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Beating the Odds
Kathleen Rydberg Donlon, 35, is used to beating all the odds. Diagnosed with a rare liver cancer in 1986 when she was 12 years old, Kathleen was never afraid.
“Dying was never an option,” she says emphatically. There were only a handful of pediatric hepatoblastoma cases in the United States at the time. Kathleen was one of three who survived.
Within hours of her diagnosis, Kathleen was admitted to the hospital in Los Angeles, more than an hour from the family’s Oxnard, California, home. A hospital liaison told Kathleen’s mother about the nearby Ronald McDonald House. Reluctant to leave her daughter, Kathleen’s mother agreed to give the House a try. Two decades later, she still recalls that feeling of entering a warm, welcoming haven.
Because Kathleen’s tumor encompassed 90 percent of her liver, removing it surgically wasn’t possible. She began experimental chemotherapy. It worked. Four months later, the tumor covered just 20 percent of her liver. Doctors removed almost all of it through surgery, and Kathleen began another four-month course of chemotherapy. She has been in remission ever since. “The doctors saved my life, and so did the Ronald McDonald House,” Kathleen says. “The House was a sanctuary for us. It made it possible for my family to stay close and keep my spirits up. That made my treatment so much easier and much more successful.”
Kathleen’s doctors weren’t optimistic that she’d be able to have children as an adult. She beat those odds, too. Although Kathleen’s daughter, Julia, is now 10 years old, her family still refers to her as the miracle baby. Kathleen and her husband Sean don’t take their good fortune for granted. “Every day, I thank God for this child,” Kathleen says.
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