What it’s like living with cancer in college

Have you ever had a bad day and then met someone who has it much worse, but still smiled like nothing was wrong?

Gabriel Dantzler is a math major at the University of Florida who lives with an aggressive type of cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma that threatens to kill him without warning. Despite that he leads as normal a life as possible—getting good grades, volunteering with children hospitalized by life threatening diseases, and helping his mom take care of their horses and pasture.

Back in 2008, when he lived in Costa Rica, he tore the ligaments in his right shoulder while playing soccer. His mom rushed him to emergency surgery and the surgeons found a cyst that tested positive for cancer.

What was your life like before you learned that you had cancer?

I played a lot of sports, spent most of my time outside, and studied. In school I was a decent student, but I liked sports a little bit more than I liked school. I was on the soccer and karate team – I definitely had a lot more of an active lifestyle than I have now.

Gabriel at three years old

How did you feel when you found out?

I didn’t really feel anything at all. I wasn’t shocked because I’ve had dogs with cancer, so I know it happens without warning. We just asked the doctor, “What do we do next? What are our treatment options?” They couldn’t tell us until they learned the type of cancer it was. When they told us it was Ewing’s Sarcoma and they didn’t have a strong enough treatment, we started calling other hospitals. We were very logical.

I wasn’t afraid of dying because I’ve always had the mindset of not reacting to anything. We grew up rescuing and rehabbing pets and wild animals – with them a split second is life or death. My mom always told us, “Don’t react, always think. Process the information, stay calm.”

How did your family and friends feel?

I don’t know too much about my sisters, but my mom was the same as me. She was there when they told us and we both did the same thing, stayed calm and asked about the next step.

My friends were casual, they’d come visit me and hang out. They didn’t overreact or freak out over the top or anything, but they were sad and maybe confused. They all wanted to help. Most of the time, since I wasn’t going to school when that happened, they would pick days to come over and hang out.

How did that first treatment go?

The first time around, we’d only heard that chemo was bad and that you would more likely die from it than cancer. No one was sharing the good results. The first two treatments we tried were unorthodox, one in Mexico and in Costa Rica. Neither of them worked. The cancer was just too aggressive, that’s how Ewing’s Sarcoma works. It’s a rare, aggressive form of cancer caused by a genetic mutation when you’re born. It usually happens in white males and the mutation is triggered around ages 11 through 20, so I was right there—14, right in the middle, a perfect match.

In Gabriel’s freshman spring semester, this x-ray confirmed he was relapsing. The white spot on the right is the tumor

After the first treatments, we had another set of scans. It spread from my clavicle to my lymph nodes in my neck, my humerus, and stopped at my lungs. My lungs had so many tumors in them that they couldn’t even count them. The doctors told us, “You better go to the U.S. and find treatment there, something a lot more aggressive. It’s gonna have to be chemo and radiation.” We called several hospitals and they either couldn’t treat me for whatever reason, never treated Ewing’s before, or only treated adults.

Eventually we came to Florida and called UF SHANDS and they said they’d treat us. They gave me the most aggressive protocol for Ewing’s Sarcoma they had. By the time we got to Florida, the new MRI showed that it had also spread to my spine and fractured my T-4 vertebrae, but the treatment started working immediately. A couple hours later my hair was falling out, but two rounds in the tumor decreased from the size of a football on my shoulder by 20 percent. It kept dropping until it was the size of a golf ball by the end of treatment. Then I had full on radiation to my clavicle, humerus, and spine. After a year and a half of chemo radiation we were done.

How did your life change afterwards?

After that first round I had missed three years in high school. I was in a different country altogether and I couldn’t finish high school in Costa Rica, so my mindset went to, “I gotta catch up.” That’s when my lifestyle went from being an active person to a very studious person. I’m still a decent amount active, but not as much—like, I’m not in every single sports club I can join. Now I’m active on the farm and I bike around campus.

In high school I was grabbing as many courses as I could, studying the entire time to do them fast and get good grades. I even took AP classes my last two years. I was fully enrolled in a regular high school and then back home I had a full course load on Florida Virtual School, so I was basically doing two years at once for each of my last two years. Then I caught up.

I graduated high school just a year after my friends in Costa Rica and came to UF. Life was good.

After taking care of horses all day, Gabriel starts a bon fire to relax with family and friends

Why were you so focused on catching up?

I wanted to keep up with my peers back home because I had already been removed from that country, so I was no longer home I couldn’t see any of them. I had been talking to them a little bit through email and stuff, but not a terrible amount and I made some friends in the hospital through Street Light, which is an organization at UF SHANDS, that I volunteer for. I think that yearning of still fitting in with society and your peers—still being that one group—was still there because I mean, it doesn’t strip your humanity away and that’s still a lot of what affects us as humans, the social norms of still fitting in. I think that was why, or maybe I just wanted to be normal, you know? To no longer stand out and have everyone ask me, “Why are you so old and still this far behind in school?” Then have to explain everything and be looked upon differently because I had cancer.

Why do you treat your cancer so casually?

I think that again, it has to do with my logical mindset. Yes, Ewing’s is aggressive—it’s one of the faster killing types of cancer, but the first time around, I didn’t know exactly how aggressive it was because I had no experience with it. As the first treatments weren’t working I learned that it’s pretty aggressive, pretty fast. When I relapsed the second and third I already knew how aggressive it was, but because of how bad and close to death I was when I first got to SHANDS I was in and out of consciousness always passing out from the pain, they kind of considered me comatose because I was asleep for long periods of time. But they just brought me back from that so-close-to-death-moment and I just trust them. It can come back as many times as it wants and so long as I’m being treated at SHANDS I’ll consider it treated and done.

The staff at SHANDS always treat Gabriel like a friend

I also have a really good support system. I have honest friends. I have Street Light, which is a really good support system and in volunteering we deal with older patients, 13 to 25 sometimes older, and we create friendships with them – more than just of giving a child a toy at the hospital. A lot of our friends who have been going through treatment have died from various diseases not just cancer—sickle cell, cystic fibrosis, and transplants. They all understand to an extent what I’m going through. Several of them have had cancer of some type. Others have seen so many kids with it they know that pity isn’t the way to go. They know how to support me and they know to give me space and let me tell them what I want versus just always being in my face about doing something for me. I think I have a really great support system with family, friends, Street Light. I think that helps me deal with it better, it doesn’t look so ominous when I have a good team helping me out.

Is there anything else people should know?

Gabriel eating Krishna at the Plaza of the Americas

Most cancer patients just want to remain normal. With cancer it usually doesn’t start when you’re young—some kids get it when they’re young yes—but it’s usually like a clunk of time in your life versus spread out through your entire life. So you’re “normal” and then you just get slammed by something and it knocks you out of normal. You didn’t grow up with a chronic disease from when you were young. You never knew anything about cancer the disease was not your thing growing up, so being treated as normal—not being pitied and having your friends laugh with you, still hangout, do the same games you used to do and respect the patient can help more than trying to do everything for them.   

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University of Florida: UF