In November of 2018, Blitz and I drove to Gainesville to spend Thanksgiving with Alex and Dakota. I had seen her about a month before.
Alex’s cancer recurred as a mass in the soft tissue of her left leg. She underwent chemotherapy which did little to reduce the size of the tumor.
Then she returned to Johns Hopkins Hospital for surgery to remove it. In mid-October, she flew back to Gainesville “free of any visible signs of cancer,” according to her doctor.
In November, however, she started having pain again, this time in her hip and lower back. When I saw her on Thanksgiving, it was clear Alex wasn’t going to make it until the end of the semester without help.
I had to return to Baltimore, but told her I would fly back to Gainesville in a few days and stay until the semester was over.
In the short time I was gone, things got much worse.
Alex picked me up at the airport on a Sunday night in tremendous pain. Oncologists are very generous with pain medication, but hers was no longer keeping up.
She handed me the keys and said, “you drive.” Then she groaned in pain all the way home.
Alex had an exam at 7 a.m. Monday. By 8:30 a.m., she was back home, lying in bed, still in pain.
Almost three years earlier, Alex, her mother and I were gathered around a table with an oncologist and a patient advocate from the University of Maryland Medical Center.
“You have metastatic Ewing’s Sarcoma,” the oncologist said bluntly. “The five-year survival rate is 30 percent.”
A detailed discussion of the treatment plan followed. Then the hospital representatives left the room.
I walked over to Alex, sat down in front of her and looked her in the eyes.
“I choose to focus on the 30 percent, not the 70 percent,” I said.
She nodded.
And she did. She fought the cancer with everything she had, never losing focus on her future.
When she reached remission, she moved to Florida, started her career and enrolled in veterinary school as if cancer never happened.
When the cancer returned, she refused to let it delay her plans again.
On this November day, I asked how the test went. She thought it was fine. She would know in a couple days.
Then I asked about her classes for next semester. She didn’t answer. I looked over at her. She started to cry.
I hesitated for a moment and said softly, “You don’t think there’s going to be a next semester.”
She started to sob.
I sat down next to her and hugged her. That wasn’t something we usually did.
I didn’t have anything to say. I knew the reality of this recurrence.
“I don’t want to give up,” she said through her tears.
“Then I’ll be here to help you,” I replied.
When the moment passed, Alex took some pain medicine and tried to sleep.
It didn’t work. When I returned to her room, she was in so much pain she couldn’t move. She couldn’t think. All she could do was cry.
For a moment, I froze. She wanted me to make the pain stop. I didn’t know how. I felt like I was failing her until a voice came into my head.
“You don’t have to stop the pain. You have to get her to someone who can.”
I packed a bag and took her to the emergency room.
We arrived at UF Shands Hospital on the second day of Hanukkah. I remember because there was a menorah at the nurses’ station with two candles lit.
The next week was a blur. Alex was admitted to the hospital and Dakota and I moved in with her.
It took three days to get her pain under control. It had never been that bad before.
Alex’s mother kept texting.
“Do I need to come?”
If this was temporary, she could stay in Maryland. I would bring Alex home.
But if it wasn’t, she needed to be here.
I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want to ask the doctor in front of Alex, so I followed her out of the room.
I opened my mouth to speak. No words came out. I couldn’t speak. I held up a hand asking the doctor for a moment.
Finally, I uttered, “Do I need to get her mother here or is she going to be able to leave the hospital and go home?”
The doctor said she thought Alex would recover, and she did.
As I lived through that week, it seemed like one continuous day. In my memory, the passing time was measured by candles on the menorah at the nurses station. Three lights. Four. Five. And on the day we left the hospital, the menorah was gone.
Once the pain was controlled, Alex asked for her computer and began watching neurology lectures between scans, radiation and chemotherapy to keep up with her classwork.
At one point, she looked over at me and said, “I got an A on that exam I took last Monday.”
One night, an orderly walked into the room. Alex was asleep on her bed. Dakota and I were asleep on the couch. When the door opened, Dakota growled. I held her leash and told her no.
She watched that man like a hawk, growling softly the entire time he was in the room.
He came back several times during Alex’s stay. Each time, Dakota was on alert. So was I.
Many staffers had come and gone during Dakota’s visits to various hospitals. She never reacted that way to anyone before or since.
I don’t know what she didn’t like about that man, but I trusted her judgment.
After a week, Alex walked out of the hospital pain free. The doctor said it was remarkable.
But no sooner did we get home than her fever spiked to 104 degrees. She called me into her room and told me to pack her things. We were going home.
I said we weren’t going anywhere with her in that condition but, if she still felt that way when she could travel, we would go.
The fever broke and did not return. Alex spent most of the next week and a half in bed or on the couch watching lectures online, taking notes and studying.
I made sure she ate, drank and took her medication, and drove her to the hospital for various appointments. She went to school when she had to take exams and managed to finish the semester.
This story does not have a heartwarming ending. Her cancer was brutal and, as bad as it was at the end of her time in Gainesville, it would get much worse when she returned to Baltimore.
But I have said before that completing her first semester of vet school was a testament to how strong Alex was. This is what I meant.
She finished 18th in her class in spite of spending the entire semester dealing with chemotherapy, surgery, radiation and a cancer so aggressive that she lived only seven weeks after the semester ended.
Also, as a testament to how much she loved vet school—after enduring all of that, she was still able to go out with her friends, pose for the picture at the top of this post and look like she didn’t have a care in the world.
Mitch and Dakota are participating in the Million Mile this month in Alex’s memory. They are raising funds for childhood cancer research so Alex’s story doesn’t have to be someone else’s story.
You can donate here.
All donations are matched by Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation.