Alum watches son, 2004 ISU grad, battle cancer

by Susan Thompson
Agriculture Communications Service
Iowa State University

It’s not unusual for college students to take more than four years to complete a bachelor’s degree. Philip Lehtola, who graduates in December from Iowa State University with a degree in electrical engineering, is one of those students.

What is unusual for Lehtola is that it didn’t take him longer, given the cancer diagnosis he faced in the fall of 2002.

Philip’s mother, Carol Lehtola, an Iowa State alum in agricultural and biosystems engineering, is recognized as one of the nation’s leading farm safety specialists. She faced one of the greatest fears of a parent -- being unable to keep her own child safe.

Philip Lehtola is shown at Cancer Survivors Park in downtown Indianapolis. The picture was taken just after his cancer specialist at the Indiana University Hospital said he didn't need to see him any more.

Philip grew up in Cedar Rapids. He spent two years at Kirkwood Community College before enrolling at Iowa State in the fall of 2001.

Carol grew up in northwest Minnesota. In 1973, she earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering at South Dakota State University. Nearly 15 years later, she returned to the academic world, earning a master’s in 1988 and a doctorate in 1992, both in Iowa State’s agricultural and biosystems engineering department.

Carol was an adjunct professor at Iowa State for two years. She also worked at the University of Iowa through the Iowa Center for Agricultural Safety and Health. In 1996, she accepted the position of extension ag safety specialist at the University of Florida in Gainesville. She’s also an associate professor in the agricultural and biological engineering department there.

Back in Iowa, Philip was doing what young men do. Enjoying life, lifting weights, spending time with friends, taking classes.

Carol Lehtola was the recipient of the 2004 Engineering Safety Award sponsored by the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies. The award honors outstanding contributions to the advancement of agricultural safety engineering in research, design, education or promotion. The award was presented Aug. 2 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers in Ottawa, Ontario.

In the fall of 2002, Philip developed a persistent cough that came with shortness of breath. He felt faint after minimal exertion. He lost his appetite, and became nauseated easily. At first, he was diagnosed with bronchitis. When antibiotics didn’t help, he went to see another physician.

After x-rays, blood tests and CT scans, several masses were found in his lungs and stomach. The diagnosis was testicular cancer. He was admitted to Mary Greeley Hospital that afternoon, spent the night in intensive care and began chemotherapy the next day.

Carol and Philip’s father, Gary, are divorced. Gary and their daughter, Ann, still live in Cedar Rapids. But Carol was the first in the family to hear the horrible news.

“I happened to call him that evening. He answered his cell phone, and I asked, ‘how are you?’ He just blurted out, ‘well, I was waiting to find out more information before I called anyone, but I’m in the hospital and I have testicular cancer with a mass in the chest and tumors in the lungs and I start chemo tomorrow!”

Carol says it was one of those times when a person wants to hit the ‘rewind’ button and go back to things as they were two seconds earlier when life was normal. “What made it more difficult is that I teach kids his age, mostly males, so every time I went into the classroom, I would see these young men his age,” she says. “It was a constant reminder.”

Philip’s doctor told him that because of surgery and chemotherapy, he wouldn’t be able to stay in school. But he remained enrolled, and with the help of his adviser and professors, he was able to complete two classes from home. He finished the other three classes later.

Since Philip’s father and sister live in Iowa, they played key supporting roles during his illness. “Living in Florida, I think it was hard for my mom not to help more than she did,” Philip says. “I know that my illness made my family worry a whole lot more than I did. To be honest, sometimes it was nice to not have any family around because I’d get stressed out with all their worrying.”

“I did things like send care packages and a lot of prayer,” Carol says. “I think he was on every Southern Baptist prayer chain in the South. Not bad for a Yankee Lutheran!”

Philip was able to enroll for the 2003 spring semester and completed five courses, scheduling his chemotherapy around classes. His spring break was taken up with chemo. The year before, he spent spring break in Cancun.

In the summer of 2003, Philip began to return to his old self. “I could work out again and I grew my hair back. But I still had a small, non-cancerous mass in my left lung and a mass in my abdominal area that needed to be removed,” he says. “After 22 weeks of chemo, I figured a little surgery wouldn’t be that big of a deal.”

But it was a big deal. On Aug. 7, 2003, Philip went to Indiana University Hospital in Indianapolis for the surgery. He spent 11 days in intensive care. One week after being released from the hospital, he began the fall semester at Iowa State. But within a month, he learned his cancer was back.

To fight this relapse, he needed a much stronger treatment. He received stem cell transplants twice, in tandem with two major rounds of chemotherapy. “They harvest your stem cells, give you high-dose chemo and then help your body recover by giving you your stem cells back,” Philip says. “The chemo I received was similar to what I had before except I was given four times as much. In a three-day span, I would receive the same amount of chemo I had received before in a nine-week span.”

The treatment forced Philip to withdraw from school. But he began classes again in spring 2004. In October, Philip's specialists in Indianapolis declared him cancer-free and recovered -- it had been more than a year since any new tumors were discovered.

The chance of a recurrence now is less than 2 percent. Philip has returned to his regular workouts. On Dec. 18, he’ll graduate from Iowa State. He’s accepted a job at Skyworks Solutions Inc., in Cedar Rapids, where he’ll design power amplifiers for cell phones.

Carol turned Philip's battle with testicular cancer into a positive by finding ways to increase awareness of the disease and provide encouragement and hope for young men who have it. Besides telling Philip’s story in her classroom, she wrote about it in a monthly safety newsletter and developed a Web site that includes photos of Philip before, during and after the cancer diagnosis.

“I share the story with my college-age students because they are in the peak years for testicular cancer,” she says. “It’s the most common cancer in men between the ages of 15 and 35. It hits guys at the age when they think they are invulnerable.”

Philip agrees. “I didn’t think I had a problem because I was really healthy. I’ve heard this a million times before but it’s true -- when you’re my age, you think you’re invincible,” he says.

Does Carol have any advice for parents dealing with a child’s cancer? “You have to handle it a little bit each day,” she says. “And get a good support group of friends that you know you can call.”

Philip responds quickly when asked what he’s learned from the experience. “Don’t sweat the small stuff. And be thankful for your friends and family.”

For Philip’s story, as told by Carol Lehtola
Another online source of information is the Testicular Cancer Resource Center

The original story appeared on the Iowa State University College of Agriculture Web site in December 2004. [Original Link]

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