Clarissa Marquez, 33, helps her 6-year-old son, Dominic, decorate their Christmas tree. Marquez, diagnosed with a bone tumor when she was 4, was helped by the Ronald McDonald House thanks to Angel Charity funding.

lindsay a. miller / arizona daily star

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Nightmares and miracles.

In her 33 years, Clarissa Marquez has come to know both well. Well enough to understand that they are flip sides to the same thing — those unexpected events that life tosses your way.

Which is why she says now, "I never let myself get down. No matter what's happening." In her eyes, she was given the chance to move on with her life; to look for the positive and to give back to her community.

The nightmare began for Clarissa and her parents, Sergio and Linda Marquez, when she was 4. She had been limping for about a year, favoring her left leg, and nobody — neither her parents nor the pediatrician — could figure out why.

Then a lump appeared on little Clarissa's lower back, in the sacroiliac joint (near the tip of her tail bone). The orthopedist she was referred to discovered the "why" — cancer. Ewing's sarcoma. A type of bone cancer usually found in children or young adults between 10 and 20 years of age.

That was the beginning of the horrible nightmare — "especially for my parents," Marquez says.

Just imagine what it was like: a 5-year-old child undergoing grueling chemotherapy and radiation sessions — six weeks of each. Marquez doesn't remember much of those days — except the pain of having her hand taped to a board and a syringe inserted into a vein for the chemo treatments and of feeling so bad.

"I remember being very sick," she says.

She also has a permanent bruise on the inside of her left elbow from all the needle pokes for blood tests.

The miracle was that she was diagnosed in May 1979 and a little over a year later — September 1980 — she was in remission.

"I was fortunate," Marquez says. "They caught it very early."

And her straight brown hair that all fell out during the chemo, grew back "jet black and curly," she says.

Still, Marquez wasn't home free; she faced years of follow-up examinations, blood tests and hospital visits. Every six months for four or five years. Yearly after that until she was in her teens.

Those daylong sessions would have been even more difficult had it not been for the Ronald McDonald House, Marquez said.

The house wasn't around when Marquez first was diagnosed. But it was when she began her follow-up visits, and a blessing it was, too, she said.

There was a lot of waiting time between exams but not enough to go home and get back to the hospital (University Medical Center).

The Ronald McDonald House, the first recipient of Angel Charity largess, offered a homelike place for the family to stay and other children for Marquez and her little sister, Deanna, to play with. Children who, like her, were battling deadly diseases. Children who became her friends.

But those friendships — and others formed through the American Cancer Society's Camp Sunrise — were the root of her later nightmare.

By the time she was a teenager, "I had buried more friends than any kid should have to," she said. "It became harder and harder to bury . . . friends."

One funeral sticks in her mind: "Sean's little sister kept hitting the coffin, saying, 'Sean, where are you? Come and play with me.'"

For a while, such experiences caused her to back away from advocating on behalf of Ronald McDonald House or the cancer society. She didn't want those friendships.

But two things — personal miracles, if you will — have reawakened a commitment to work on behalf of Ronald McDonald House and organizations that help cancer patients.

The first was the birth of her son, Dominic Bjerken six years ago — an event that, as far as Marquez is concerned, definitely falls in the miracle category. Doctors had told her parents that due to the radiation treatment, she never would have children. Plus, she had been taking birth control pills.

She carried Dominic to seven months and then required an emergency cesarean. That allowed the doctors to see how damaged her uterus was, and all agreed: She shouldn't have been able to carry a child.

The second thing that happened was her grandmother's diagnosis of breast cancer.

Marquez was able to comfort and support her because of her own experience. And the good thing is that her grandmother's cancer is in remission.

That, combined with her growing awareness of a child's vulnerability to illness and disease, made her commit to advocacy for cancer patients.

In April 2006, she organized a "radiothon" for La Preciosa — Radio 97.1-FM on behalf of the Ronald McDonald House.

"We raised $16,000," she says, "and for me it was the completion of a circle. I had received so much, and this allowed me to give back."