‘I wasn’t willing to accept that nothing was going to be done, and I was just going to die’

The first time Kim Hughes’ beeper went off, she was at a rock concert. The music was so loud she couldn’t hear the piercing beep, but she saw the light flashing, and a horrified look swept over her face. Then she began crying for joy. A quick phone call, however, revealed a false alarm. The 21-year-old Fallbrook woman has liver cancer and needs a transplant. Since she was put on the waiting list for a new liver more than 10 weeks ago, the beeper has been her constant companion. There have been other false alarms, but now Hughes reacts with calm. When the real call comes in, Hughes will go to UCLA Medical Center for the life-saving surgery that will be followed by at least a six-week, in-hospital recuperation. Family resources tapped, Hughes’ mother, Sheri, has led several fund-raising efforts to help defray the $200,000 medical price tag. Meanwhile, Hughes continues the wait. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed Hughes at Scripps Memorial Hospital-La Jolla, and Don Bartletti photographed her.

I’ve known about my cancer for 2 1/2 years. I had an unrelated pain in my stomach and the doctors did X-rays and an ultrasound to see what it was, and they found a mass. They did a CAT scan and then they knew it was a tumor. Then came an exploratory surgery.

Right after they found out it was cancer, I had chemotherapy and just the chemotherapy made me sick. I wasn’t sick from the cancer. Then, about a year ago, I had a biliary bypass because my bile duct was closed off in the liver and it made me jaundiced. Last August, I started radiation treatments five days a week for six weeks. I’d get sick right afterward on the way home.

I was working for a Pizza Hut at the time, I had been working there since I was 16 or 17, so I just kept working. My boss would give me time off for chemotherapy. A year and a half ago in the fall I started working as an instructional aide in the special education department at Vista High School, and I worked there until last December. I’ve been on leave since then.

With the responsibilities I had at work, I felt I had to continue. My boss depended on me a lot and . . . so I didn’t want to let him down. He was a great boss. He never pushed me or said, “You have to come in even though you’re feeling sick.” I didn’t stay home too often.

Now, I don’t do a whole heck of a lot. I wake up at 11, and I may see a friend or go to somebody’s house during the day. Then my boyfriend gets off work in the evening, and I usually spend every evening with him. Sometimes, my stomach hurts, I have little aches. But I don’t get depressed.

I think because of this it has determined what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I was always kind of indecisive about what I wanted to do. I wasn’t thinking I wanted to do anything special, I never thought of myself as doing anything really special.

Now, I really feel like I’ve got something to give. I want to be a psychologist, somehow. I want to go into counseling. I don’t know what type, maybe for teen-agers or working as a counselor in a high school. Also, if the circumstances came up where somebody wanted me to talk to people about having a liver transplant or having cancer, I would do it. Not right now, but after this is all over with.

I’m still real positive about this. In the very beginning, the UCLA liver-transplant program turned me down. For a week, I thought a liver transplant was impossible, but I still never believed that that was the definite, that there was just nothing we were going to be able to do. I wasn’t willing to accept that nothing was going to be done, and I was just going to die.

I have a strong faith in God, and I just kept praying over and over again, and I never stopped believing that He was going to take care of me. And a week later, I got a call from UCLA saying they could do it. Ever since then, I believe everything’s going to work out just fine.