Suffering through more chemotherapy was too much for Billy Best, so the 16-year-old packed a bag, wrote a goodbye note to his parents and took off. Now other young cancer patients wish they could lure him home.
"I just wish I could talk to him and tell him it's all right to feel the pain," said Aaron Fastman, a 20-year-old from Woodstock, N.Y., diagnosed last summer with Hodgkin's disease, the same condition Billy has."But he's just got to heal himself. He has a long life ahead of him. He can do his treatments right next to me if he wants."
Billy fled his home in Norwell, a Boston suburb, on Oct. 26. He called home around 9 p.m. Monday from somewhere in Texas, said his mother, Susan Best.
"We did have a calm conversation, but he said he's still not ready to come home yet," she said. She added that she told him about the hundreds of people who have called offering support.
Billy also called once last week and told his father "he still feels like the medicine is killing him and he doesn't want to do it," said William Best.
Billy's thinking surprised some doctors, who say up to 80 percent of people who undergo full chemical and radiation treatments emerge cancer-free. But Fastman understands.
"I can relate to what he's thinking, absolutely," said Fastman, who has just completed his fourth treatment of chemotherapy.
Hodgkin's disease is a cancer of the body's lymphatic system, which is used to fight infection. It is fatal if untreated.
Billy's first five treatments had eradicated the cancer from everywhere but the area around his windpipe. But doctors said the treatments, which had been causing hair-loss, nausea and lethargy, were needed for four more months to eliminate all traces of the disease.
Other young patients recall going bald while their peers fretted over hairstyles and dropping weight uncontrollably while friends pumped iron at the gym.
For teenagers - already under the typical pressures of growing up - the physical pain of chemotherapy and the emotional trauma of facing a deadly disease can seem insurmountable, experts said.
"When you impose a disease like cancer it totally changes the agenda," said Dr. Philip Pizzo, chief of pediatrics at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md. "It clearly makes you different, and that has serious implications."
But Billy's reaction to learning that he would need more chemotherapy still seemed extreme to some cancer experts.
"I was surprised, essentially, by the radical nature of this kid taking off," said Dr. David Rosenthal, director of health services at Harvard University and a past president of the American Cancer Society. "But what doesn't surprise me is the fact that young people are having a great deal of difficulty dealing with these issues."
Jason Nickoloff remembers losing his eyebrows and feeling noticeably skinny as he underwent chemotherapy for Hodgkin's as a 17-year-old high school senior.
"I felt sort of depressed and left out," said Nickoloff, now 22 and free of the disease.
To combat the unique difficulties adolescent cancer patients have, many hospitals have set up programs to encourage youths to counsel each other in support groups, overnight camps and road trips.
"I can well remember kids who were on the verge of dropping out of treatment who were brought back by other kids," Pizzo said.
Now Billy needs to come home, he said.
"Whatever he's facing is certainly appropriate, but it has been faced by others," Pizzo said, "and is certainly possible by his inner strength and ability to conquer."