Rebekah Price is not your typical cancer patient. She has a full head of silky hair, dyed black for fashion, and looks vibrant in her form-fitting black top and pants and striking purple nails. Rebekah Price and daughter Skarlett Carpenter, 4, watched television together. Price, 33, has a rare form of cancer in her chest and abdomen. Skarlett knows her mother is sick. Price also has an 11-year-old daughter. You have to study her closely to find the three transparent fentanyl pain-killing patches on her left deltoid, obscured by the bright colors of her tattoo.
She sounds drugged, having taken extra doses of vicodin because her pain is so intense and her abdomen so uncomfortably bloated that she curls up in her dining chair.
Price, 33, has advanced mesothelioma in her chest and abdomen, which was not diagnosed until January, 1½ years after the first pangs of pain. She begins chemotherapy on Monday.
Mesothelioma is a cancer that begins in the lining of the body's organs. The cause of Price's disease is not known, said Dr. Lyudmila Bazhenova, Price's oncologist at UCSD's Moores Cancer Center. But Price suspects it came from asbestos inhalation in her youth, and she has hired an attorney to investigate the possibility of a lawsuit.
Another Moores Cancer Center oncologist says the disease is incurable, and Price said she read in her medical report that she has a life expectancy of one year after being diagnosed.
The single mother and former preschool teacher talks stoically about her ordeal but breaks down at the thought of leaving her two young girls, 11-year-old Chloe Aker and 4-year-old Skarlett Carpenter.
“I didn't have my children for others to watch them, but the mother part of me thinks, 'They should start getting used to other people,' ” she says, tears welling as the Disney Channel blares with cheerful cartoons for Skarlett.
“When I'm alone, I cry, think about my fears – will I be alone, what will it look like, is it painful or ugly?” she said.
Her family and friends say there's little they can do to ease her distress, but they have organized a fundraising garage and bake sale today to help Price do things with her children to create memories.
How to help
What: Bake sale to benefit cancer patient Rebekah Price and her two daughters
Where: San Dieguito Academy student parking lot, Nardo and Melba roads
When: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today
What money will be used for: Price's medical and daily expenses and a chance to do things with her children It is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at San Dieguito Academy's student parking lot at Nardo and Melba roads.
Price's sister, Bryn Faris, says there will be furniture, crystal glasses, clothes, books and paintings donated by Price's friends from across the county. There also will be a cake walk and face painting for kids.
Organizers say they hope to raise as much as they can. Some of the money will be used for Price's daily expenses. She can no longer teach and lives on $1,800 a month from state disability payments and child support from the father of one of her daughters. Her family donates the rest.
Coping with the specter of dying is especially difficult for cancer patients who have young children, Bazhenova said.
“Most mature patients don't get cancer in their 30s. The average time when patients get cancer are in their 50s when their kids are grown,” she said. “It's difficult to deal with it when the kids are so young.”
Price's illness began in October 2004 when she felt pain in her ribs and the right side of her chest. But mesothelioma is hard to diagnose because it does not have specific symptoms, Bazhenova said.
Price's doctors sent her to specialists. The pain continued, and the illness was diagnosed in January.
Her insurance, a HMO that uses MediCal, does not offer her too many options, such as clinical trials, which Price would have liked to try, but she is receiving care, she says.
At home in Encinitas in her rental granny flat decorated with purple curtains and filled with her children's toys, Price passes time trying to be a mother to Skarlett.
Her older daughter, Chloe, has chosen to spend more time at Price's mother's nearby home. When with Skarlett, Price assembles Barbies for her and watches her play with her bobble-head polar bear. The two bake clay to make skulls fashioned after Mexican folk art. Sometimes, mother and daughter just sit together to soak up each other's presence.
“I tell her something in my body that isn't good is trying to kill me, but I will do my best to fight it,” she said. “She sees me crying, and she'd say, 'But you will go to heaven and see Hazel (a cat) and I will be there soon.' ”
Every day, Price's best friend, Erin Meister, spends the afternoon or almost all day at Price's, helping her with calls to support groups and home-aid providers, or just cutting up bananas to feed Skarlett. Price's boyfriend picks up the slack.
Price's sister arranges for friends to bring her regular meals. Her mother, Debbie Wilson, a 53-year-old part-time office manager for the Rancho Santa Fe Library Guild, baby-sits and has assured her she will share in the upbringing of her grandchildren with Price's ex-husband, Zack Carpenter.
“The girls will be . . . you know . . . it's not something you want to think about,” Wilson said. “I am angry. I feel like my whole world has changed.”
