Rancho Campana senior doesn’t let brain cancer keep her from graduating




Messecar

Leila Messecar was diagnosed with brain cancer her junior year, but that was never going to stop her from finishing high school.

“My goal was just to graduate.” Leila said. “I didn’t want to be left behind. First of all, that would be embarrassing, I don’t want to be the one in my family to not graduate!”

She wasn’t. Leila took part Wednesday in Rancho Campana High School’s graduation.

The 17-year-old is doing well after undergoing treatment with an immunotherapy drug under clinical study. Her brain tumor has decreased in size since she began the treatment.

Doctors removed half of Leila’s frontal lobe, but a small, untouchable piece of the tumor is still in the middle of her brain. That area is the control center for her heart; doctors cannot risk operating there.

“Most of the time, I don’t feel like I’m sick,” she said. “My head doesn’t hurt all the time. It’s just something that’s here.”

Her brain cancer diagnosis came a month after she’d had a breast tumor removed.

DuHamel

DuHamel

Through all the doctors’ visits and treatments, Leila has been challenged to balance schoolwork and a social life. When she was admitted to the hospital, she was unable to do anything, including her class assignments.

In the final week of junior year, she had to finish her finals from a hospital bed, right after undergoing a craniotomy, in which a piece of the skull is removed.

Leila is planning to attend Moorpark College for two years before transferring to a four-year university, and will major in bio- science.

“I actually wanted to be a plastic surgeon,” she said. “But after my diagnosis and going through my craniotomy, I was like, ‘This is not for me.’”

She wants to go into nursing, partly because her grandfather Manuel Lopez only had one lung and struggled with breathing problems.

Lopez was diagnosed with tuberculosis at a young age and was on bed rest in his 20s, Leila said.

“During the last year of his life, he had a whole bunch of different therapists to help him with certain things, and one of them was a respiratory therapist. . . .” she said. “I was really enriched with all these different medical practices.”

The therapist told Leila he went to Moorpark College and his education there gave him the training he needed to open his own practice.

Someday, she said, she wants to have her own practice as a respiratory therapist.

If graduating from high school earlier this week is any indication of her tenacity, she’ll reach the goals she sets for herself.

Because Leila isn’t one to be left behind.