The Fight of His Life : Former Cedars-Sinai Poster Child Battles Leukemia for the 4th Time

Mark Mitchell was so outgoing and adorable at age 4, shortly after he was diagnosed with leukemia, that he was asked to represent Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in its cancer fund-raisers.

The grinning, button-nosed child starred in instructional videos and appeared at informational seminars. He spoke at fund-raisers about his fight against the disease.

Mark helped raise thousands of dollars for the hospital’s cancer clinics. The hospital, in turn, saw him through three near-death bouts with the blood cell cancer by age 13, each one punctuated by a remission.

As he neared adulthood, Mark appeared to be winning: The cancer had not come back.

But in July, at 21, he was again afflicted with leukemia. Doctors say the new strain is more aggressive than ever.

Having inspired cancer patients for years with his optimistic tale of beating the disease, Mitchell, now a charismatic young man with deep dimples and an easy smile, is once again confronting his lifelong nemesis.

At first stunned by the relapse, he is now calmly accepting it. He has fought and won before.

“I’m a veteran,” he says.

Today at UC Irvine, Mitchell and his family will hold a bone marrow drive in the hopes of finding a donor whose healthy marrow can replace his own. After having had chemotherapy for much of his life, his body is unable to withstand more than another year and a half, his doctor says. The long-shot transplant procedure is considered his best hope of full recovery. (Prospective donors can call (714) 824-6922.)

Mitchell’s physician, Carole Hurvitz, a pediatric oncologist at Cedars-Sinai who has treated Mitchell since he was first diagnosed, said a relapse is highly unusual for a patient in remission more than five years.

“When I found out,” said Mitchell, who now lives with his mother in Century City, “all I could think of was the agony of going through this again, of not being healthy, of not being sure about my future.”

His latest bout with leukemia began with what felt like the onset of a bad flu. His head aching, Mitchell called his mother, Marie Cohen, to tell her he was leaving work early to get some rest. But just as he was leaving, she called back.

She had a strange feeling, a weird intuition, she said. She insisted that he go to the emergency room.

There, tests showed irregularities in his blood, and doctors told him to come back for more tests. Three days later, they confirmed what he was too afraid to consider.

Mitchell, who looks younger than his years because he is barely 5 feet tall (his growth was stunted by huge doses of radiation when he was a child), had just begun to spread his wings as an adult.

He had left his mother’s house and moved to Westwood to live on his own for the first time, working in a sales job at the Beverly Center and taking business classes at UCLA Extension.

Angry, hurt and disbelieving, he at first considered defying his doctors’ recommendation to resume chemotherapy. It would poison his body as it killed the leukemia cells, causing excruciating side effects--hair loss, nausea, weakness, lesions--that often seem worse than the cancer itself.

His doctors insisted that a decision to forgo chemo would constitute suicide.

Mitchell left town for a week to think and talk with friends. His mother stayed home and worried, but by the time he returned she knew he was ready to fight for his life again: Mitchell had shaved his head.

“That he cut off all his hair was a big one for Mark,” said Cohen, who took leave from her job as a state unemployment office claims adjuster to see her son through the disease. “All his life, he had lost his hair off and on [due to chemotherapy]. Shaving it was like accepting the illness and the things he would have to go through to get to the other side.

“It made me happy and sad,” she said, her words catching in her throat as she began to cry. “I realized I couldn’t shelter this little child of mine anymore. It was the hardest day of my life.”

As a child, Mitchell hardly comprehended that he was fighting a deadly disease. He liked being the focus of attention. Until his cancer went into its most recent remission, he literally knew no other way of life.

Now, he says, his childhood battles with leukemia have prepared him for the struggle. “I figure if I could do this three times before, I could do it again,” he said.

He and his mother are closer than ever now that Mitchell has quit school and work and moved back home to undergo treatment. They often finish each others’ sentences; when they disagree, it is a gentle, quiet clash that reveals mutual respect.

Cohen stood by her son’s bedside as he endured the first, most difficult weeks of chemotherapy in early August.

With stronger doses than ever to combat the relapse, Mitchell was hospitalized for a week with violent nausea. He couldn’t eat. He developed a severe fungal infection that sprouted white blisters in his mouth and his esophagus. His hair stubbles fell out.

Despite it all, Mitchell considers himself one of the lucky ones. Hospital administrators allowed him back into the pediatric ward so he could be treated by Hurvitz and the other two pediatric cancer doctors he has had since age 4.

Now that the first phase of chemo is over, his side effects are mild compared to those of other patients, he said.

“The hardest part is over: accepting that I’ve relapsed,” he said. “Now it’s getting easier. I still go out and talk to people at the hospital. I still tell them, ‘You can beat this. Life goes on even if you’re ill.’ ”