The Survivor
Page Two
Growing pains. That’s what the doctor called the ache above Huguette’s knee. The throbbing persisted, sapping the 15-year-old’s energy and limiting her movement, but still her doctor seemed unconcerned. After eight months, when Huguette no longer could lift her leg, her parents consulted a second physician. He diagnosed her “growing pains” as cancer: Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare and deadly cancer of the bone that typically strikes adolescents and can spread quickly. Your chances of survival, he said, are not good.
Huguette and her family were not prepared to give up so easily. She and her mother flew from their native Lebanon to OMRF’s research hospital. The year was 1954, and even though OMRF was internationally recognized for its work on childhood cancers, she nevertheless had reason to fear the worst: 53 years ago, few victims of Ewing’s sarcoma, in Lebanon or elsewhere, survived. The language barrier—Huguette spoke no English, only Arabic and French—only added to her apprehension about this unfamiliar place half a world from home.
Hugh Payne, OMRF’s general manager, made it his mission to comfort OMRF’s new patient. He knew that Huguette’s treatment would be harsh; the cancer had grown unchecked for the better part of a year, and surgeons deemed amputation the only way to save her life.
Payne delivered the news himself. When he told Huguette, translating through her mother, both women broke down sobbing. The teen had never heard of amputation, but Payne assured her that it would save her life. He also explained that her leg would be used for research, to help save other young people just like her. She dried her eyes. “If it’s going to help people, okay.”
The night before the operation, Payne stayed up with Huguette until the wee hours, reading to her from the Bible. The next morning, he presented her with her first corsage, a gardenia.
After the surgery at University Hospital, Huguette returned to OMRF’s research hospital. For the next three months, as she recuperated and underwent therapy, Huguette called OMRF’s research hospital home. Doctors wouldn’t know for certain for another year or two, but her surgery appeared to have been a success. OMRF’s doctors and nurses helped her adjust to the challenges of living with just one leg. They also helped teach her English—a language she speaks fluently today.
“You’d think that I would have been traumatized by it all, but it’s just the opposite,” she says. “It’s a beautiful memory for me, and I am so grateful to everyone here. It completely changed my attitude and made me a better person. Even my loss from cancer didn’t compare to what I gained from my time at OMRF.”
Huguette is not alone in finding a silver lining in her fight with disease, says OMRF President Stephen Prescott. “It’s surprising, but a bout with cancer can be a positive experience,” says Prescott, who served as executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah before coming to OMRF. “Regardless of how serious the case or how difficult the treatment, people often remember a battle with cancer as a special time. Often, it shapes who they become later in life.”
Shortly after she finished her treatment at OMRF, Huguette returned to Lebanon. But when she found herself treated as an object of pity, she decided to return to Oklahoma and finish high school in Bristow, where her grandparents lived. After graduation, she took a job with the Oklahoma Tax Commission and enrolled at Oklahoma City University.
She had been cancer-free for four years, and she had adjusted to life after amputation. “I was independent and self-sufficient,” she says. “My life couldn’t have been better.”
But when Huguette was injured in a traffic accident in 1958, doctors made a terrible discovery: Cancer had again invaded her body, this time her lung. Once more, her physicians told her the outlook was grim.
Surgeons removed the lower lobe of one lung, and then Huguette returned to OMRF to fight for her life. Her doctors employed the same therapy that had successfully treated the cancer in her leg. The treatment was aggressive, employing nitrogen mustard—a crystalline form of the mustard gas used on battlefields—and wracking her weakened body. Again, Huguette’s OMRF caregivers stood by her side, offering support and comfort. And once more, she beat the odds. Four weeks later, she left OMRF for what she hoped was the last time.
