’s New Year’s Eve celebration happened in a hospital ward.

“I’ve been Googling this Needoh thing,” Seth said. “The first thing that comes up is a story about another 7-year-old girl who did the same thing. She was in a coma for three months. How is this not nationwide news?”

The images of Reegan’s injuries are jarring.

Warning.

The photos are not for everyone. Scroll past if you don’t want to see them. But his family felt it was important to provide a full, authentic context of their son’s injuries so that others may understand how dangerous the burns are.

Photos provided by the family of Reegan Dean.

The family doesn’t have an attorney. They say they’re not interested in litigation. They’ve decided to use the accident as an opportunity to teach their kids about responsibility, consequences, and accountability.

“Our primary goal is to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else,” his Mom said.

The skin on Reegan’s hands is regrowing. Doctors are hopeful that the grafts on his chest and arm heal properly. His parents walk around the burn unit and exchange stories, and come away thinking, “Our son is one of the lucky ones.”

I’ve written several human interest columns that outline the struggles of regular folks. On Christmas Day, I filed a column about Paul Cormier, an 81-year-old reader who served as one of the unofficial copy editors of this publication.

He had terminal cancer.

It was his final Christmas.

I loved sharing Paul’s story with readers. It provided a healthy perspective. I loved it even more that so many readers wrote notes in the comment section of that piece, adding their own experiences and talking about the warmth and joy (and profound sense of loss) that holiday gatherings sometimes bring.

Paul’s daughter sent me a note on Monday: “Dad died early this morning. Thank you for giving him such a sense of purpose.”

I miss the guy.

I write about coaches and athletes. I sit in a press box at games. I frequently find myself looking out the window at college football games and peering down at the families who buy tickets and sit at the stadium. I remember tossing a Nerf football in the parking lot as a kid, and being thrilled to be at the stadium or watch a game on TV.

Sports are a distraction.

But humankind provides the perspective.

It brings us back to that Oregon Duck fan with the third-degree burns. There is a pile of uncovered medical expenses. Mom and Dad have lost wages and missed time at work. A family member started a GoFundMe to help defray the costs. Reegan’s family is hoping to get home as soon as possible. Amid that, there’s this Oregon-Indiana football game on Friday in Atlanta.

Life or death?

Big stakes?

I don’t know about you, but I’ll frame it a little differently knowing that a 7-year-old boy is watching it from the bed in that burn unit.

“He’s so, so lucky,” his mother said.