LIHU‘E — It had to have been one of the more horrifying telephone calls Janet Mayfield ever received. A Spanish-speaking person was, through a translator, informing Mayfield that her daughter was sick. The word “tumor” was not lost in translation.
LIHU‘E — It had to have been one of the more horrifying telephone calls Janet Mayfield ever received.
A Spanish-speaking person was, through a translator, informing Mayfield that her daughter was sick. The word “tumor” was not lost in translation.
Christy Mayfield, 17, a Lihu‘e resident and a senior at Island School in Puhi, was in Chile as a Rotary exchange student, and was having debilitating headaches that finally made her host family bring her to a hospital.
It was a hospital visit that may have saved her life, Janet Mayfield said during an interview with her and her daughter recently at The Garden Island office in Lihu‘e.
After first being examined at a small hospital in her host family’s town, a quick decision was made to move Christy Mayfield to a larger hospital in Chile’s capital city, Santiago.
The preliminary diagnosis was astrocytoma, something like a brain tumor.
“I have brain cancer,” Christy Mayfield now says, matter-of-factly.
By then, her mother had joined her in Chile. From there, it was off to the medical center at the University of California at San Francisco, a teaching hospital.
They stayed there for three more weeks, where doctors tried to rule out all other causes of her headaches before a biopsy was taken. Christy Mayfield spent her 17th birthday in the hospital.
“I had a real fun birthday,” she said, seriously.
A week after her birthday, doctors delivered an unwelcome present — the biopsy results concurring with the Chile diagnosis.
The condition causes the brain to swell, squeezing the optic nerves and leading to irreparable vision damage that has taken some of her peripheral vision and ability to distinguish between colors, she said.
Christy Mayfield thought her vision deterioration simply meant she needed glasses, as others in her family wear.
All agree that it was fortuitous that doctors in Chile diagnosed her correctly and quickly. The tumor is known as grade-two level (not too far spread).
“We couldn’t have done any better (with care and diagnosis) if she had been here,” Janet Mayfield said.
The cancer is, however, too spread out in critical areas of the brain for surgery to be an option, the Mayfields said.
She is taking a pill form of chemotherapy, as the brain’s protective membrane successfully keeps liquid-based chemotherapy away, said Christy Mayfield, who quickly became an expert on the disease but has no desire to become a doctor.
“I really like sleep,” and the doctors she has gotten familiar with, mostly in San Francisco, always “seem sleep-deprived,” she said.
The pill form of chemotherapy hasn’t meant too painful side-effects, said Christy Mayfield, who is also on a steroid regimen.
If the swelling returns, continued damage to her vision will occur, she said. Surgery may be required to install a shunt in order to allow liquid to drain from her brain area. The liquid is thought to be causing the swelling.
There is also a chance the bad cells will die off, she said.
As a minor, and with the disease as it sits now, there are not a lot of options, they said. Once Christy Mayfield reaches adulthood at 18, she may be eligible to get into a clinical trial of an experimental drug, therapy or regimen, Janet Mayfield said.
While doctors have not been able to identify what caused the tumor, Christy Mayfield said it wasn’t caused by cell-phone use or drinking diet soda.
Apparently, Christy Mayfield was the life of the party in what can probably be a pretty somber pediatric cancer wing at UCSF. Nurses on the night shift “chat a lot,” and they had someone to talk with in Christy Mayfield.
“They would come in to socialize,” and were amazed at the upbeat attitude Mayfield continually displayed.
They called her “the happiest brain-cancer patient they’ve ever seen,” and the least-sick-looking person on the floor.
She said it was harder for her doctors to tell her the silver-dollar-sized piece of brain they extracted from her showed signs of cancer than it was for her to receive the news.
Having the disease has been a lot harder on her family and friends than it has been on her, she said. “Our family deals with things with humor,” and Christy Mayfield having cancer is no exception, she said.
“You have to keep a sense of humor,” and attitude is everything, she said.
There were some cancer jokes around the family dinner table, and Christy Mayfield says, “We (cancer patients) walk among you and you would never know.”
While back on Kaua‘i, among her chores is to narrow down her college choices, because this time next year she will either be packing to leave for college, or will have relocated already.
Cornell is her first choice, with its renown hotel-management program. She wants to study hotel and hospitality management, but her resort workplace must be “environmentally friendly,” she said.
She said she is not interested in attending UCSF, as she has probably seen enough of that campus.
They’re heading back to UCSF again soon though, as doctors there like to see her face-to-face every three months. “My doctors are amazing. You have a posse” of doctors and nurses at UCSF, she said.
On Kaua‘i, she and her family have been impressed with Dr. Timothy Crane, her eye doctor, they said.
Ongoing treatment is aimed at stabilization, and includes chemotherapy each month, MRIs and regular blood testing.
At the same time, she is anxious to do great things in her senior year in high school and is happy to be home.
“I just kind of want to get back to my normal life,” she said, adding that “my friends here have been fantastic.” She wants to get back to her mock-trial team, participating in school plays, maybe playing some volleyball.
Caffeine and really salty foods seem to help her symptoms, so a friend brought her some Mexican food to snack on, she said with a wide smile.
More travel is likely to be scheduled, she said of her love of adventure, adding that the flight from Lihu‘e to Chile consumes 32 hours.
Another form of consumption has been the family’s out-of-pocket expenses for travel, medications and treatment, they said.
While the Mayfields’ Hawai‘i Medical Services Association coverage pays for some of Christy Mayfield’s expenses, it does not pay for travel and has a sizable co-payment on the chemotherapy drugs which cost over $2,000 for a five-day supply, Janet Mayfield said.
For that reason, Janet Mayfield’s bunko-playing girlfriends have organized a fundraising concert in October, featuring the Blonde Boys and the New Used Cars Band.
The event, featuring Dickie Chang as master of ceremonies, is from 1-5 p.m., Oct. 25, at the Kilohana lu‘au pavilion in Puhi. There will be dancing, a silent auction and lucky-number drawings.
Bunko is a dice game that Laurie Weber and Sharron Weber of Tire Warehouse and several dozen of their closest female friends gather to play regularly.
The unsolicited fundraiser is touching to Janet Mayfield, she said.
“The friendship is overwhelming. … People will go to great lengths to help.”
Janet Mayfield said she is “grateful” that Laurie Weber, who is in charge of the fundraiser, Lorraine Wichman and the other bunko girls wanted to do this for her daughter.
• Paul C. Curtis, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or pcurtis@kauaipubco.com
