agillooly@observer-reporter.com
Carol Gordon prayed to God that the sluggishness and weakness her teenage daughter was suffering were symptoms of mononucleosis.
She said the anguish and heartbreak were preceded briefly by numbness when the pediatrician called to say it wasn't the so-called "kissing disease."
Initial blood tests showed a blast of white blood cells - one of the first indicators of acute lymphocyte leukemia, or ALL.
That was June 19, the day 16-year-old Jackie Gordon of Canonsburg found out the childhood cancer she fought eight years ago had returned.
Jackie had known something wasn't right. She wanted to chill with friends at the annual St. Patrick's Festival in Canonsburg last June, before the diagnosis. But she just didn't feel up to it. She felt a little shaky, a little weak.
Later that weekend, after visiting with friends, her mother was struck by the comments made about her teenage daughter's attitude and appearance.
No one could put a finger on it. Some people just said, "She just wasn't acting like herself." Others said, "she looked too washed out."
Then, on June 18, Jackie broke a rib when a friend playfully tossed her into Canonsburg's Town Park Pool.
Carol took Jackie to her pediatrician for an X-ray and blood tests. Minutes after the phone call alerting them to the spike in the girl's white blood cells, the pair raced to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Recalling what happened next is still fuzzy for Jackie. She doesn't remember her oncologist, Dr. A. Kim Ritchie, hopping up on the examining table with her. And she doesn't remember the hug he gave her before he confirmed the worst: The cancer had come back. She'd again be fighting for her life.
Carol is thankful for the memory lapse. She said she's glad Jackie doesn't remember her immediate reaction.
"I can't do this. I can't go through this," Carol recalls her daughter telling Dr. Ritchie.
But what she told her mother next devastated her.
"But, Momma, I'm only 16."
The first time around
Toward the end of Jackie's first-grade year, Carol took her to the pediatrician. The petite 8-year-old blonde had a fever.
The doctor said it was a common virus and sent them home with an assurance that Carol was doing what mothers do best - worrying, sometimes unnecessarily, about her child.
The next day, what had been a slight fever became more serious, and Jackie told her mom that her legs hurt. So Carol again trekked to the doctor's office. This time, she
requested the doctor draw blood to rule out any serious medical ailments.
The symptoms Jackie was experiencing were also consistent with both meningitis and even leukemia, she told him.
But the request was refused.
"He kept saying to me, 'Mrs. Gordon, she's just coming down with a virus. She's fine.'"
By Saturday, Jackie couldn't walk. Carol remembers bundling the little girl up and driving her to Children's Hospital, begging for answers, some help in understanding what was attacking her little girl's body.
By the end of the day, Jackie was diagnosed with ALL. The chemotherapy began shortly thereafter. Jackie lost her hair. Her parents felt as if they were losing their minds.
Tom Gordon remembers watching television with his daughter during her long stays at the hospital. Carol said the two shared a love for television programs that were outside the mainstream sitcoms popular with so many others. Sometimes it was wrestling; other times it was how-to shows.
But watching his daughter lying bald in a hospital bed, fighting against the same cancer that claimed his father's life just years before, was too much for him.
So he made a deal with God. He promised to fast if God would help his little girl get healthy. Because he's a contractor, he wouldn't be able to work without eating. So he gave up watching television, a leisure he most enjoyed with his daughter. The fast spanned three years.
While the image of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, is burned into the collective conscience of the American public, it's not one that Tom shares. He didn't watch television that day, and it didn't matter that he couldn't see history unfold before his eyes.
"All I cared about was that she was healed," he said.
While Tom put in long hours at work, Carol drove her daughter back and forth from their home to Pittsburgh for treatment. She drew on her faith during the nights she stayed in the pediactric oncology unit while Jackie underwent chemotherapy.
During one of those stays, Carol sat in on a cancer support group meeting. She remembers a man talking about a family member fighting the disease, and she remembers what she told him: It's OK to cry. It's OK to be angry.
Soon she became a regular at those meetings, sharing a message of faith and hope. She read books about the power of prayer and positive thinking. Looking back, Carol credits faith for keeping her marriage together at a time when stress and sadness threatened to tear it apart.
"The stress was so much that we would just argue all the time," Tom said.
Carol shook her head in the affirmative before adding, "I'm surprised we all didn't have a nervous breakdown."
But even Tom's deal with God and the couple's faith didn't take away the biting sadness. And it didn't stop the tears.
Carol and Tom said one of the most difficult parts of caring for a sick child is trying to appear strong when their insides are recoiling in grief and all they want to do is unleash some tears.
In those days, the shower was The Crying Place. That's where Carol and Tom would go when it became too much. With the door closed and the water splashing they knew young Jackie couldn't hear their choked sobs.
This time around
Jackie would have been a sophomore at Canon-McMillan High School this year. She would have been on the junior varsity cheerleading squad. She might have been able to drive her new 2008 silver Ford Focus to school.
But the intense chemotherapy regimen - which is administered through spinal taps and intermuscular shots - means days-long stays at Children's Hospital.
And then there are the complications.
Since her diagnosis in June, Jackie has undergone blood transfusions and suffered fevers, infections and bouts of shingles - ailments Ritchie said can be common when an illness affects immune function.
But Jackie's diagnosis itself is less common.
The chances of a recurrence of ALL after a patient is in remission for more than four years is "extremely rare." It happens in less than .1 percent of cases, Ritchie explained.
"Jackie is a major exception," he said.
Jackie admits she never expected a cancer relapse. She never thought she'd spend her sophomore year of high school attending classes from home.
"It was a slap in the face," she said.
Carol's mind, meanwhile, is still racing. Her two-story Van Eman Street home is just across the street from All Pro Auto Mall. And she can't help but remember talk of environmental concerns that arose during the planning of a condominium development there.
An old fear that was spawned from those meetings resurfaced: Was there benzene in the earth there? Was the carcinogen the reason why the plans fell through? Could benzene have contributed to Jackie's relapse?
Borough manager Terry Hazlett said developers scrapped the plan after council pared it significantly and one of the principal investors died.
And even though the American Cancer Society reports that there are no known cases of chemical exposure causing ALL, Carol still frets as she supports Jackie through the rounds of chemotherapy that robbed her daughter of her long, blonde locks.
And this time around, Carol said that was the most difficult part.
Jackie's first chemotherapy treatment was administered two days after her diagnosis, and she wore her hair in a ponytail every day to try to stave off excessive shedding.
"I tried to wear it up every day to keep it from getting all over the furniture, even though it did anyway," she said, her eyes downcast and the smile fading from her face.
As the days wore on, she said her hair grew matted. It mostly fell out when she showered in the evening or brushed it before bed. Fed up during a stay at Children's, she asked her mom to call a family friend and ask her to bring along her clippers.
She takes off her hat to reveal some fuzz growing there, and she's just thankful her brows and lashes didn't fall out.
Unexpected losses
It's an unseasonably cool day in August, and Jackie is sitting on her living room couch, absentmindedly petting her "baby," a diaper-clad, 11-pound Chihuahua named Cubby. Carol and Tom bought the little brown and white purebred for Jackie as a present for surviving her first bout with cancer. She picks up the petite pup, and points to his tiny paws, where scabs were healing.
"He chews his paws until they bleed when I have to go to the hospital," she said. When she's home, Cubby is her constant companion, and one of her only remaining friends.
The girlfriends she made as a Canon-Mac cheerleader have stopped calling. She no longer gets text messages from some of her other classmates.
"When the hair was going and the weight was coming off, I told them, 'This is not contagious,'" her mother said.
Jackie's team of doctors at Children's encourages her to bring along friends when she's facing a long hospital stay. But although her cheerleading buddies would tell Carol how much they "just loved Jackie," those kind words were never followed up with friendly visits.
Today, Jackie is wearing a hot-pink, fitted American Eagle T-shirt with a pair of faded jeans. A matching headband adds a splash of color underneath a white Bebe hat that sits on her head, cocked slightly to the right.
She has a synthetic blond wig that looks strikingly similar to her natural "do," but she usually only dons it when she goes shopping or out to eat.
Even though she's scheduled for another round of chemo - this time through a spinal tap - she prefers not to dwell on it.
Jackie would rather discuss her Oct. 4 driving test or the Jonas Brothers concert she'd soon attend.
That's the type of attitude Dr. Ritchie wants to see.
Jacqueline Gordon, he said, "is an effervescent young woman" before she's a cancer patient - and a positive attitude coupled with a supportive family helps in the healing process.
It's important, he said, for patients to retain as much normality as possible. And for Jackie, that support has given her strength when she felt like the odds were against her.
"Even if I didn't have cancer, we're crazy," she said with a sheepish grin. "We fight about the goofiest things and we laugh about the goofiest things."
Statistics show that patients with her diagnosis have between an 80 and 90 percent survival rate. But she doesn't pay much attention to statistics.
She knows what her chances are.
"I'm not ready to die yet," she said.
"Me, either," her mother added.