STOCKTON — The headaches would last only a few seconds, but the pain that Nickie Ellis first experienced three years ago was so intense, it would cause her to bend over, holding her head in excruciating pain.
Starting in the back of her skull, pangs would shoot up past her ears and over the top of her head. The only good thing was that they were occasional.
Then they became more frequent.
And her father, Dave Ellis recalls one game of racquetball when they were playfully hitting the ball around, learning the rules and techniques.
“I look behind me and she’s bent over holding her head with the palms on her temple squeezing her head,” he said. After first shaking it off, they both tried hitting the ball a little harder and this time she dropped to the floor. “I said ‘We’re done. What you have is not a normal headache, there’s something going on.'”
A neurologist quipped that the headaches might be tension or exertion related — migraines run in the family — but a brain scan revealed a tumor the size of a lemon in the then 23-year-old’s brain.
“It was shock,” Ellis recalled of hearing the news for the first time. “It’s like going up to a water fountain and you’re expecting a trickle (of water), and instead it’s like a fire hose.”
“It’s a parent’s worst nightmare,” Dave Ellis said.
Now 25, the Gilroy native has actually just completed her first year as a kindergarten teacher at Delta Bridges Charter School in north Stockton. You couldn’t miss her. She wore a black fedora to hide that her once-flowing hair has actually grown back sparsely.
But her laughter and smile are contagious, as well as her incredible sense of humor. She’s a survivor of brain cancer.
A 2013 graduate of California State University, Fresno, she majored in criminal psychology and moved back estate with her parents, taking a part-time job at her former elementary school.
She was halfway through the interview process at a juvenile correctional facility when she found out about the cancer.
“I had just graduated. I was ready to go, ready to move out of my parents’ residence and getting started with life,” Ellis said. “I (had) too much stuff to do, too several people to meet.
“And I cried. I drove myself estate (from the doctor’s) in the slow lane all the way estate because I was just sobbing.”
She was referred to a pediatric oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco, familiar with her rare form of cancer called medulloblastoma. It’s a cancer so uncommon several hospitals never see it.
She liked the child-friendly personalities of the nurses and doctors who tended her in the pediatric center. But it was devastating to see children as young as infants go through chemotherapy.
“It was heartbreaking,” Ellis said. “Nobody deserves cancer — what had these kids done?”
Ellis was given a choice: five days of radiation a week for seven weeks and six treatments of chemotherapy, or a lighter radiation treatment that would ease the adverse effects but face a greater chance that the cancer would return.
“That kind of made my decision for me,” she said. “I didn’t want (the cancer) to come back, so I chose the hard path.”
In December 2013, Ellis was in surgery for six hours. Doctors warned that she might not be able to talk or recognize family, and they warned she might regain little to no motor skills.
But the tumor, left unchecked, would kill her. Doctors removed as much of it as they could but couldn’t eliminate all of it because it was attached to her cerebellum.
“I remember waking up, and my mom (Debbie Ellis) was in the room, and I asked my mom ‘Can you get me some water?’ and she starts crying,” said Ellis. “I was fine the next morning. I was in a regular hospital room within 24 hours.”
Ellis was doing so well, in fact, she was acing tests with a physical therapist. And 48 hours after surgery, she was back estate in Gilroy, with 44 staples in the back of her head. A week later came the bad news: the tumor was not benign; radiation would be starting.
The cancer had spread through spinal fluid, too.
For seven weeks Ellis drove two hours both ways Monday through Friday for treatment that required her to lie still in a large mechanical tube for an hour.
She remembers the sound the machine would make, like a swinging pendulum, as well as the Pandora radio station that would constantly play music by Bruno Mars.
“Thank you, Bruno Mars, for helping me get through the radiation!” she said laughing.
The adverse effects that came with the treatment were intense. Aside from the constant nausea, Ellis said at times she couldn’t open her eyes because she would be so dizzy.
Then she began to lose her hair around Week 3. She had already cut her hair short, but losing it meant she couldn’t hide her illness any longer.
“Before, it was like, ‘yeah, I’m sick, but nobody knows that I’m sick, nobody is going to be weird around me,’” Ellis recalled. “Nobody can tell just by looking at me that ‘Oh my gosh, she has actually cancer,’ and now everyone is going to know.”
At first she had not seen much hair left on her pillow, in the shower, or on her hairbrush. But then, one day, while sitting in the waiting room for her radiation treatment, she was reading a magazine and ran her hand through her hair.
“(My hand) comes back with a handful of hair, and I’m trying really hard to hold it together,” Ellis said. The radiation team, by then friends, offered comfort and support. And when she got home, it was a family affair to do the rest: Dad shaved her head, mom vacuumed up the hair, and sister Rylie Ellis held her hand.
“We’re all crying, I made my mom cover all the mirrors in the residence — for about a week I couldn’t look at myself,” she said. “That was the hardest part of cancer. People are like ‘Really?’ But I don’t know what else to tell you, I felt like everyone knows I’m sick. I don’t even look like myself anymore.”
Radiation complete, it was time for chemotherapy, and with it came more obstacles. Ellis had a port implanted into her chest to take the cocktail of medication. This would make it less likely her veins would collapse. She developed shingles on her thighs and was placed in isolation. Then she developed peripheral neuropathy to the point where she could no longer walk and needed a wheelchair for mobility.
Through it all, she had the support not only of her friends, family, nurses and doctors, but the community. The school where she had previously worked got together to make blankets and sent coloring books and gift cards for gasoline.
In some sort of weird luck, Ellis’ body was at the right age to take treatment. Dave Ellis said if his daughter was too young, or too old, the treatment might have killed her.
But Ellis not only survived, she regained her ability to walk thanks to her physical therapists at Coastal Kids estate Care. In October of 2014, she completed her last round of chemo. Every three months she has actually to go back to UCSF for scans to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned.
“I make a point to see those nurses (when I visit),” she said. “That’s always really fun, I enjoy that. I will never forget that group.”
Fast forward to today, and “Ms. Ellis,” as she’s known to her kindergarten class, is healthy and cancer free. She’s still frustrated about losing most of her hair but has actually three wigs. They were fun in the beginning, she said, but they’re hot, itchy, and heavy.
“I work with kindergartners, so it’s easier to pop on a hat,” Ellis said. “I’ve worn a wig a couple times, and the kids say ‘Ms. Ellis you look silly,’ so hats are my thing now.”
They ask her why she wears hats, and her response is she became really sick and the medicine to make her better made her hair fall out. She has actually and will never mention cancer.
“They’re young. They don’t need to know about cancer yet,” she said. “They’re too innocent. Because that’s hardcore stuff. I just say ‘I’m all better now and now I’m your teacher.’”
Jeff Tilton, Deputy Superintendent of Delta Charter Schools said in the fall that, Ellis, who commutes from Oakdale, will become a teacher with one of the district’s virtual-based schools, Delta Charter Online. That way, he said, she can keep working on getting her health in order and she can still grow into the profession of teaching.
“Nickie’s spirit has actually been the same every day this year. I would want to be a student in her class if I was that age,” said Tilton. “I would want my children in her class if they were that age.”
Dave Ellis is proud of his daughter for taking one day at a time and for being so positive given the grave statistics. “She took everything with a grain of salt, kept going forward … you don’t want this on your worst enemy,” he said. “She got through it and did it with flying colors.”
Now on summer break, Ellis is fine with not really knowing what life has actually planned for her in the future. Cancer caused a derailment, but she said she’s ready to focus on herself now.
“I really think all the positivity was really what got me through,” she said. “My mantra was ‘Keep the faith. Gather hope. Spread the love.’ You keep your faith: in doctors, friends and yourself; always hope for best; and spread the love.”
“With that,” she said with a smile, “you can get through anything and everything life throws at you.”
— Contact reporter Nicholas Filipas at (209) 546-8257 or nfilipas@recordnet.com. Follow him on http://ift.tt/1NVH3uI or on Twitter @nicholasfilipas.
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