Tracy

A Lucky Day

The luckiest day of Tracy’s life was the day when the truck in which she was riding spun out of control on a rain-slick road in St. Augustine, FL and flipped over. Tracy, then 14 years old, her older sister, and a friend walked away unharmed. But that is not the reason she’s so lucky.

“A couple of days after the accident, I became worried that Tracy might have a cracked rib or something else that may have been missed when she was seen in the emergency department of Flagler Hospital. She was sore all over after the accident,” says her mom, Sharon. They returned to the hospital where a doctor listened to Tracy’s chest and ordered an x-ray.

There on the film, sitting on her lung near her windpipe, was a lemon-sized tumor. “It was an incredible shock because Tracy had absolutely no symptoms,” says Sharon, “but we weren’t that worried at first, because her blood work looked fine.”

Surgery to remove the tumor was scheduled at Wolfson Children’s Hospital within the month.

“An hour into the surgery, Dr. Walsh came out to tell us that there was a chance that the tumor was malignant. She also said that it was necessary to remove the upper half of Tracy’s lung,” remembers Karen, “It wasn’t until they had all the pathology reports back that we learned that the tumor was a pleuropulmonary blastoma, a rare and aggressive cancer which was in stage 2 of 3 in severity. We were told that Tracy receive chemotherapy for the next year.”

Under the supervision of Michael J. Joyce, MD, a Nemours oncologist, Tracy received outpatient chemotherapy treatments, ending in October of 2005. “It was pretty horrible sometimes,” she says, “I was throwing up and crying, and my mom was crying.”

“When Tracy’s beautiful dark hair began to fall out, we went out into the back yard, and I shaved it all off. She wore a bandana to the homecoming dance,” remembers Sharon, “ “When she was receiving chemo, I told her that I would give anything to do it for her. Tracy said that ‘I wouldn’t want you to go through this.’ Then I really started to cry.”

“Some of my friends had a hard time dealing with my illness,” says Tracy, “They didn’t know what to say or do. One girl wanted to know if cancer was contagious. But most of my friends stuck by me through the whole thing.” Not surprisingly, Tracy grew up rather quickly during her ordeal. “Sometimes I see my friends doing the most stupid stuff. I say to them, ‘It’s so easy to do the right thing. Why are you doing this?’”

Holding her good luck charms, a plastic-encased mustard seed and a ‘worry angel’, in each hand, Tracy underwent another surgical procedure, a “second look” to make sure that there was no evidence of the tumor. “About ten minutes into the surgery, Dr. Walsh came out all smiles and said that she could not find any cancer,” says Sharon. Although her oncologist, Dr. Joyce, considered having Tracy undergo radiation as a means to prevent the recurrence of the cancer, he eventually decided that the side effects were too big a risk for her.

Every three months, Tracy returns to the hospital for scans and blood work. “I’m not worried,” she says. She has resumed attending classes at her high school and has a part-time job at Ripley’s Believe It or Not in St. Augustine. Her hair is finally growing back under that red bandana. With beautiful skin and big, penetrating dark eyes, Tracy is already a beauty.

What most excites 16 year-old Tracy these days is driving her 2005 Ford Focus. “It’s black. My aunt got me a license plate with my name and little purple lights,” she says proudly, “Although it was really lucky that I was in that accident, I don’t plan to have another one!”