Issue date: 4/25/05 Section: News

Media Credit: steven knapp AGAINST ALL ODDS - Stacy Greenlaw fills out a survey in her math class Friday. Despite her battle with cancer, she still maintains her full-time student status.

At 8:15 a.m. in a studio classroom at the University of Maine's Class of 1944 Hall, walls of waving mirrors reflect students dancing in synchronized movements. The dancers are quiet, but the beat of instructional music and shifting feet bellow off the metal ceiling. One girl stands out in the crowd, a yellow Livestrong bracelet wrapped around her wrist and a pink bandanna covering her head. Lacy Greenlaw has more steps than Ellen DeGeneres when dancing and more to think about than four-day chemotherapy treatments. She's got school, dancing, cooking and friends on her mind.

Chemo, Greenlaw will tell you, has one great benefit: She no longer has to think about shaving her legs.

Greenlaw's cancer was diagnosed April 9, 2004, just days before her 19th birthday. Severe lower back pain led her to seek treatment. After two misdiagnoses, a morning MRI discovered a grapefruit-sized mass in her pelvis. Ewings sarcoma is a rare form of bone cancer that generally forms in the pelvic bones, in the middle of the long bones of the legs or arms, or in the chest near the ribs. It is caused by chromosomal changes that occur after birth.

In the first week of May, Greenlaw began two chemotherapy regimens. The four-day treatment requires Greenlaw to remain in the hospital. Though treatments are scheduled every three weeks, they are performed about every four weeks when her white blood-cell count is high enough to fight infection effectively. Blood work is done weekly to determine the count. Another treatment takes just two days and is performed as an outpatient procedure.

Greenlaw is currently in cycle 12 of 14 scheduled chemo treatments. Chemotherapy drugs decrease the chance the tumor will spread or grow in other areas of the body, such as the lungs or bone marrow. She hopes to complete the treatments before the beginning of her junior year.

In September 2004, Greenlaw began radiation treatments while starting her second year at UMaine, where she majors in communication sciences and disorders. For 15 minutes everyday, Greenlaw received radiation to reduce the size of the tumor. In December, radiation treatments ended, and the mass is currently about one inch in diameter. Greenlaw has a CT scan every two weeks to monitor the tumor.

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