Carrying on after cancer and treatments
'Many reasonsto be glad...'
BY DEBRA PRESSEY
NEWS-GAZETTE STAFF WRITER
Published DECEMBER 1, 2004
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RANTOUL – Inside her wallet, 20-year-old Jessica Tremper of Rantoul keeps a precious family picture showing her parents, her older sister and herself in the spring of 1994.
She and her father look at that picture now and marvel at what they didn't know at the time it was taken, but found out just a week later – that a grapefruit-size tumor was pushing on Jessica's brain.
"You look at her and she was just a normal 9-year-old," says her dad, Mark Tremper, on a recent morning after driving Jessica to her classes at Parkland College.
Today, the Trempers view 1994 as the year that forever changed life as they knew it, especially for Jessica, who 10 years later is still dealing with the effects of the intensive chemotherapy and radiation treatments that saved her life.
Mark Tremper says there were signs before the discovery of the tumor that worried him and his wife Bobbi, with the main one being that Jessica had three very painful headaches in a month. Jessica even remembers how much it hurt when her mother tried to brush her hair.
The first doctor they saw told them the headaches were probably the result of school stress, he said.
The Trempers wanted a second opinion, and took Jessica to a Christie Clinic neurologist, who quickly ran her through a series of tests and found the brain tumor. On the very same day, Mark Tremper said, the neurologist called him and told him to alert his wife, pack a suitcase and get Jessica to Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis fast.
Jessica remembers emerging from her cancer surgeries and treatments to return to a school where she was considered different – the one who had cancer – and the other children were sometimes cruel.
The hairpiece she had glued to her head so hopefully to cover up her hair loss was tugged on by some of the children, who also made fun of her body that had swelled up as a result of glandular damage caused by her tumor and radiation.
In high school, boys overlooked her sweet smile, and didn't ask her out on dates.
"It was because of how I looked," she said.
The treatments and disease also took a toll on her body in other ways. Her height growth stopped at 5 feet 1 inch, and she was left without a field of vision below her nose. There are also some remaining gaps in her thought process that hinder, among other things, her ability to drive a car safely.
"I seem to space out a lot," she said.
Jessica said she tried driving around Rantoul for several years, with her dad watching over her and the road from the passenger seat. But she got into a couple of accidents when she tried to drive alone – including one in which she totaled the car on her first trip to Parkland by herself, she said.
The cancer treatments have also left Jessica with some learning difficulties, especially with math, though she said she's determined to keep working hard and graduate from college.
Unfortunately, the degree she needs to become a child life specialist – a field she wants to enter so she can work with children as sick as she once was – requires math courses that are now too difficult for her, she said.
So she's completed a certified nursing assistant course at Parkland, and is continuing work on her degree, with hopes of pursuing a career in hospital social work, she said.
Despite everything that has happened in her life, Jessica has many reasons to be glad she's still around, she says.
One of them is a new man in her life.
Jessica says that when she met her fiance, Jason, a fellow Parkland student, in August, it was "like magic," and they are now planning to marry in 2006.
"He accepts me. It was a totally awesome feeling," she said. "I never thought anyone would."
Jessica has also written a short book in journal form called "To the Moon and Back" that describes her experience with cancer, and she says she hopes to get it published one day.
This year, she and her family celebrated a big landmark: Jessica marked her 10th year of free of cancer, though she'll still have to undergo lifelong monitoring.
Jessica's mother says she can now look back at the whole ordeal and see that it brought the family closer together.
"People talk about stress all the time, their jobs or money or all that, but if you don't have each other and your own simple life, you really don't have anything at all," she added.
Dealing with their daughter's illness also strengthened their religious faith, both parents say.
One time Mark Tremper particularly remembers was when Jessica was set to undergo her second surgery, and he completely fell apart at the Ronald McDonald House in Indianapolis, where he and his wife were staying.
"Why my kid?" he says he kept asking.
And then, he recalls, he suddenly felt a comfort and a presence as solid as a hand on his shoulder, and he knew with certainty that he and his family were far from alone.
"There's a difference between believing in God and knowing he's there," he adds.
You can reach Debra Pressey at (217) 351-5229 or via e-mail at dpressey@news-gazette.com.
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