Three years ago, Becky Linscott of Nipomo came home from college to spend Christmas with her family, bringing along a persistent, nagging cough.

The 21-year-old Linscott and her doctors initially passed off the cough as a bad case of bronchitis, but when Linscott returned to Cal State, Northridge, and visited a nearby emergency clinic, the actual diagnosis was far worse.

An alert physician at the clinic decided to order a chest X-ray, which yielded a disturbing image — a mass roughly the size of a large man’s fist had taken Linscott’s chest cavity hostage.

“(The doctor) propped (the X-ray) up and I’ll never forget what he said next,” Linscott recalled. “Looking startled, he said, ‘Oh. That’s not at all what I expected.’”

Following a round of tests, doctors diagnosed Linscott with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph node system that can spread systematically through the body.

Throughout her long battle, Linscott has stayed positive, bolstered by family and close friends cheering for her. They rejoiced at news delivered during a recent week: Linscott has no active disease left in her body.

After receiving her Hodgkin’s diagnosis, Linscott underwent chemotherapy, which failed to produce a cure.

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In August 2007, doctors at City of Hope in Duarte decided Linscott’s best hope would be undergoing a grueling double stem cell transplant using stem cells harvested from her own body.

Stems cells can essentially be described as “blank canvases” in that the body has not yet designated them to form a specific tissue.

Linscott received powerful drugs to stimulate her bone marrow to go into overdrive to produce enough of the precious commodities to cover two transplants.

Then, several days of high-dose chemotherapy killed off all the blood-producing stem cells in Linscott’s bone marrow, which doctors replaced with the “clean” stem cells harvested prior to the transplant.

A few short weeks after Linscott’s recovery, doctors repeated the last two steps in the process.

“It was awful,” Linscott said of the transplant. “The only (thing) I can compare it to is when your arm falls asleep and you try to move it and it gets worse. And I was throwing up all the time.”

Altogether, Linscott spent a total of nearly two months in the hospital with the transplant, but it turned out to be worth it in the end because the transplant managed to do what chemotherapy alone could not — chase the cancer into remission.

When Linscott’s scan showed no signs of cancer, her oncologist, Dr. Auayporn Nademanee, affectionately known by her patients as “Dr. Nadee,” ordered Linscott to leave the office immediately.

“She said, ‘Get out of here. I have sick people to treat,’” Linscott said with a laugh. “(Dr. Nadee) has so many sick patients, she has no time for the healthy ones.”

Life went on for Linscott, who recently graduated from college and in September married her longtime boyfriend, Mitch Houseman.

The couple had first become friends during their days as students at Arroyo Grande High School. Houseman has stood by Linscott throughout the entire cancer ordeal, attending endless doctor appointments and even occasionally staying in the hospital overnight with Linscott during her stem cell transplant.

However, just as she began to get used to living life cancer-free, in November, Linscott received the devastating news the cancer had come back, and, less than a month later, flew to Houston, Texas, to review her options in regard to participating in clinical trials at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Before leaving for Houston, Linscott said she hoped the treatment she would receive at Anderson would either buy her some time before another transplant — using donor marrow instead of her own stem cells — or make the transplant unnecessary altogether.

With a donor bone marrow transplant comes the added risk that the patient could reject the marrow and even die from resulting complications.

Doctors at Anderson had planned to use drugs to stimulate Linscott’s immune system to fight the cancer on its own, without chemotherapy.

“All I heard (was) I get to keep my hair,” Linscott joked.

This month, cancer threw Linscott and her family for another loop.

A series of tests conducted at Anderson to stage Linscott’s cancer and determine whether she fit into the study showed she has no active disease remaining in her body.

“The good news is right now it seems that (the cancer) is taking a break and giving us a little bit of a merry Christmas gift ahead of time,” said Linscott’s mom, Amie, from Houston just hours after hearing the good news. “We’re very excited and we’re looking forward to taking a little break around here.”

The Linscotts planned to return home to the Central Coast to celebrate Christmas. Meanwhile, doctors will continue to monitor Linscott’s progress, remaining on standby should the disease reoccur.

While cancer has usurped much of her time and energy in recent times, Linscott has not allowed the disease to become her whole life. The unflagging support system she has in place has made this possible.

“The stuff I try to remember are the fun times we had,” Linscott said.

Friends have rallied behind Linscott since the day she first received her diagnosis. Several people got together to make Linscott 1,000 paper cranes, borrowing from a Japanese legend that says the person who receives 1,000 paper cranes can have one wish granted.

Another close friend gave her a magic wand with a note attached that read, “If I had a magic wand and could make it better, I would.”

“That’s the one that still jerks me to this day,” said Linscott’s father, Steve Linscott, stressing it’s important for family and loved ones to form a partnership and help the patient manage his or her care.

“As much as doctors want to help, they don’t have the time. Do the research ... and be there for the patient and advocate,” he said. “You’ve got to stand together, you’ve got to build a team. We’re like a teepee. When we have bad days, we lean together.”

December 25, 2008