Ethan Grant was watching television in his bedroom.
It was a Wednesday, nearly 6 p.m.
The phone rang.
His mother answered, and the doctor told her that Grant had cancer.
“It knocks the wind out of you when you find out your son has cancer,” Melinda Grant, Ethan’s mother, said.
The news came only two weeks after Grant received his high school diploma.
“(My mother) was bawling her eyes out,” Grant, now a sophomore studying education, said. “She was losing it, and I remember I didn’t cry.”
Cancer is the development of abnormal cells that divide uncontrollably and can infiltrate and destroy normal body tissue. It is the second-leading cause of death in the United States, according to the Mayo Clinic, a nonprofit medical practice and research group.
At 18, Grant was diagnosed with stage 2 non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer that starts in the lymphatic system, the disease-fighting network throughout the body, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Grant, who is from Dennison and is now 20, said he only had one symptom.
“My neck got huge, like freakishly huge,” Grant said. “It was like a softball on the side of my neck.”
The doctors did a biopsy, and the test came back positive.
“The first thing I said was, ‘I wish I could take it for you,’ ” Melinda said. “Nobody wants to see their kid sick. He was so strong from the second that he heard about it.”
In 2015, it was estimated by the American Cancer Society that there were 1.65 million new cases of cancer. The impact is felt in Athens, and those who are affected by cancer at Ohio University have resources to turn to.
Cancer support at OU
Cancer changed Grant’s college plans.
“I was going to go to the main campus at Kent State, and I was going to do ROTC, and I was really excited for it, but then I couldn’t go to the main campus, and you can’t be in the military until you are five years cancer free,” Grant said. “So, it changed pretty much everything.”
Grant went to the Tuscarawas branch of Kent State University for a year where he lived at home and commuted. He said his teachers worked with him through treatment, and he has been in remission since September 2014.
After a year at the Kent State branch, Grant transferred to Ohio University for Fall Semester 2015.
OU’s Student Accessibility Services works with students with disabilities and long-term illnesses. Every registered student is eligible for up to four hours per class per week of tutoring, as well as priority class registration, according to Carey Busch, assistant dean for student accessibility.
“I think priority registration is important sometimes for students if you think about having to ... maintain a treatment schedule, and sometimes that’s really helpful and important for students to try to keep making progress toward their degree,” Busch said.
Individual counseling is available at Counseling and Psychological Services. In the past, Fred Weiner, director of CPS, said it had support groups for students to help with not only cancer, but also other chronic illnesses.
How often CPS has a support group depends upon the number of students who show interest, Weiner said. Currently, CPS doesn’t have a support group.
“At the present time, if someone is dealing with cancer, it would be an opportunity to get support through one-on-one counseling available at the center,” Weiner said.
OU also has a chapter of Colleges Against Cancer, a national organization run through the American Cancer Society. Through tabling and fundraisers, the group raises awareness and educates students on all types of cancers. As of Jan. 7, the group had raised about $900, most of which will be donated to Relay for Life, Breanna Seevers, co-president of the student chapter, said.
Although Grant has been in remission, that doesn't mean the doctor’s visits are over.
“You have to be five years cancer free to be done with it,” Grant said. “I still go back every three months for check-ups and things like that.”
Cancer research at Ohio University
Monica Burdick researches cancer at OU with her lab, which is comprised of six undergraduate and four graduate students.
Her research deals with identifying new and specific ligands expressed by breast cancer cells in order to better design diagnostics or therapeutics against cancer, Burdick, an associate professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering, said. A ligand is a molecule that binds to another molecule or its receptor. After binding, it can enable different cell functions, such as cell growth.
Taking a multidisciplinary approach, her lab works with people from the physics, mechanical engineering and biomedical sciences departments.
“What my lab does is try to take an engineering approach to unraveling cancer biology, in particular, how the cancer cells might break free from the primary tumor and then spread throughout the blood vessels to get to another organ where it will set up a metastatic colony,” Burdick said.
She has a familial connection to the disease, as two of her uncles and one aunt have died from cancer.
“It does make you think a lot,” Burdick said. “Could we have done something better? Could we have done something sooner? It’s a question that probably most cancer researchers ask themselves.”
Living with cancer
When Wendy Rogers found out she had breast cancer during her junior year at OU, she said she thought she was going to die.
In 1991, Rogers, now the assistant director of learning community programs, noticed a lump on her breast one morning after she jumped out of bed.
Because breast cancer runs in her family and her maternal aunt had died from breast cancer at the age of 32, Rogers decided to have a biopsy.
The biopsy came back conclusive, meaning Rogers had breast cancer at the age of 21.
“I think the worst thing really to happen to me was any time I was alone with my thoughts,” Rogers, now 45, said.
Instead of going to back to Athens for classes Fall Quarter, she started chemotherapy, ultimately doing four rounds of treatment.
How people treated her, Rogers said, was one of the hardest parts of the disease.
“Around Athens, I wasn’t treated weird, even though I was bald and clearly sick,” Rogers said. “Back where I grew up, I think I was shunned by more people, and that was really tough.”
Grant received his treatment at Akron Children's Hospital and did three cycles of chemotherapy.
“You sit there, and you get medicine pumped into your chest, which is the scariest thing ever,” Grant said.
Through chemotherapy, he lost around 35 pounds.
“After the third round, I was just so sick — just tired of being sick,” Grant said. “You just get sick of it literally and tired of dealing with it, tired of going to the hospital, tired of all the visits and just ready to be done.”
Chemotherapy “sucks,” he said.
“When you are going through chemo, they give you other drugs to counteract the chemo to keep you as normal as possible so ... they gave me steroids, ... and I (had) a lot of mood swings, so I got really angry,” Grant said.
His family had to monitor him, Melinda said, to ensure that he wasn't dehydrated.
“People think that you lose your hair because of cancer. It’s because of chemo,” Grant said.
After Rogers finished chemotherapy, she returned to OU for classes that Winter Quarter and graduated on time after four years.
“It was not advised that I come back because it was winter and I was going to have to walk everywhere, and I didn’t have hair,” Rogers said. “My immune system was still super low, but I couldn’t wait to go back and be with my friends and be in college again.”
Rogers had a modified radical mastectomy, which left only a thin layer of muscles on her chest wall. After the procedure, she was considered to be in remission because all the lymph nodes they removed were clear.
Financially, it was difficult for Rogers and her family to return to class after going through chemotherapy.
“We had to sell my car,” she said. “I know my parents had astronomical medical bills they had to pay off after I returned to school.”
Rogers has been cancer-free for 24 years, and she's in her 21st year working at OU.
A good attitude and a support system are needed, Grant said, in order to beat cancer.
“I think it’s all about your family. It’s all about the support that you have and your attitude because if you don’t have a good attitude, and you don’t believe that you are gonna beat it ... then it’s going to eat you alive,” Grant said. “It’s just gotta be a step in your life.”
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