Teen tackles cancer, fights to win

Christy Standler thinks she's probably only a couple of toxic infusions and four or five weeks of intense nausea away from being a typical 13-year-old.

And she's looking forward to going to a movie without having to wear a face mask to protect her from everyone else.

The next few weeks won't be fun, but they are doable after the year the Standlers have had, says her mom, Dr. Nancy Standler.

It's a year that included a devastating diagnosis of a cancerous growth on her spine, delicate back surgery and the news that some of the cancer could not be removed, a month's worth of radiation, repeated trips from their Cedar City home to Primary Children's Medical Center for a year's worth of extremely potent chemotherapy and hospitalizations in between each time an opportunistic infection dropped in.

Christy's story was first told in the Deseret Morning News last February. At that point, University Hospital's Dr. John T. Braun had already operated — opening her up through the ribs and then through the back — to remove as much of the tumor, diagnosed as Ewing's sarcoma, as possible. But when they closed her up, they knew a small amount had been left behind.

Christy and her mom were warned before the surgery she might never walk, that the surgery, treatment afterwards, even the tumor itself could destroy her spine.

Instead, by Day 2 she was tentatively making her way with the aid of a walker and a physical therapist.

Since then, she's had radiation — made complex by the fact that she has eight 1/4-inch by 4-inch screws in her back. After declaring radiation would be impossible, Dr. Dennis Shrieve, a radiation oncologist at Huntsman Cancer Institute, nevertheless created a way to do it, coming up with a radiation wavelength that didn't see or damage her spinal cord or the screws, Nancy Standler said.

But the amount of radiation needed to kill the tumor was very close to the amount that would destroy her spinal cord and leave her unable to walk, so nothing has been simple this year.

"We owe the world to all sorts of people," Nancy Standler said. "And she's even on her own list of people who saved her life."

Partway through treatment, after a long time on the total parenteral nutrition (TPN) "feedings" that provide nutrition through her veins, Christy's stomach seemed unable to function and no one could quite figure how to get it going again so she could be weaned back to eating, her mom said. And staying on TPN too long is not an option because it can severely damage the liver.