Quest for a cure
Cancer victims tell amazing stories of survival

Kathleen Houlinhan, 60, and Michael Sullivan, 65, are both lung cancer survivors. The two began smoking in high school due to cultural influences and experimentation. Houlihan noted, "smoking used to be everywhere." Sullivan smoked for 50 years before quitting smoking while Houlihan quit after 26 years. Sullivan had surgery to remove his left lung in July, 2007, and said that since that time, he has had "no desire for one [cigarette] [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff writer

GALLUP — There is no cancer from which someone has not been cured. That hopeful message is one that inspired Gallup resident Kathleen Houlihan when she battled lung cancer in 1999, and it’s a message she continues to share with other cancer patients today.

Houlihan and recent cancer patient Michael Sullivan talked with the Independent about their years as smokers, their diagnosis with lung cancer, their fight against the disease, and their messages for both smokers and nonsmokers alike.

For smokers, the message is twofold. Quit smoking now, and take responsibility for your health. Quit as a gift to yourself. Quit as part of a New Year’s resolution as Houlihan did. Quit in the middle of a medical crisis like Sullivan. But just quit. And then, as Houlihan advocates, do everything possible to “tip the scales” in your favor: get medical screenings, seek a second opinion if necessary, eat healthier, exercise, pray, get in touch with your spirituality, and advocate for your own health.

As for nonsmokers, the message is not so different. As Houlihan noted, lung cancer doesn’t just strike tobacco users. According to cancer research, exposure to radon — an invisible, odorless radioactive gas that is present in many U.S. homes — is the second leading cause of lung cancer and is believed to be the No. 1 cause of lung cancer among nonsmokers. Secondhand smoke is the third leading cause of lung cancer.

Images of smokers
Houlihan, 60, and Sullivan, 65, both started smoking in high school, grew up in homes where one or both parents were smokers, and as teens they turned to smoking to relax and socialize with others.

“At that time it was very cheap,” Sullivan recalled, “it was about 10 cents a pack.”

Back then, they also agreed, smoking was everywhere in American culture. Images of smokers filled the television and movie screens of the 1950s and 1960s. Houlihan, a retired university linguist, remembers smoking in her college classes as a student and later smoking in classes as an instructor.

After 26 years of smoking, Houlihan said she quit with a New Year’s resolution in 1991. She hadn’t really seriously tried to quit before, but it was a part of other healthier lifestyle changes she was implementing, like improvements in nutrition and exercise.

“It seemed more and more risky and stupid, so I wanted to quit,” she explained.

Therefore, when she experienced a pain in her left shoulder seven years later, a pain that radiated down her left arm, she accepted her doctor’s opinion that it was a muscle injury. Yet his recommendations of Ibuprofen, stretching exercises, and physical therapy didn’t help. An orthopedic surgeon later suggested an X-ray, but Houlihan ignored that since she believed a muscle injury was at the root of the problem.

But when she began coughing up blood in February 1999, Houlihan was back in the doctor’s office. A month later, after a chest X-ray and a biopsy, Houlihan was diagnosed with lung cancer — adenocarcinoma, Stage IIIB.

Houlihan’s next challenge was finding a cancer treatment that offered her hope. She was living in Espanola at the time, she said, and her local oncologist offered her only the grim and depressing prediction of a 20 percent survival rate.

A friend, however, told her about the Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Houlihan and her husband checked out the CTCA’s Web site and called the center’s facility in Tulsa, Okla., on a Sunday. By Monday evening the couple had checked into the center, and by Tuesday morning Houlihan was beginning her tests and treatment.

Houlihan looks back on that decision to seek another opinion as the beginning of hope for a life after cancer. In addition to successfully treating Houlihan’s lung cancer, staff members of CTCA encouraged her to “whoop it up” by enjoying life and pursuing long-neglected interests in singing and painting.

Since 2001 Houlihan has volunteered with the toll-free Bloch Cancer Hotline, which matches cancer patients with volunteers who have survived that same type of cancer. In addition, Houlihan’s story is currently featured on the home page of the CTCA’s Web site.

Roller-coaster ride
Sullivan’s story is much different. Recently retired as the facility manager at Gallup’s Sacred Heart Retreat Center, he just completed his cancer treatment at the New Mexico Cancer Center-Gallup. Sullivan’s struggle wasn’t finding a good cancer treatment center, his struggle was to come to terms with the disease of lung cancer and to quit smoking.

During the 50 years he smoked, Sullivan explained, he was in denial about his own addiction even as the disease of lung cancer took his father and twin brother.

“It won’t happen to me,” he recalled telling himself. In spite of his internal denial, Sullivan did try to quit smoking many times through a variety of methods.

Sullivan’s pack-a-day habit finally came to a dramatic halt this past summer. In June, while Sullivan was being treated for other medical problems, his lung cancer was detected. A month later, his left lung was removed.

Sullivan compares the fear he felt when informed about his cancer diagnosis and the ensuing up and down emotional and physical journey of his surgery and cancer treatment to a roller-coaster ride.

Receiving “extreme unction” — commonly called last rites — was a sobering experience for Sullivan, a devout Catholic. It was also an eye-opening experience to see the large number of young adults in their 20s and 30s, Sullivan explained, who are battling various forms of cancer at the Gallup center.

Now with his final chemotherapy treatment recently behind him, Sullivan is focusing on his recovery and his own life after cancer.