Tumor Turned to Triumph

Alex Duran has some die-hard study habits.

Even cancer surgery couldn’t keep him from completing a Spanish class he was taking in the fall of 1998. Ultimately, he turned the disease itself into a learning experience, emerging with new resolve to spend the rest of his life in pursuit of a scientific mission.

Before he was diagnosed, Alex was feeling stronger than ever. The Capistrano Valley High School graduate had just earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and was working for a pharmaceutical firm in Santa Barbara. He was boogie boarding, skiing and frequently going to the gym.

He’s always been small and thin, no matter how much he ate to fatten up. And he had always been bothered by looking at his skinny reflection in the mirror. But the workouts had added 20 pounds. His weight was up to 130 and people were starting to notice the improvement.

Then one Sunday, after a strenuous morning of surfing and stair-stepping, he felt a hard lump on one of his testicles. His doctor diagnosed testicular cancer, the most common type to attack young males. In less than two weeks, Alex had the diseased organ removed.

The surgery took place on his 23rd birthday. The worst was yet to come.

A second diagnosis at City of Hope Cancer Center determined he was at a high risk of having the cancer spread. Within a month, Alex would have to submit to a second operation that left a scar like a zipper from his chest to his waist.

A Spanish class is the last thing a young man should worry about on the eve of such a horribly invasive procedure, known ominously as “retroperitoneal lymph node dissection.” Yet Alex made sure he wouldn’t lose credit for his community college course, which he took to learn his father’s native language. He took the test early and even completed an oral presentation--on cooking pollo in cream sauce--before going under the knife.

“I’m not going to die from this,” he told himself, knowing there is a high cure rate for testicular cancer. “So I’d better finish the class.”

Alex survived the second surgery on Dec. 10, 1998, and returned to school before year’s end to visit his fellow students. His torso was deeply scarred, but his academic record remained pristine.

After weeks of agonizing chemotherapy and its debilitating effects, Alex mustered the strength to plan his future with a purpose. Next month, he’ll enter the PhD chemistry program at prestigious Washington University in St. Louis. He plans to teach and do research to help develop better techniques for detecting and tracking the killer disease.

Inspired by Another Cancer Survivor

In his biographical essay, Alex told the admissions committee he was inspired by Lance Armstrong, the testicular cancer survivor who won last year’s Tour de France and is competing again this year in the world’s most grueling bike race.

“Being physically and emotionally drained during surgeries and chemotherapy was frustrating and difficult, but it put everything in perspective,” Alex wrote to committee members. “I recognize that the motivation and direction I was lacking as an undergraduate is something I now have which will help me succeed.”

Stories about cancer survivors have never particularly appealed to me. But in this case, I knew the patient’s father, Gustavo Duran. I met him in my salsa dance class and often ran into him at salsa clubs and concerts.

One day after a lesson, the proud papa told me about his son’s struggle and triumph. Pretty inspirational. But it wasn’t until I sat down with both of them for dinner this week that I learned how much music helped them in dealing with the disease and its devastating aftermath.

Father and son took up salsa as therapy.

Alex felt drained by the crucible of chemical treatments. He lost weight. His thick, auburn hair fell out. His spirit sank.

“Chemo is tough,” said Alex, who’s down to a feathery 110 pounds. “The surgeries are like nothing.”

When his hair started to grow back, he decided it was time to rejoin the world. “That’s when I started getting into salsa dancing more,” he said. “I was getting pretty good. I was better than my dad for a while.”

Dad didn’t dispute the claim, which in salsa can be taken as a serious challenge.

Gustavo, 53, doesn’t look like your typical salsa dancer. He’s also slightly built, and at 5 feet 4, he stands 2 inches shorter than his son.

For him, salsa was a fresh experience. He jumped into it to help defeat his own bout of depression, which was also something new to him. Nothing before in his life--not losing his business nor losing his marriage--had hit him as hard as seeing his son suffer so much.

“I’m usually a pretty strong person, but this one really took me,” said Gustavo, who has worked in redevelopment for the last decade, first with Buena Park and now in Huntington Beach, where he is manager for housing and redevelopment. “You hate to see your son like that, wiped out, one ordeal after another after another.”

Gustavo also lost weight. He couldn’t sleep. He didn’t enjoy anything anymore--not food nor movies. Not even people.

“That’s when I got started with the salsa, because I figured I’ve got to get out of this,” he said.

The dancing was like shock treatment, but more fun. A week ago, you could have seen Gustavo and Alex together tripping the light fantastic to salsa music at Disneyland.

A Family History of Succeeding

Alex isn’t dancing as much anymore. But he’s more active than ever. He bought a mountain bike and a guitar and took lessons. He already played drums, but recently he built his own electronic drum set using doorbell buzzers.

He’s also eating better, more fruits and vegetables. He’s cut out the milkshakes for breakfast to build bulk, more concerned about how food works on the inside.

Alex had the chile relleno when we went to dinner at a favorite Mexican restaurant he discovered recently near his father’s Costa Mesa apartment, where he’s staying for the summer. Gustavo sat next to his son at a small table. Over an order of flautas, the elder Duran ruminated about the sheer gumption that runs in his family.

Gustavo traces his ancestors on his mother’s side to a 16th century conquistador who became the first mayor of Guadalajara, Pedro de Placencia. Gustavo’s mother, Elisa Placencia, lived a less lordly life in Mexico City, where she struggled as a seamstress for celebrities to raise her family. As a child, Gustavo remembers days of hunger.

But she “was born to succeed,” said Gustavo of his mother, who married an American merchant marine and settled in North Hollywood, where she still lives at age 73.

“We are very determined people,” said Gustavo, his fingers slicing forward through the air like a lance. “Driven, I guess. That’s the word. We’re very driven.”

Later this month, Gustavo plans to take his son to Mexico for the first time. Alex looks forward to visiting his grandmother’s birthplace, a ranch called El Llano de los Placencia, near Guadalajara.

Alex concedes he may have inherited his strong will from his ancestors. But he traces his interest in science to his more recent past. Credit goes to his fourth-grade teacher, Mark Sutherland, who fascinated his students with field trips and vivid demonstrations in class, which were “so cool.” Sutherland even got Alex started in juggling and taught him to ride a unicycle.

“I thought of trying to find him and saying thanks,” Alex told me.

That would be easy. Sutherland, 46, is still working at Trajan Elementary outside Sacramento, where the Durans lived in the 1980s.

When I called him at home, Sutherland remembered Alex right away. Skinny, kind of quiet, had freckles. (Yes, freckles and red hair from his mother’s Tennessee side of the family.) He’s the kind of kid “you would like to have in your class,” said Sutherland, who’s now teaching physical education. “He really got into whatever we were doing.”

Sutherland wasn’t shocked to hear about his former student’s health problems. Coincidentally, his own college roommate at San Jose State had survived testicular cancer. For three years in the mid-1970s, they shared a roof and the traumatic recovery.

So Sutherland knows how hard this disease can be. He also knows the ordeal can make people stronger. His roommate went on to become a science teacher and varsity football coach.

Sutherland figures nothing can stop Alex now.

“The main result here is he wants to do something in life with a purpose,” the teacher said. “Those are the people who change the world.”

Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday and Saturday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com.