Story Photos
 Despite four experiences with cancer and various other health issues, Lorraine Hutton has kept her positive outlook. Greg Ebersole / The Daily News
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The Fighter: Lorie Hutton whips cancer three times, faces fourth bout at 79
Tuesday, November 18, 2008 3:09 PM PST
By Cathy Zimmerman
Printable version
E-mail this articleSome people who beat cancer don’t like the word “survivor.” Too dramatic, probably. Others can’t escape the word for the life of them. Lorie Hutton, for example, might as well have her own reality TV show after the challenges fate has dumped on her. At 79, the Rose Valley woman has had cancer four times over the last 21 years, starting with a whopper.
“I got my first mass on my pancreas in 1987,” says Lorie, a wiry little thing with blazing brown eyes.
“They said nothing could be done,” says Dave Hutton, Lorie’s husband. Three surgeons looked at two ultrasounds and agreed that the cancerous mass was too imbedded in the pancreas, Lorie says. “They were flabbergasted.”
The pain was like a “somebody hit me in the stomach with hammer.”
She couldn’t keep anything down except warmed up 7-Up. Doctors gave her pain pills and “watched me like a hawk,” Lorie says. “They told me I wouldn’t leave the hospital.
“I wasn’t there a full week. The doctor came in, and I said, ‘I’m going home.’ “
For a couple of years, follow-up ultrasounds showed no change in the size of the tumor.
“I didn’t really dwell on it,’ Lorie says. “There was pain, but the doctor said he’d never operate on me; all they could do was give me medicine.”
The Huttons went on with their lives. Dave, who was a tugboat captain for Knappton Tug and Barge, had a ritual with Lorie. Whenever he was coming down the Columbia River past the Carrolls bluff, “I would flash the search light, even in the daytime,’ he says. “I could see up to our house, and she would stand on the deck and wave a flag.”
In 1996, Lorie needed a hip replacement, which went well. Two years later, in May of ‘98, she noticed surface abnormalities on one of her breasts. A mammogram revealed cancer.
So now she dealt with a mastectomy, followed that fall by radiation treatment.
“My pancreas went crazy,” she says. “My theory is that the radiation woke it all up. I’ve never been a fan of chemo and radiation.”
As a Kaiser patient, she was sent down to Sunnyside Medical Center in Clackamas, Ore., where Dr. James Schwartz looked at the tests and talked with the Huttons about the “Whipple,” the name for surgery to remove cancers from the pancreas and intestines.
The procedure, Schwartz told them, opens a patient from sternum to pelvis, “like an overhaul of a car,” Lorie says, in her straight-shooter style.
“He thought he could do some good. He asked me six different times if I really wanted to go through it, because I might not make it. It was either that or die.”
Family members were gathered, and they, too, asked Lorie, “Do you want to do this?”
“My daughter went off and had a crying jag,” she says. “Then she came back and said to me, ‘Mom, you’re a fighter.’
“ ‘Fine,’ I said, “let’s do the Whipple.’”
Schwartz told the family that if he came out of surgery in one hour, that would not be good.
Dave Hutton says he remembers “distinctly what he told us: ‘If the operation doesn’t last long, we will do all we can to make her comfortable.’ “ If it took longer, the surgeon said, there was hope.
“We were praying for a long operation,” Dave says.
Lorie was in surgery for eight hours, time enough for Schwartz to remove half of her pancreas and a second cancer they found, a golf-sized tumor in a gall duct.
In recovery, “I was isolated,” she says, “because they were afraid of infection.”
Dave remembers how there were “so many tubes hanging down, it was like moving into a space craft.”
Having brought Lorie through the Whipple, “Schwartz wouldn’t let any other doctor take care of me,” she says. “He took his weekends off, but for me, he wanted to be called any time.”
She lived on liquids and a long exploration of medications that would treat her pain without causing all kinds of side effects.
Little by little, Lorie fought her way back. “Eighteen days later, I was walking on my own,” she says.
Back home, Community Home Health nurses made frequent visits, and “so many people called and brought food — family, friends, neighbors — it was incredible,” Lorie says.
Dave was the main caregiver. She marvels at what he managed.
“Some of the stuff he’s had to do ,,,” Lorie shakes her head. “My stomach was wide open under the bandages.”
“She’s my partner,” Dave says. “We stick by each other. There would never have been any hesitation on her part if I had gotten sick.”
When Lorie got stronger, the two took off again in the motor home, spending winters in Yuma, Ariz.
“I had to be careful, but I could eat normally,” she says. And in 2005, she had a knee replacement. The following year, they were in Yuma when she got sick with what she thought was the flu.
The symptoms worsened, and Dave knew something was going on. On a Friday evening, Lorie was hit by severe pain and shaking. “The closest Kaiser was in San Diego,” Dave says.
Deciding against the Yuma hospital’s emergency department, he threw a pillow in the car, tucked Lorie in and drove 180 miles. They made it by midnight. Emergency personnel rushed her to the head of the line.
“My blood pressure was 60 over 30,” Lorie says. “I was almost gone.”
A CT scan showed that her colon had ruptured, its cancerous contents spreading inside “It took seven or eight liters of saline solution to wash me out, just like you’d wash clothes in a tub.”
Life has dealt the Huttons lots of blows, interspersed with flashes of luck. That night, the doctor on call was a specialist in colon cancer. “She did my surgery,” Lorie says.
Dave called the Huttons’ two kids, Cathy Slater and Paul Hutton, who both live in the local area. They flew down for a week and Dave went to Yuma to retrieve the motor home.
When Lorie was stabilized, Lina Grace, a neighbor and a registered nurse, flew to San Diego. Grace accompanied Lorie — once again, swathed in a bandage across her gaping midsection — home to Portland by air while Dave and Paul took to the Interstate in the motor home.
Lorie’s pattern repeated itself — she survived. A year later, a CT scan of her abdomen looked clear, and she and Dave wintered in Yuma. While they were there, Schwartz contacted them. He had seen something on the scan that didn’t seem right.
“We waited until April,” Lorie says. “I said, ‘I’m not going to rush home.’ “
This time, she has a tumor in her lower abdomen. It’s cancerous. And Schwartz won’t operate.
“I want the surgery,” Lorie says. “But he said he won’t put me through it. That was a blow. Dr. Schwartz is like a second god to me, and now he won’t take this out.”
Instead, she’s had 28 radiation treatments, which “did do some good,” she says. But chemotherapy “almost killed me. I said, ‘That’s enough. No more.’ “
This latest diagnosis has knocked her for a loop, Lorie admits. Earlier this fall, she and Dave took off the beach to combat their anxiety.
“This whole year has not been good to me,” she says, tiredness deflating her. “I just have to accept it, I guess. At my age, what should I do? I’ve had a full life. But I’d like a little more.” She pauses.
“I’ve been blessed with so much. I have a deep faith. I’m not overly religious, but I’m a great believer. If it’s God’s will, I’ll stick around. My grandkids are young. They’ve gone through all this with Grandma; they’re so accepting.”
What has cancer taught her? “Get well. Live for today. Live as large as you want!” she says.
“She just has a positive attitude,” Dave says. “She’s had it ever since we’ve been married.”
Of the disease that has punctuated their life, he says, “You don’t get used to it. You learn to live with it.’
Related links:
For the Life of Me: Stories of living with cancer
For the Life of Me: Honorable mention essays
tally ho wrote on Nov 18, 2008 2:40 AM:
feistyone wrote on Nov 18, 2008 5:40 AM:
MARV19 wrote on Nov 18, 2008 7:20 AM:
realityshowgirl wrote on Nov 18, 2008 8:57 AM:
Most people would not have that same outlook, so I love hearing stories of people who do.
My thoughts and prayers are with the Hutton's. "
onmymind wrote on Nov 18, 2008 9:24 PM:
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