Dwight Tosh, the 17th patient at St. Jude, on surviving lymphoma in 1962

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Dwight C. Tosh

Dwight C. Tosh

Arkansas state representative for the 52nd district (R-Jonesboro)

They were trying everything, but then with a high dosage of radiation and chemo…my body was just almost getting to the point that, like I said, I just didn’t want to do anything, just trying to survive.

This is the fourth installment of the Cancer History Project’s series of oral histories with survivors of cancer. 

The interviews are conducted by Deborah Doroshow, assistant professor of medicine, hematology, and medical oncology at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who is also a historian of medicine and a member of the Cancer History Project editorial board. 

Dwight Tosh had grown so weak that he was unable to walk. Still, doctors at the rural Arkansas hospital—where he lay in bed for weeks in 1962—were unable to diagnose him. 

“My athletic body had been reduced to just a shell of an individual, looked like you’d just taken the skin and stretched it over my bones, just wasn’t much left of me,” Tosh, 73, a Republican state representative in Arkansas, said to Doroshow. “And still, the doctors couldn’t figure out or diagnose what the problem was.”

Tosh, only 13 at the time, wasn’t getting any better. He was running fevers of 107 and 108, and there didn’t seem to be a solution.  

“And then a huge knot came up on my neck and a biopsy of that night revealed that I had Hodgkins’s lymphoma,” he said.

Doctors told his family he had two weeks left to live, but Tosh and his parents never quite believed that.  

“I still kept the spirit that I’m going to make this,” he said. “My mom and dad, I know they had to be extremely worried, but I saw they took on a spirit as well, that they were not going to let this cancer take their son. And I’m telling you, I remember that. And I drew from it.” 

The day after doctors told Tosh’s family to prepare for the worst, he was transported by ambulance through the doors of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He was assigned a patient number—17. 

There, Tosh received an aggressive form of chemotherapy and radiation treatment under the care of Donald Pinkel, the first director of St. Jude.

“It was just devastating,” he said. “I started losing my hair and I just lost my appetite, and of course, I was still running a high grade fever.” 

Tosh recalls taking several ice baths at St. Jude, as doctors were desperate to alleviate his fever. 

“The fever was just destroying me,” Tosh said. “I’d been running this fever for so long now and never really got a break from it. They were trying everything, but then with a high dosage of radiation and chemo…my body was just almost getting to the point that, like I said, I just didn’t want to do anything, just trying to survive.”

He credits the staff of St. Jude, who he recalls being upbeat, with keeping his morale up—“If I had sensed in them that they were giving up, I probably would’ve gave up too.” 

A former athlete, his days of playing on his school’s basketball and baseball teams were now over. He had lost touch with friends from back home, and grew close with fellow patients. 

“There were not that many of us there in that wing of that old hospital,” he said. “There’s a bond that develops. You leave all your other friends behind. I’d been out of school for some time. These were my new friends in life and we hung out together, we’d visit. We would just share conversations with each other and their parents and my mom would become good friends.” 

Some days, Tosh asked his mother to walk him around the hospital in a wheelchair. He liked to visit his friends that way. 

“I’d go by one of their rooms to see my friend. They would be gone and I was just… All their things were gone. Their beds were made,” he said. And I said, ‘Mom, where did they go?’ And she would try to explain to me about death, but I was a kid, I had a difficult time understanding about death and why my new friends were dying.” 

Eventually, his fever broke. Doctors declared his cancer was in remission. It was time for Tosh to return to Jonesboro Arkansas and Valley View High School—but not without complications.

“I had lost the arches of both my feet,” he said. “Those muscles had deteriorated to the point that, like I said, I couldn’t walk.” 

Tosh may have once envisioned himself trying out for the high school basketball team, but now he faced the challenge of physical therapy. Doctors tasked him with different exercises in which he picked marbles up with his toes, strengthening the muscles in his feet.  

“Even today I still have trouble,” he said. “I’ve always bounced, well, I guess I might say I walk on my toes. I’ve always compensated for that.”

In gaining his health back, Tosh’s parents turned to a surprising source of nutrition: pecans.

“My mom had some friends that had a grocery store and they would buy these pecans in these cans by the cases,” Tosh said. “I never got so sick of pecans in all my life, but I was eating those things just nonstop. Then I started gaining some weight. I’d started to be able to walk again, I’d started to recover.” 

Though Tosh wasn’t quite ready to get back to competitive sports, he was determined to return to high school and the friends he had left behind. 

The only problem? Some of the families in the Valley View community feared his cancer was contagious. 

“Some of them even were pretty bold about it. They just said, ‘Hey, if he comes back to school, we’re taking our kids out,’” Tosh said. “I made a promise that I was going to return to school, and I was going to prove to these concerned parents that didn’t think that I should be around their kids, that I was going to prove that just because you’ve been a patient at St. Jude Hospital does not make you any less of an individual.” 

Tosh is the first patient at St. Jude to become a 60 year survivor. He spoke recently at the 60th anniversary celebration of the hospital, where he also shared his story. 

He’s still living with the side effects of his cancer today, especially after having been treated with such an aggressive chemotherapy and radiation regimen. He’s participated in several studies on the long term effects of childhood cancer treatment, and doctors have begun to help him connect the dots.

“I started having pulmonary heart issues, a disease, when I was in my late forties, and had to have a bypass when I was 48 years of age,” he said. “I developed diabetes, and it’s just, I’ve had to have a hip replacement, and my joints and everything. It just seems like they’re wearing out a lot quicker than everybody else’s.

Tosh maintains the upbeat disposition he had during his time at St. Jude. 

“At least I’m still here,” he said. “Though there may be some aches and pains and some health issues that I may not have had to deal with if I hadn’t gotten sick, but I did. And it’s just part of life’s journey.

Deborah Doroshow, MD, PhD
Assistant professor of medicine, Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
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Deborah Doroshow, MD, PhD
Assistant professor of medicine, Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

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