Life of service paused, not derailed: How a Ramapo College student battled rare cancer

At just 22, Abby Fieldhouse spent much of her final year at Ramapo College helping young assault victims, rape survivors and families of murder victims navigate the legal system as an intern with the Passaic County Prosecutor’s Office.

It's not an easy job for hardened veterans, let alone a college student. But Abby loved the work. As a victim’s advocate, she was surrounded by people suffering through the lowest points of their lives. She offered guidance and compassion as they sat through grueling trials or prepared to testify against their perpetrators.

But Abby had to put her work on hold earlier this year as she endured the lowest point of her own young life.

Story continues below photo gallery

Abby was diagnosed in February with a rare and aggressive form of cancer called primary mediastinal large B cell lymphoma. Her busy life was ground to a halt — captaining the Ramapo cheerleading squad, a part-time job teaching gymnastics, helping her dad manage a seafood restaurant , a full course load in her final semester and the courthouse work that she loved so much.

"I went from healthy college student to cancer patient like that," Abby said. "It was a shock, but then when that wore off, I was like, 'Okay, let's deal with this and get back to where I was.'"

To get a sense of Abby's determination, you have to go back to her childhood in Bloomingdale, where she was a competitive gymnast at a young age. She also developed a strong sense of anxiety in her adolescent years. Therapy, medication and family support helped bring it under control.

Abby is open about those difficult times to help reduce the stigma felt by many who deal with mental health challenges . It also helped propel her budding career.

“That’s one of the things that drove me into social work," she said. "I could relate to a lot of the people I wanted to help.”

After a year at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, she decided to transfer closer to home to Ramapo where she thrived. One of the first things she did was join the cheering team where she practiced three nights a week for three hours and performed at basketball games on weekends.

Internship with the prosecutor's office

After three years of studying in the classroom, it was time to put that training to use in her senior year. Social work internships are hands-on and hard. They can scare some students off.

“There are students who have an innate sense of what they want to do and Abby was one of those,” said Cort Engelken, a longtime professor of social work at Ramapo. “She was quietly determined that criminal justice is where she wanted to focus. We don’t need rock stars in social work. We need people to go out there like Abby and do what needs to be done.”

Abby admits she was scared before her internship began with the prosecutor's office. "I thought I wouldn't be able to handle it," she said. "It'd be too traumatizing."

But it wasn't. She was thrown into the work, which meant dealing face-to-face with victims of major crimes. They often did not know the many steps and layers of the criminal justice system. And it was now Abby's job — along with her supervisors — to help move them through the system with as much support as they could muster.

The internship required her to work two days a week, eight hours each day. As the semester rolled on, Abby would often go in for a third day.

"I loved every second I was there," she said. "You get all sides of the story, the legal side, the victim's side. There are things you would never learn in the classroom."

Abby was set to return to the internship in the spring semester this year, but a nagging pain in her shoulder that began in the fall gradually grew worse over the winter. She was used to injuries as a gymnast. But this one didn't go away, despite pain and anti-inflammatory medications.

Symptoms of blurred vision, dizzy spells, labored breathing

Other strange things began to happen. The vision in her right eye became blurry. She had some dizzy spells. She felt tired all the time. By January, her breathing had become labored. Not only was she winded from cheer practice, but simply walking across campus to class was draining.

She had trouble sleeping due to night sweats and the increasing pain in her shoulder. Abby tried to continue her busy schedule, but her professors and supervisors at the prosecutor's office told her she needed rest.

On Feb. 22, the pain had become so bad that Abby went to the emergency department at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, where doctors were more concerned about her breathing problems. They ran a bank of tests culminating in a CT scan. It revealed a large mass pushing on her heart and lungs. It was 7 inches by 5 inches by 4 inches.

The next day, Abby was diagnosed with cancer. Her first round of chemotherapy came soon after.

No one knows when Abby’s cancer began growing. Her symptoms began months before her diagnosis, but the possibility of a serious disease wasn’t on anyone’s mind.

“She’s young and she’s an athlete so you’re not thinking cancer when your shoulder starts to hurt,” said Dr. Michele Frank, a hematologist at Valley who is treating Abby. “If anything, you’re thinking sports injury.”

Her chemotherapy regimen was aggressive: six sessions every few weeks from February through the middle of June. Abby lost her hair but not her drive. She continued to take her final college courses virtually and made the dean's list in spite of everything.

Abby received a some good news amid all the bad when she learned that she was accepted into Seton Hall University's master's program in social work concentrating on the legal system.

“She was remarkably poised from the onset,” Frank said. “She showed quite a bit of courage around her parents. Parents are often hit harder by something like this and Abby has always been bright, always optimistic, and it’s genuine.”

A scan in July showed that Abby had “dramatically improved,” Frank said. But it was not completely negative. Abby is due for another scan next month. “Hopefully that will be clear and she will be in remission,” Dr. Frank said.

As is tradition at Ramapo, Abby and her fellow 2024 graduates participated in the annual “Arching” ceremony prior to commencement this spring. Wearing their academic robes, they walked through Havemeyer Arch on campus to mark the end of their college careers just as they did as freshmen to mark the beginning.  Abby looked like any other graduate, except for two distinctive features. She wore a long blond wig. And dangling from her chest was her chemo pump.

“Her wearing that, that’s one of the gutsiest things I’ve ever seen,” Engelken said, holding back tears. “But that’s Abby.”

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Life of service paused, not derailed: How a Ramapo College student battled rare cancer