Ex-classmates, touched by cancer, form lasting bond

Five years ago, Katie Hathaway was out doing some Christmas shopping when she ran into a classmate of hers from her Galvin Middle School days, Michelle Loughran, and her heart broke for her when she learned that Michelle had cancer.

Katie Hathaway and Michelle Loughran

Michelle, still very much in shock herself, had been told just days earlier that she had multiple myeloma — a type of incurable blood cancer — and had been given an initial prognosis of two years to live.

What Katie didn’t know at the time was that a similarly frightening disease, leukemia, had been lurking inside her oldest son Ryan, then a freshman at Xaverian Brothers High School.

Needless to say, the diagnosis that spring would consume the Hathaways’ lives as Ryan underwent a battery of medical procedures, including an eventual hip replacement surgery after the cancer destroyed the bones in his hips.

Michelle, meanwhile, moved forward with her own treatment protocol, beginning with a nine-month course of chemotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant procedure that had to be stopped and then started again after she contracted a MRSA infection that nearly cost her her life. Through it all, she had the unwavering support of her husband, Brian, as well as her twin children, Matt and Kirsten, and numerous family members and friends.

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Credit their friendship to Facebook and frozen yogurt.

The way Michelle now remembers it, Kirsten began running into Katie at the Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt shop in Cobb’s Corner, where Kirsten now works. Kirsten would ask about Ryan, who by then had gone into remission and had transferred to Canton High School, and she would also share updates about her mother’s condition, which had improved over a two-year period before a sudden relapse in the winter of 2011.

“It was Valentine’s Day and I got a call on my cell phone that I was reactive again,” recalled Michelle, who swears she could write an entire book about her medical journey over the past five years.

Eventually, her symptoms, including bone pain and neuropathy in her hands and feet, became so severe that she became housebound. Encouraged by her husband, Michelle turned to Facebook, and before she knew it many of her old friends and former classmates had started “coming out of the woodwork” to express their concern and offer whatever help that they could provide.

She also decided to reach out to Katie on Facebook at the urging of her daughter, and over the past few months the two former classmates have become fast friends — online as well as in the flesh.

“It’s a beautiful bond that’s developed between them,” remarked Brian, who noticed a change in his wife when she started going on Facebook. “I can’t even put into words how much it has helped Michelle.”

Michelle was recently told by her doctors that she will be on chemotherapy for the rest of her life — an expensive, painful, and time-consuming proposition that involves making weekly trips to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Katie now takes her in once a month, and the two share laughs as well as tears while also connecting with other patients going through similar ordeals.

“The whole experience is sort of heartwarming,” said Katie, “because people are so connected by this horrendous thing going on in their lives. And they’re all facing their own diseases with such courage and grace.”

Katie has also made meals for the Loughrans in an effort to ease their burden on the days  that Michelle has to go in for treatment. She recently brought over a full roast beef dinner; another time she surprised them with lasagna.

“We came home from the hospital to a lasagna and salad sitting on our kitchen counter,” said Michelle. “We had no idea who had brought it, and it was Katie bringing us food because she knew I had a long day at Dana Farber — because she’s been through those long days herself.”

Michelle said Katie has astounded her with her acts of kindness, while Katie insists that her gestures are “not really a big deal at all” and that her friendship with Michelle is its own reward.

“I’m glad to be there and to be a friend, and really it’s easy,” Katie said. “She’s so much fun to be around. She’s just a sweet person and I think she’s a really brave person.”

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If Michelle ever gets around to writing that book about her medical journey, there will be no shortage of harrowing tales, although hopefully it ends with a “happily ever after.”

Already they’ve been through “hell and back,” she said, with complications ranging from a compression fracture in her back to a thyroid issue to a nasty bout with the flu.

Admittedly, one of the hardest parts of battling cancer thus far has been losing her hair, which has happened twice over the past two years.

“When I started losing my hair [for the first time], I just lost it,” she said. “I went from being a single mom who did everything for her kids to someone who was married who couldn’t drive and couldn’t do anything — and now all of a sudden I could tell I had cancer.”

The strain that her illness has put on the family finances has been equally painful; her medications cost thousands and there have even been times where she has had to skip a treatment because they simply did not have the money to pay for it.

Michelle said the holiday season is always especially hard for her. “It feels horrible that I can’t give my kids what their friends get for Christmas,” she said, “and my husband and I haven’t given each other a Christmas gift since we’ve been married.”

Yet she also knows that she has a “wonderful and supportive” family, including two selfless kids who could not care less about the latest gadget or fashions, and an “amazing” husband — the kind of man who would plan a surprise birthday party for her and then surprise her again with a renewal of wedding vows, as he did for her 50^th this past October.

“He wrote on a piece of paper how he felt about me and how I don’t realize how strong I am,” recalled Michelle, fighting back tears.

And there are so many others who have been there for her as well — her mother and her mother-in-law,  her friends and Brian’s friends from Canton, and people like Katie.

“She’s just been wonderful,” Michelle said of her new friend. “She has her job as a nurse and she has her own family to take care of, but she just gives her heart out to everybody.”

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Posted by Jay Turner on Dec 12 2013. Filed under Features. Both comments and pings are currently closed.