It was out of nowhere, she said. I thought it was supposed to the best year, and then you get totally blindsided and brought down.

You have purple glasses and I have cancer, Meghan Brown says. Its OK.

Meghan, 21, doesnt look like she has cancer. She has long brown wavy hair and a radiant smile on her face.

But she does have cancer, a very rare form of cancer called atypical carcinoid that affects less than 1 percent of all cancer patients.

Birthday brings unexpected surprise

Three and a half years ago, Meghan was a senior in high school. She was the captain of her swim team.

In December of that year, Megan turned 18. On her birthday she found out she had cancer.

It was out of nowhere, she said. I thought it was supposed to the best year, and then you get totally blindsided and brought down.

Meghan went into the doctor that December with a cold. Meghan had a history of pneumonia, so the doctors performed a chest x-ray. They immediately saw something suspicious, but told her not to worry.

The next day, they took an MRI. At that point, they were aware something was wrong, and told Meghan that they needed to do a biopsy. The day after the biopsy, Meghan started having severe chest pain. The biopsy results revealed that Meghan has cancer. The doctors were still unsure what kind of cancer she had. Meghan spent a month waiting and wondering.

It was all just a whirlwind

In January, she found out she has an atypical carcinoid tumor the size of a golf ball on her heart. Meghan was instantly thrown into chemotherapy treatment.

Meghan spent the rest of the year home-schooled in order to graduate on time.

It was all just a whirlwind, she said. It came out of nowhere.

In August of that year, Meghan started college at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. She had always thought of college as this place of extreme understanding, yet she was not ready to share this part of herself with her peers. The chemotherapy made Meghans hair fall out, so she wore a wig.

It was hard being a freshman in the dorms � I slept, ate, lived with my wig on, said Meghan. Even her roommate was unaware that Meghan has cancer. Meghan wore her wig to the shower.

Even when Meghans hair grew back some, she still wore the wig. She was afraid to take it off, afraid that it would be obvious that she was a cancer (Meghan makes the quotation gesture when she tells me this) patient. She found support in her communications class; they knew she had cancer, and encouraged her to take off the wig.

Slowly, Meghan started coming to class without her wig. The feedback she received was overwhelmingly positive, but it was incredibly difficult.

I was proud that I survived it, but I was ashamed that I was different, said Meghan.

What Meghan wanted more than anything was to be a normal college student. She wanted to have to worry about exams and reading assignments instead of worrying about spending four hours in the hospital or taking white blood cell shots to keep her from getting sick.

After her first semester at UW-L, Meghan decided to transfer to UWM to be closer to doctors. It was while at UWM that she felt the most comfortable to be herself.

Ill never forget � I saw a girl walking with her head shaved and she didnt look like she was a patient, she said. She looked very artsy, very eclectic, and had tons of jewelry. I noticed when she passed, no one looked at her. I thought if she can do it, I should be able to.

Meghan found a pre-existing support network at UWM because many of her high school friends attended the university and she also felt that enough time had passed since her diagnosis that she was completely OK with it.

We thought I was done

Meghan was supposed to undergo two years of chemotherapy treatment. But after four rounds of treatment (three months), her tumor, once considered to be the size of a golf ball was now the size of one-and-a-half large grapefruits. Meghan went into the hospital with chest pains, and doctors discovered that the tumor was unresponsive to the chemotherapy and was starting to push into her heart.

Meghan must have surgery. It lasted for 14 hours, during which the doctors removed the tumor and gave her a plastic aorta and plastic pericardium (a double-walled sac containing the heart and blood vessels). The surgery left Meghan with a two-foot scar down her chest.

Meghan went a year-and-a-half without needing any treatment. She had regular checkups, but it seemed the cancer went away.

We thought I was done, she said.

But nine months after her surgery, the cancer returned. This time, however, it spread to her lungs, kidneys and spine. Meghan had another surgery to remove tumors from her chest and starts radiation.

It was much harder the second time around, Meghan said. The first time around you dont really know what to expect. Its scary because of that, but there is ignorance in bliss.

She was scared. She hadnt expected to have to go through this again.

I thought you did chemo, you did surgery and it was over, said Meghan. You survive it. You finally get to move on and have a normal life.

Meghan got radiation treatments from October to December of 2006 at Columbia St. Marys across the street from UWM. She received treatment everyday and the location was perfect.

I could walk across the street, cover it up with a t-shirt, go back to class and be a normal college student, she said.

But the radiation didnt work.

For more of Meghans story, see next weeks edition.

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