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Medical students provide free care
With the cost of health care forcing many Americans to do without health insurance, KU medical students are helping bridge the gap. Every week KU medical students help provide free medical care to patients who couldn't afford treatment elsewhere at JayDoc, a completely free clinic in Kansas City, Kan.
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Professor to speak on 'Daily Show'
A KU journalism professor will appear on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart tonight. He will discuss his new book, which examines the role of interactive media in politics.
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© 2008 The University Daily Kansan
Living in remission
KU students survive cancer to continue education, moving beyond months of treatment and coping with uncertainty
BY MARY SORRICK msorrick@kansan.com
Jessica Roark sat in the ophthalmologist's office, waiting for the results of a biopsy of the inflammation under her right eyelid. The eyelid had been swelling for weeks but nothing doctors prescribed seemed to help.
She hoped he would prescribe another round of steroid treatments to make the puffiness go away. Instead, he delivered news that sent her reeling.
Jessica had cancer.
In that moment, numbly absorbing her diagnosis, Jessica couldn't see the months of chemotherapy, hair loss and nausea.
She didn't know she would spend more time researching cancer than studying for classes. She didn't know she would lose her eye.
Jessica is among a small number of KU cancer survivors, a group that includes Tracie Revis and Erica Red Corn. For them, being diagnosed with cancer marked the beginning of surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy - literally fighting to stay alive at an age when they should be launching careers and starting their adult lives.
"That air of invincibility that young people have—the sense that they are bulletproof—gets blown out of the water when they have cancer."
Jessica adjusted to the loss of her eye and overcame anxiety about her cancer to work toward degrees in civil engineering and environmental studies. Tracie survived the removal of a tumor the size of a grapefruit and the recurrence of her cancer to study at KU law school. Erica endured the spread of cancer from her knee to her lungs to enter medical school with the belief that the experience would make her a better doctor. Each survivor faced her own set of challenges, but they are all linked by one certainty: I or cancer there is no cure, there
ROBERT TWILLMAN KU Medical Center
Jennifer Klemp, managing director of the breast cancer survivorship center at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said short-term side effects of chemotherapy and radiation included not only
is only remission.
Although there are no statistics describing the prevalence of cancer among college students, about 70.000 people ages 15 to 39 are diagnosed with cancer each year, according to the Livestrong Young Adult Alliance. Despite improved survival rates for every other age group, cancer survival rates for young adults have not increased in more than 30 years. For college students in this demographic, the treatments can take an especially heavy toll.
In the long term Klemp said cancer treatments could cause a weakened immune system, susceptibility to infections such as pneumonia; early bone loss and the increased likelihood of secondary
cancers wherever radiation was focused on the body.
Robert Twillman, program director of pain management at the KU Medical Center, said the loss of control felt by young patients during treatment could be as difficult to manage as the physical side effects.
hair loss, but also fatigue, depression and decreased cognitive function - a snag for any patient pulling double-duty as a college student.
"That air of invincibility that young people have - the sense that they are bulletproof - gets blown out of the water when they have cancer," Twillman said. "That's something that's not supposed to happen until later in life and it can be tough."
JESSICA ROARK
While hair loss and surgical scars can affect a young person's body image.
Twillman said
Contributed Photo Jessica Roark is out of treatment but has not forgotten the difficult days of chemotherapy that caused her to lose her hair and miss weeks of school.
infertility and practical concerns about insurance and future employment forced student patients to grow up fast.
But the world of cancer was about to get a lot more familiar.
Before her diagnosis in October of 2006 Jessica hadn't worried much about cancer or even heard about adenoid cyst carcinoma, a cancer so rare that only about 3,300 people get it each year in the United States.
For all the pain and frustration they endure, Twillman said young cancer survivors had an uncanny resilience in bouncing back.
In January, Jessica underwent four days of in-patient chemotherapy at the University of Iowa's Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center to shrink the tumor in her tear duct.
JESSICA ROARK
"There are so many different types and treatments you have to go through," Jessica said. "And how it affects you personally - there's this whole part of life I had absolutely no idea about and I wasn't prepared for it."
Doctors' appointments and treatment plans became the focus of Jessica's daily life. After class, she alternated between coursework and online cancer study sessions.
First, she received intra-arterial chemotherapy - her first ever surgical pro
"I had buzzed my hair before, and when I did it voluntarily, it was different," she said. "You think about gender definitions a lot without your hair. I just didn't feel very feminine."
On campus, she donned a short black wig to avoid strangers' stares. While she kept her mind busy by focusing on classes, her father, John Roark, struggled with the reality of what was happening to his daughter.
She then underwent three more bouts or chemotherapy in the following three days, this time through an IV in her arm.
cedure. Strapped to an operating table, Jessica lay still while she received chemotherapy drugs in her eye from a catheter that doctors inserted into the artery near her hip, threaded up through her heart, into her neck, and fed into her ocular veins.
Within two weeks, her hair fell out
cedure. Strapped
"You wish you could take the pain away and the hurt away, but you can't," he said. "It's a feeling of helplessness. It's pretty scary."
That helplessness only increased after doctors told Jessica in February that they wouldn't be able to remove the tumor in her tear duct without also removing her eye.
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