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Don Coppola simply shouldn’t be here.

In 1983, when he was 10, he suffered a ruptured appendix. Doctors performed surgery and repaired the rupture, but they found something else wrong with Coppola’s young body. A battery of tests revealed acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer.

His mother, Tomie Coppola, remembers that the oncologist on call was Dr. Frederic Billings, who was 95% sure it was the more serious condition of leukemia. He told Tomie her only options were M.D. Anderson in Houston or St. Jude in Memphis.

Don’s appendix surgery wrapped up at 2 a.m., and doctors told her to be prepared to get on a plane at 8 a.m. “I remember them telling me that Houston was closer, but Tennessee was the best,” she says. “St. Jude took care of everything monetarily. The decision was easy.”

So severe was Coppola’s illness doctors declared him clinically dead no fewer than three times. But his resolve was strong, and his treatment effective. He overcame cancer and grew up like a regular teenager, and today, at 34, he is the picture of health, patrolling downtown as part of the Baton Rouge Police Department’s bicycle patrol.

These days the hospital that saved Coppola’s life all those years ago is reaching beyond its physical walls to ensure that all Baton Rouge children diagnosed with cancer get the same fighting chance, but it’s not alone in this fight.

St. Jude administrators knew just what they were doing nine years ago when they tapped Dr. Sheila Moore, a maverick in treating children with cancer and blood disorders, to establish an affiliate clinic in Baton Rouge. Moore has managed to create a world-class children’s cancer clinic on the Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center campus on Essen Lane, one of only four such St. Jude affiliate programs. (The others are in Shreveport, Johnson City, Tenn., Peoria, Ill., and Huntsville, Ala.)

When St. Jude was founded in 1962, the cure rate for the most common form of pediatric cancer, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, was 4%. Now, 90% of those young patients survive, thanks to diligent research and advanced treatment options. Problem is the treatment is grueling, not just for the children but for their whole families. After several weeks of induction treatment in Memphis, they usually require non-stop weekly chemotherapy for up to three years.

And that’s a key reason the St. Jude clinic in Baton Rouge is important. It allows area families to receive treatment here, rather than having to commute—or in some cases, even move—to Memphis.

It’s a blessing for families like the Castelluccios, whose daughter Olivia was diagnosed last fall with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or ALL.

Peter and Gina Castelluccio had just welcomed their third child, Matthew, into the world Sept. 21. The happy parents barely had time to revel in the birth. They were on a plane to Memphis six days after Olivia’s diagnosis was confirmed. She spent several weeks there undergoing treatment, and once her cancer was in remission she returned home.

She now receives weekly treatments at the local St. Jude affiliate clinic at Our Lady of the Lake and only returns to Memphis as needed. “We are so fortunate to have this facility,” Peter Castelluccio says. “Our commute for treatment is literally 15 minutes. It’s made this so much easier.”

A long and winding road

The local St. Jude clinic came about thanks to the hard work and unorthadox career path Moore has taken.

She grew up in Clinton, attended LSU and then went on to LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans. She began her first year of residency pregnant with her first son, and became pregnant again during her second year. With two small children at home she decided to take a break from medicine to raise her family in Zachary, walking away from her residency a year before she completed it.

It wasn’t until 1973, when her youngest son was 5 years old and in kindergarten that she decided to return to medicine.

It was a time when the American Academy of Pediatrics was looking to draw women back into medicine—women who either hadn’t finished or weren’t working in the field. Living in Zachary, it would have been impossible to complete her residency in New Orleans. “It had been six or seven years of raising kids, learning how to plant roses and cook squirrel and that kind of stuff, which I never did very well,” she jokes. “At that point, with two kids, there was no way in China I could finish a residency in New Orleans.”

So Dr. Larry Hebert, head of pediatrics at Earl K. Long, met with the head of pediatrics at LSU in New Orleans and granted special dispensation to Moore to stay and finish her residency in Baton Rouge. It was a pioneering move, 19 years before Earl K. Long would become an official training facility within the LSU Medical School system.

After she completed her residency she continued to practice at Earl K. Long.

Too many of her young patients developed cancer, and upon diagnosis she sent them to St. Jude in Memphis, long considered the pre-eminent provider of cancer care for children worldwide. They’d begin treatment at St. Jude, then return to Moore’s clinic for a few years of weekly chemotherapy, all in accordance with St. Jude protocols. While patients are able to receive most treatments at the Baton Rouge clinic, they do have to return to Memphis every few months for research purposes and advanced procedures including imaging, bone marrow transplants and sometimes re-induction.

Before long Moore recognized a problem her young patients faced: they were at the mercy of the rotation schedule of LSU Medical School’s residents. “It was more along the lines of residents assigned to this clinic, and then next week the child would see someone else, and with the way the rotations were set up, it might be three weeks before they saw the same doctor again. I just decided that I’d have me a half-day clinic for blood diseases and a half-day clinic for children with cancer.”

That was 1974. In those early days Moore held the clinic one day a week at Earl K. Long. By the time she left there in 1998, the clinics operated all day, every day.

Cancer treatment has improved significantly since those early days. “It’s amazing what happens in medicine,” Moore says. “You just don’t dare shut your eyes because you’re going to miss something.”

By the early 1980s, hematology/oncology had become a sub-specialty, requiring doctors to first complete a fellowship. But Moore already had so much practical experience she was allowed to take a test and instantly became one of the only such specialists in the Baton Rouge area.

“It was, like, one day I didn’t have this piece of paper and the next day I did,” she says. “I don’t know why that piece of paper meant so much. I hadn’t changed the way I treated my patients.”

In those days Earl K. Long operated under a ward system, and often children with cancer and other types of blood diseases were placed in the same ward as infectious patients, with only a curtain separating them.

To provide her young patients with the best treatment possible upon their return from Memphis, Moore started admitting them to Our Lady of the Lake. The problem was that in the early 1980s there was a real “town vs. gown” animosity toward doctors paid by the state who also treated patients at private hospitals, Moore recalls. She was only the second doctor to branch out of Earl K. Long and do this.

After finishing her workday at Earl K. Long, she would drive across town to Our Lady of the Lake to make rounds on patients from the clinic she had admitted there, as well as some private patients. She practiced medicine this way until 1998 when politics interfered.

Caught in the crossfire

At that time, New Orleans-based Ochsner, LSU and Tulane were looking to develop their own pediatric cancer protocol. When they began investigating what was being done in Baton Rouge they found that for 13 years Moore had been sending patients out of the state to St. Jude, instead of to Children’s Hospital in New Orleans.

“I was basically told I was not being a team player,” Moore says. “They said I needed to send my patients to Children’s and I said, ‘when my families can get the same care, when my children can get the same care, I will do it in a heartbeat.’ ”

Overwhelmingly, parents say they choose St. Jude because of its reputation for providing the best care. Also, St. Jude is extraordinarily well-funded. Thanks to generous donations, the hospital pays for everything—it flies patients and their families to Memphis, puts them up in hotels and pays for all their meals, often for weeks at a time. Moore says the simple fact is state funding of Children’s in New Orleans can’t match the scope of St. Jude.

Officials at Children’s Hospital declined to comment on Moore’s assessment and version of the events. But in a lengthy, prepared statement, Children’s officials insist that their cancer treatment is similar to that of St. Jude’s, noting that since 1987 the facility is part of a nationwide pediatric cancer research group called Children’s Oncology Group.

“Diseases such as leukemia are treated at Children’s Hospital with the same protocols as those used by 240 COG institutions, such as St. Jude, M.D. Anderson and Johns Hopkins,” said Cathleen Randon, Director of Public Affairs for Children’s Hospital.

During her early years of Baton Rouge practice, Moore developed a close relationship with Our Lady of the Lake, and when the time came for her to leave Earl K. Long, the Lake was glad to welcome her clinic in 1998. It wasn’t long before administrators at St. Jude approached her about starting a local affiliate program, so she opted not to join forces with any New Orleans-based programs.

“In 1998, the LSU Department of Pediatrics in New Orleans became more insistent I send all cancer patients to Children’s in New Orleans and with that ultimatum I retired from LSU,” she says. “It was about that time St. Jude approached me about directing my own clinic, so it was an opportune time to change directions. It’s essentially what I had done all my life anyway, but I wouldn’t leave my sickle-cell kids behind because they had no place to go, so I got a verbal agreement from the folks in Memphis that I could bring those patients with me, too.”

That was nine years ago.

Since then, Moore and her staff of dedicated nurses have built the clinic into a renowned center for the treatment of childhood cancers. The clinic currently has 44 active cancer patients, plus hundreds more in remission who receive follow-up treatment. The clinic has treated children from 20 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes, and occasionally children from other cities and states along the Gulf Coast due to closer proximity than Memphis.

As well as her staff of nurses, Moore has a new medical partner, Dr. Jeffrey Deyo, who will take over after she retires.

A place of healing

In contrast to Our Lady of the Lake’s sterile, off-white walls and excessive, arrow-pointing signage, the waiting room of St. Jude’s Baton Rouge Clinic is bright and cheerful. Children, parents and nurses greet each other hello.

The clinic itself is tucked away in a corner office at the end of a long hallway at OLOL’s old medical plaza building. The clinic has eight examination rooms, a playroom for its youngest patients and a transfusion room that seats six. The clinic staffs three full-time nurses, one nurse practitioner and doctors Moore and Deyo. It’s a small operation making a big difference.

On a Friday morning in late February, 13-year-old Patrick Richoux walks through the door, and just like all the others, he’s just too young to have cancer.

A St. Jude baseball cap sits atop his fully re-grown head of hair, and a surgical mask covers his ashen face to protect his weakened immune system. Walking with his mother, Theresa, he is armed with a duffle bag full of PlayStation videogames. He knows it’s going to be a long day.

He was diagnosed in July 2004 with ALL, and has been receiving treatment here for almost three years. He’ll complete his chemotherapy in August, but the staff will routinely monitor him until he is 21 years old, standard St. Jude protocol.

After the nurses call him back to the exam rooms, he finds out his red blood cell counts are too low today for chemo, so he’s going to need a blood transfusion. The transfusion room is at the far end of the hall and may sound ominous, but it’s stocked with comfy chairs, and each patient gets his own TV and PlayStation gaming system. It was Patrick’s uncle, Sean Molony, who donated the gear.

Patrick selects a chair, and once the nurses get his IV hooked up to the first unit of blood, he unzips his duffle and retrieves a copy of Call of Duty 3, popping it into the machine. The world suddenly slips away as he immerses himself in the World War II-based action on the screen.

On any given morning, about a dozen children will shuffle into this third-floor waiting room. They will be stuck with needles, their blood tested, and then they’ll wait their turn to have powerful chemicals dripped into their IVs, medicines that will sicken them and cause hair to fall out, but ultimately, will probably save their young lives.

A legacy of life

Hanging in the waiting room are three large picture frames full of children she has treated. Some are baby pictures of her youngest patients, and others show some of her survivors dressed for their prom. The hall leading to the examining rooms is lined with framed newspaper articles chronicling the lives Moore and the clinic helped to save.

One article details Moore’s surprise 60th birthday celebration, put on by Cancer Services of Baton Rouge. Patients young and old turned out to honor their doctor. Some present that day were parents who had lost a child to cancer, so profound was Moore’s compassion, determination and impact on their families.

Maybe it’s inevitable that an area known as Cancer Alley would be home to such a pioneering, dedicated doctor as Moore, and a St. Jude affiliate in which to do it.

“This will be my legacy,” she says. “This is what I will leave to the children of Baton Rouge. It is my hope that long after I’m gone this clinic will continue to provide the best cancer treatment possible for the children of this community.”

Back in the clinic, Patrick Richoux is well into his day of transfusion, and ever-nearer to the end of his treatment.

“We are really looking forward to August,” says his mother, Theresa Richoux. “Three years is a long time, and we’re both so tired. Since he was diagnosed, we’ve had no sense of normalcy. When we started treatment, we kept looking forward to that three-year mark, thinking that if we can make it, it’ll all be over, but it will never be over. I’ll constantly be worried that the cancer could come back.”

But for now, mother and son eagerly await the day they won’t have to make their weekly clinic visit, although it will be bittersweet. They have made some good friends here, including Dixie Roberts and her 6-year-old son, Grant.

On this particular morning, both mothers sit back and talk. Grant is standing behind Patrick, watching intently as the 13-year-old navigates through battlefields and eludes Nazis. The nurses, careful not to interrupt the mesmerized boys, monitor Patrick’s transfusion and get Grant to lift up his shirt so they can access the semi-permanent intravenous port in his chest. Grant’s eyes never leave the TV and the nurses successfully clean his IV line and administer his treatment for the day. Today was simple. Grant is in and out in a matter of minutes, but Patrick’s transfusions will take all day.

Grant’s mom is calling him. It’s time to go, but not before the mothers and sons hug and kiss each other good-bye.

“It’s like family around here,” Roberts says. “The staff is just amazing and it’s nice to be around people going through similar situations. I feel so blessed that we have this facility here. It truly is the best-kept secret in Baton Rouge for families dealing with this.”

Of course, the clinic is no secret to the Coppola family. Even three decades later, Don Coppola’s mom gushes with praise for Moore and her clinic. His cancer went into remission in 1984, and even then doctors worried he’d never have children. Today, he is married and has two.

“He’s my miracle,” Tomie Coppola says. “He’s been through hell, but look where he is now.”