When Charlie Gabrion ’15 found out he was diagnosed with cancer two years ago, he was the only one who seemed to be calm, and he stayed that way throughout the entirety of his experience, he said.

Charlie especially remembers his mother crying hysterically when his family discovered the news, he said.  The news came unexpectedly but he looked at it with a positive attitude.

“We were already watching my grandfather deal with cancer and to think Charlie was going to have to battle that as a teenager was really upsetting,” Charlie’s sister, Ali Gabrion ‘13 said.

At 13 years old, he had a bump on this arm which he thought was a broken bone, but was Mesenchymal chondrosarcoma. The lump began to grow closer to his lymph nodes, and if it had not been treated could have made its way to the lungs, said Ali Gabrion.

“I figured there wasn’t anything I could do but to treat it,” Charlie Gabrion said.

Mesenchymal chondrosarcoma is a very rare type of cancer that occurs in the cartilage, said Charlie Gabrion.  It is so rare that there have only been 400 cases on record and only a handful of them have been reported in children.

“Even though the doctors didn’t know how to approach it, they figured that they could only do whatever they could to get rid of it,” Charlie Gabrion said.

The Gabrions did not hesitate to take action, he said. He underwent 14 treatments of chemotherapy every other week and surgery after the eighth chemotherapy treatment.  On top of chemotherapy, he had 25 radiation treatments five times a week for five weeks, which ended in August.

With a young person who is still developing, chemotherapy can be a very frightening experience.  Upon returning from his trips to the hospitals, he would be out of school for days just continually rejecting all the poison used to kill the cancer during chemotherapy, Ali Gabrion said.

“It’s a lot of laying around trying not to be sick most of the time,” said Charlie Gabrion.

After chemotherapy was radiation, said Ali Gabrion.  When it began they used a very high dosage, leaving Charlie with terrible burns all over both arms.

“I couldn’t imagine being a teenager going through that,” Dennis Pascoe, Charlies’s homebound teacher said.

Pascoe did not teach Gabrion at school, but would bring his homework from his other classes to his house and go over it with him, said Pascoe.

When Pascoe received an e-mail saying that Charlie would be needing a teacher that would be able to gather Charlie’s homework and sit down with him and work through it. Pascoe figured since Gabrion was a football player and the pair had similar personalities it would work out for the both of them, he said.  Since the two were alike in many ways it made the homebound teacher situation easier on Charlie and was able to develop a relationship between the two.

“Charlie was such a hard worker considering everything that was going on,” Pascoe said.

Unfortunately this season Charlie was unable to play football as he is currently regaining strength, said Pascoe, adding he hopes Charlie will be on the field next year.

Since the Gabrions spent a lot of time in the hospital, they became very close to the other patients, the nurses and the other families who visited the patients.  Ironically, it was hard for the family to leave all of that behind, said Ali Gabrion.

“On Charlie’s last night in the hospital we had a big party in the room with people who have been there through it all,” Ali Gabrion said.

Charlie is now cancer free, and there is no sign of it coming back, he said.  He is very appreciative of his family, friends and teachers for treating him just as they did before he was sick.

“My experience was a blessing in disguise,” Charlie said.

Charlie knows he was very lucky to be able to fight cancer, but he also feels he learned the importance of life and health, he said.

Charlie said, “Everyone should know that any obstacle can be overcome if you never give up.”