Boston College grad celebrates ‘double graduation’ from school and cancer treatment
When Boston College graduate Woody Hubbell tossed his cap at graduation last month, he also celebrated the end of three long years of cancer treatment that all started when he was a BC sophomore.
In the fall of 2017, Hubbell started feeling lightheaded after working out, he bruised easily and kept getting bloody noses, so he went to the health center on campus and got a blood draw.
“The doctor that works there told me he felt my blood counts were similar to that of a leukemia patient,” Hubbell, 23, told the Herald.
Hubbell said a BC police officer escorted him down to Brigham and Women’s Hospital right away where doctors confirmed he did in fact have acute lymphoblastic leukemia, an aggressive cancer of white blood cells. Hubbell stayed inpatient at Brigham and Women’s for a month.
“What I least looked forward to was calling my parents and telling them,” said Hubbell, who is from Minnesota and had never lived away from home before college.
Luckily, Dr. Marlise Luskin, a physician in the adult leukemia program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s was on call that night, and even grew up in the same hometown as Hubbell. She spoke with Hubbell’s mom and brought him some comfort.
“It felt meant to be that I was there to take care of him while he’s away from home,” said Luskin.
Luskin said acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL, used to be fatal, but now the majority of children diagnosed with the cancer can be cured.
Part of the ALL success story is using pediatric treatment protocols on adults like Hubbell. After staying at Brigham and Women’s, he started outpatient treatment at Dana-Farber five days a week. Hubbell enrolled in a clinical trial, and was out of school for all of 2018.
The course of his treatment, which was the most intense in the first year according to Luskin, involved an immunotherapy drug and chemotherapy via pill and infusion. Hubbell said he lost his hair, and felt quite ill for a period of months.
“That was probably the toughest part as far as side effects goes,” Hubbell said.
Luskin said, “Whenever he encountered a side effect, he found ways to work around that and move forward.”
She added, “What was remarkable about Woody is his ability to always be the positive light and not let this stop him. He never said ‘why me?’ he never complained, he just pushed himself to do as much as he could.”
Hubbell said Luskin and the Dana-Farber team became family, which was, “a huge contributor to staying positive.”
Hubbell pushed forward, got back on track with school and finally reached two amazing milestones at once just last month. He had his last cancer treatment and graduation ceremony in the same week. Luskin, calling it “the perfect graduation story,” said the timing was pure coincidence.
“It was kind of a wild week of having my final treatment, saying goodbye to my doctors and nurses … and then I had a week of straight fun activities and then we ended with graduation on the following Monday,” Hubbell said.
Both Luskin and Hubbell said it was a bittersweet goodbye.
“You feel proud and excited and sad that I won’t get to see him as frequently as I did,” Luskin said.
Hubbell is in remission and moved back to Minnesota where he started a job in investment banking.
“I feel great. It feels cool to see how far I’ve come from being inpatient in the hospital and now I’m fully done and out on my own,” Hubbell said.
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3uZqELX
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