A common bond

Jenny Marder

As best friends go, Devon Oddy and Karina Hubbard have a lot in

common.

Both are chatty, bespectacled 9-year-olds. Both love Hillary Duff

and hate Brittany Spears. And both have spent nearly a quarter of

their lives battling acute lymphocytic leukemia.

Devon was already nearly a year into chemotherapy when the two met

at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County in April of 2002. Devon

was recovering from four-weeks in intensive care for a critical

bacterial infection. Karina had just been diagnosed.

Karina’s mother, Socorro Hubbard, first spotted Devon in the

recreation room. Devon was dressed in blue jeans with an American

flag bandanna wrapped around her head. She noted that Devon appeared

to be the same age as Karina and she introduced herself to Devon’s

mother, Cynthia Oddy.The two mothers hit it off immediately and their

daughters became fast friends. Hubbard began calling Oddy with

questions about cancer. Oddy would prepare her on what Karina was

about undergo; when she’d start losing her hair, what kind of

reactions she could expect.

“You’re fearful,” Oddy said. “You get to the hospital and the

doctor tells you that this is what’s going to happen in your life for

the next 26 years We were able to let them know what to expect.”

The hardest part for both girls was having to be secluded from

other children, for fear of contracting diseases, while their immune

systems were down from the chemotherapy.

“A lot of times, I had to stay at the hospital for more than two

weeks,” Karina said. “I missed Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving and

I missed my family. I got really lonely.”

For Oddy, watching her daughter endure the first and most

intensive year of treatment was heartbreaking.

“There’s a tremendous amount of poking and needles and blood

transfusions,” Oddy said. “It’s so frustrating to see a child have to

be put through that. It’s heart wrenching to have to see your child

have so much medication, to see them lose their hair and to see the

side effects, even though you know in the long run that chemo is

what’s best for them. All the miserable side effects that go along

with it, you just ache for them inside.”

But the girls quickly found strength in their friendship and found

they could draw comfort from it at the most difficult times. And

Devon, who was ahead in treatment, became a sort of mentor for her

friend.

“It was better [having each other,]” Karina said. “If you have a

friend, it gives you strength and courage. There’s someone to talk to

and get you through they misery.”

Karina remembers that Devon was wearing fish pajamas the first

time they met. Devon remembers watching a movie, “Dr. Doolittle,” in

Karina’s room.

“It was good for them to be there for one another,” Oddy said.

“The girls are so compatible. It was meant to be for some reason. I

don’t know why.”

Now, whether they’re doing arts and crafts, playing “hospital”

with their dolls or hanging upside-down on the jungle gym, they spend

as much time together as they can.

A glance at each girl now and you’d never know that they’d had

cancer.

Devon, now in remission, is the poster child for a successful

cancer patient. She plays tennis and piano, rides her bike and plans

to take up soccer.

“She’s the picture of health now,” Oddy said. “[The doctor] said

to me one time, ‘I just wish that newcomers to this whole ordeal

could see the potential, that there’s light at the end of the

tunnel.’ He’s just delighted when he sees her.”

Karina is well on her way to a normal life.

“Even though I still have a portocath in, I go to the beach, I

collect shells and I surf,” Karina said.

A portocath is a quarter-sized disc surgically placed just below

the skin in the chest through which cancer-treating drugs can be

infused into the bloodstream.

But reminders of their two-year struggle are everywhere. A small

dresser filled with knit hats sits by the main door to Karina’s

two-story Huntington Beach home. One hat is thin and white, one looks

like a strawberry and one is knit with heavy black yarn. Underneath

the hats is a rainbow-colored assortment of bandannas. Karina wore

the hats and bandannas after losing her hair during chemotherapy. In

another drawer are several long, blond wigs.

Devon’s hair, which hangs below her shoulders, has grown back

thicker and darker than before.

“There’s so much now,” her mother said. “We fight over the tangles

now.”

Karina’s hair changed from bright to dirty blond and has taken on

a straw-like texture and the steroids have caused her to gain some

weight.

But in less than a month, her treatment will be over. Karina’s

family is already planning a huge bash to celebrate. Family and

friends will be invited. And of course, Devon will be there.

And her father, Jeff Hubbard, plans to buy her the biggest bouquet

of flowers she’s ever seen.

“She will never, ever see a bigger bouquet of flowers,” he said.

* JENNY MARDER covers City Hall. She can be reached at (714)

965-7173 or by e-mail at jenny.marder@latimes.com.