MAKING THE BEST OF IT : Molli Mullen Helps Herself and Others in Fight With Cancer

Molli Mullen begins her last chemotherapy treatment today.

Just as sure as the Adriamycin drips into her bloodstream over the next 48 hours, she knows she will feel lousy exactly 10 days from now. She will be lightheaded, cranky and virtually unable to move. The fuzz she has for hair will fall out again and sores will develop inside her mouth. She has done this long enough to know the routine and the after-effects from the treatment that could save her life.

She pitched a seven-inning softball game 5 1/2 months ago, April 24, for Newport Harbor High School. In her second season as a first-team all-league player, all she could think about was finishing as quickly as possible because of the pain shooting through her neck. It ended with her hyperventilating and in tears.

Two days later, doctors removed three cancerous lymph nodes from the right side of her neck. Within a week, they removed another swollen lymph node on the other side to verify that it, too, was malignant.

It was that quick. Kind of like a fastball up and in.

Now, Mullen is in the latter stages of beating this rare disease. A little older, a lot wiser and certainly no longer a child.

Her dad, Mike, softball coach at Newport Harbor the last four seasons, is convinced his daughter’s years of competition, from youth soccer to high school softball and field hockey, has helped.

Helped her battle cancer. Helped her get through the anguish of her mother’s death after surgery last December.

Though many of the illnesses and accidents that have befallen high school coaches and athletes the last year have had tragic conclusions, Mullen’s story isn’t about death.

“I never think about it,” she says.

She need only walk down the third-floor hallway at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, pulling her I.V. behind her. It is the cancer ward.

What does she think when she looks into the rooms of bald children and parents wearing surgical masks?

“How lucky I am.”

Her dad is walking alongside. “Her glass is three-quarters full,” he says.

She disagrees. “I’m luckier than that. My glass is overflowing.”

And that’s the way she has approached the battle of her life.

*

She took CHOC under her wing and unwittingly became a spokesperson. She is articulate, funny, expressive. She took to patients and hospital personnel and became a dear friend. She is kind, playful, interested. But she no longer takes life for granted. She is grateful, humble, reflective.

“I see things differently now,” Mullen says. “I don’t worry about little things anymore.

“My story’s nothing. There are kids in there. . . . I’ve cruised through this thing compared to other kids. There are some phenomenal stories there on the third floor.”

Mullen could have stayed in her room and read the cards and letters she received from softball players at Corona del Mar, Santa Margarita, Estancia and Irvine. She could have felt sorry for herself. She could have written thank you notes that she’s still planning to get to. But she didn’t.

Instead, she wandered the hallways, once on roller-skates, looking for fun in all the right places. Mariah Gill, 7, lights up when she sees Mullen because she knows they will paint their fingernails together. Mariah has had one affliction after another: Brain tumor, gastrointestinal bleeding, shingles, bacterial infection, partial hearing loss. Twice, her mother was told Mariah wouldn’t make it through the night.

“Molli’s presence is huge,” says Kristen Gill, Mariah’s mom. “We like to hang with people who have a good attitude. There are huge survival rates for people with good attitudes.”

Who is Mariah’s favorite friend?

“Molli,” she answers from her wheelchair.

“It’s just as good for me to play with the little kids, as important in my healing process, as I hope it is in theirs,” says Mullen, who turns 18 one week from today.

Apart from two high school friends who visit her at home, Mullen’s social circle the last 5 1/2 months is largely dedicated to children not yet old enough for third grade.

The dynamics of those relationships will change if Mullen attends Goldey Beacom, an NAIA college in Wilmington, Del., that has offered a partial athletic scholarship. She wants to go someplace where she can play softball. Mullen hasn’t deluded herself into thinking she’s a blue-chipper, but she’s smart enough to know there are opportunities out there for athletes outside the Division I level.

Unlike Goldey Beacom, an NAIA regional power, Newport Harbor’s softball team is just another so-so team. The Sailors played to stay out of last place in the Sea View League last year. After beating Corona del Mar to do so, players filed into the hospital in uniform to share their victory.

“Parents, coaches and players get caught up in the win-loss thing and they lose sight of why they’re out there,” Mike Mullen says. “To me, the reason we play high school sports is to build the kids’ egos, make them feel better about themselves. You can do that whether you’ve won or lost. That’s really the life lesson.

“There are very few full-ride scholarship kids, but there’s a whole lot who will hopefully go on to a successful and happy life; if you’ve helped them achieve that, then you’ve given them far more than any score will ever give them.”

*

Nicholas Azad, 4, doesn’t know that Molli Mullen is a good field hockey player who wants the Southern Section to let her dress for a game and sit on the bench this fall. He doesn’t know Mullen cannot play because she is enrolled in her independent studies classes through Monte Vista High School, a continuation school not affiliated with the CIF. He has never heard Mullen tell a reporter, “You put that in the paper, that the CIF won’t let the little girl with cancer play field hockey,” or confess that she couldn’t play for more than a minute even if she were allowed.

But Nicholas has been entertained for hours by the little girl with cancer who walks his Slinky dog with him in the hallways.

“Molli has made the best of an awful situation,” says Shelley Azad, whose middle child has leukemia. “Molli’s so energetic and full of life. She just bubbles with energy and you just know she has to feel like crap sometimes.”

Maybe, but Nicholas would never know. “I think that she’s sweet. She’s beautiful and she’s nice.”

That’s the recurring theme on the hospital floors where Mullen walks. Nurses and secretaries talk about her being so genuine, so funny, so willing to pull a prank. So truly beautiful.

What kind of impact has Mullen made? “Even some of the kids will look at the [room assignment] board and say, ‘Oh, Molli’s here!’ ” says nursing assistant Norma Mendez of Costa Mesa, recalling the five days a month Mullen is an in-patient.

William “Willie” Hinton, 5, of Costa Mesa made a handwritten sign with explicit instructions for all who dare enter his room: “No one can come in here except for Molli.”

“Befriending people, like Mariah, has been her inspiration,” says Maggie Mullen, Molli’s 14-year-old sister who is a freshman at Newport Harbor. “Since she has gotten cancer, I’ve admired her even more. I’ve seen her bad and I’ve seen her good, and her bad isn’t that bad. She’ll turn a negative into a positive.”

Maggie was 13 when her mom, Cindi, died from complications after ulcer surgery on Dec. 29, 1995.

“I want to feel sorry for myself at times,” Maggie says, “but I can’t mope around because my dad and my sister have it a lot harder. My dad has to work every day, come home and make dinner. All I have to do is go to school and do sports [field hockey, soccer, badminton].”

Molli and Mike say Maggie has it toughest, though.

“Maggie and Cindi were real close, and Molli had the advantage of having had a relationship with her mom during those tough adolescent years that Maggie never will be able to have,” Mike says.

So Molli’s role changed in the four months between her mom’s death and her own diagnosis. “I had to become the mother of the house,” she says. “I take care of the nagging now.” She says that with a laugh. Somehow, she manages to laugh a lot.

The reason? “Molli’s more aware that there are other people out there with a more difficult life than her’s,” Maggie says, “and because of that, she has to keep on going.”

It’s not Molli Mullen’s first exposure to cancer. Her childhood best friend, Erin Vallely, was diagnosed with cancer when they were 9. She visited Erin on Sundays at CHOC. Mullen was 12 when Erin died. That’s how Mullen first became aware of CHOC, and that environment influenced her decision to be treated there instead of at an adult hospital.

*

Mullen has become a CHOC celebrity since beginning her in-patient/out-patient treatments in May. She created a design that will be reproduced as one of CHOC’s Christmas cards, and she has made various presentations, such as the night she gave Angel pitcher Mike James a stuffed “CHOCO Bear” at Anaheim Stadium for donating tickets to the hospital. She loves the Angels and baseball. She also admires Dodger pitcher Scott Radinsky, who also has overcome Hodgkin’s disease, and Brett Butler, who had the same surgery Mullen had.

She has spoken at departmental meetings at the hospital and before CHOC supporters at Planet Hollywood. She was supposed to speak to students at an elementary school on Friday, but was too ill to do so. Another reality check.

She organized her own publicity fund-raiser over the weekend for Sunday’s CHOC CommunityWalk at Orange County Performing Arts Center and got several area high schools to commit to participate.

“Whatever I can do to help,” Mullen says. “CHOC has done so much for me.”

It has certainly given her perspective. Coming on the heels of the unexpected death of her mother, maybe too much perspective.

What did she previously take for granted? “Everything. Family. Everyone does until they have something like this happen.”

Now, she’s grateful for everything. New friends, old memories, having a cancer that she has an 80% chance of beating.

“No matter what it is, I don’t like to lose,” says Mullen, who plans to return to Newport Harbor in January. “I’m very competitive, to put it lightly. If I had just been given a 10% chance, I think I would live just to prove those doctors wrong. That’s just the kind of person I am.”

Her father says Mullen has turned recovery into a game. “You can tell she has taken that competitive spirit and focused it on fighting this disease,” he says.

He knows, deep down, his daughter pitching seven innings next spring like she did in April is a long shot. “But if she can pitch reasonably well for a couple of innings by the end of the season, I’ll be ecstatic.”

So the Mullens pray Molli won’t need further treatment. To be considered cancer-free, she must be in remission for five years. There’s still a 50% chance she will need radiation treatment, but the family keeps its fingers crossed that the hospital trips will be more goodwill in nature. She will definitely return to CHOC of her own volition, though.

“I’m going to go there as much as I can,” Mullen says. “I think it’s important for the kids to see other kids who have survived and who have gone on with their lives afterward.”

Molli Mullen begins her last chemotherapy treatment today. She can’t wait for tomorrow.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Hodgkin’s Disease

Type: Hodgkin’s disease is a rare cancer of the lymphatic system, which helps the body fight off disease. It accounts for less than 1% of all cases of cancer in the United States.

What it is: White blood cells, which kill, break down, engulf or otherwise disarm foreign material, become abnormal and ineffective; they multiply, crowding out and impairing the functioning of normal white blood cells through the lymphatic system. Essentially, it breaks down the body’s immune system.

Cause: The direct cause is not known. Brothers and sisters of the same gender as patients with Hodgkin’s disease have a greater than normal chance of developing the disease, but there is no apparent hereditary pattern and is not contagious.

Signs and symptoms: The most common early sign is painless swelling of lymph nodes, most often those on either side of the neck, but sometimes those in the groin or armpit. Those glands can become swollen as a result of other infections or illnesses, but a physician should be consulted if the swelling persists longer than a few weeks. Other symptoms include persistent fatigue, recurrent high fever, sweating at night, severe itching, pain in the back, legs or abdomen, anemia, nausea or vomiting, loss of weight, bone pain.

Who is at risk: Peak concentration of the 7,400 annual cases of Hodgkin’s disease is in people 15-34. People over 55 are the other largely at-risk group.

Treatment: Early-stage Hodgkin’s disease is treated over a period of weeks with super-voltage radiation to all involved nodes, adjacent regions and nearby connecting nodes. In its intermediate stage, treatment might be radiotherapy or chemotherapy alone. In its advanced stage, chemotherapy might be used with radiotherapy.

Survival rates: Hodgkin’s disease can be arrested in about 90% of cases diagnosed in early stages; more than 50% of those diagnosed in later stages can obtain 10 years or more of productive life after treatment.

Source: Leukemia Society of America,

National Cancer Institute