A first-grade encounter with cancer

Then a first-grader, current junior Calvin Shih thought the lump on the right side of his neck was a candy he had accidentally swallowed whole.

But one day during dinner, his parents noticed, and they feared it was something else. 

A biopsy at the doctor’s confirmed that the lump was actually a swollen lymph node, and Shih was diagnosed with B-cell lymphoma, a cancer that affects B lymphocytes in the lymph glands located around the neck. B lymphocytes produce antibodies that protect the body against bacteria and viruses.  

“I didn’t really understand what was going on at the time because I was young,” Shih said. “I knew something wrong maybe but nothing super serious.”

 

Starting treatment

Six-year-old Shih was suddenly thrown into the world of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Commuted Tomography (CT) Scans and chemotherapy. He started treatment right away, in the middle of the school year. 

Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to fully grasp what was going on, Shih’s parents sheltered him from the technical details. Despite this, he still remembers the painful experiences during treatment. 

“The first month of chemo, I couldn’t keep my back straight because [chemo was through injection] into my bone marrow,” he said.  “I had to sit up when I slept.” 

Shih didn’t show up to Argonaut Elementary for the rest of the month; and, even after returning to school, Shih went through chemotherapy once a month. 

The treatment lasted until the summer of second grade, when doctors pronounced him a cancer survivor. At this point, Shih understood by then that he had some “serious illness” — he just didn’t know that the illness happened to be cancer.

 

After the battle

The scars on Shih’s body are the only wounds left from his battle with B-cell lymphoma. 

Years later, students here view Shih as a lighthearted, cheerful swimmer; his past ordeal with cancer seems to have never even happened. 

“He lives every day as carefree as ever and is always spreading smiles and laughs wherever he walks,” said junior Randy Tsai, Shih’s friend. “I feel as if his past battle with cancer may have an impact on his life when he has to make certain decisions, but he definitely does not show it.”

After stopping treatment at the end of second grade, Shih didn’t even realize the seriousness of the disease until others started asking him about it.

“After first grade, as I got older, people were wondering if I actually had cancer,” he said. “As I kept answering these [questions], I started to get more of a sense of how serious it was.”

 He still returns to the Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital in Stanford for annual checkups. 

Shih said he was lucky to survive cancer. He said his doctors “every now and then would tell [him] that they were surprised at how healthy [he] was.”

Shih never did understand just how healthy he actually was until late art teacher Stephen McCue passed away from cancer past January.

“This was the first time that someone that I knew personally was affected [by cancer],” he said. “[The event] showed me that I’m really lucky, and in a way that I should be careful because theres always a chance for relapse and so I always have keep healthy habits.”

But for some, cancer is such a foreign concept that they refused to believe Shih’s story.

“One time at a swim meet this person was looking at me because I had a scar on my chest from surgery, and they were wondering why I had the scar,” Shih said. “I told him that I had cancer and he looked at me like I was weird, and said ‘Really? you have to be lying.’”

Unfazed, Shih laughed and responded with, “I’m telling the truth. You can believe whatever you want.”

But now, his life doesn’t revolve around the hospital room, chemotherapy or that one evening when B-cell lymphoma entered his life. 

“[The fact that I had cancer] doesn’t really touch my mind too often,” Shih said. “I just think that it’s in the past and that I shouldn’t let it change what I do.”