NEWS RELEASE, 4/17/97

Cancer battle puts learning in a new light for UC Berkeley's "most distinguished" 1997 graduating senior

Berkeley -- Despite battling malignant melanoma, graduating senior Carl Ryanen-Grant has earned straight "As" at UC Berkeley and will receive the campus's highest academic honor, the University Medal, for his scholastic achievements.

"Nobody my age thinks about these things, of having it themselves," he said. "I started on a nightmarish roller-coaster ride that is still going on. I was totally flabbergasted when I realized the implications."

While most skin cancer "is non-fatal and easily removable even in the dermatologist's office, my kind is often fatal and just as vicious as breast cancer or lung cancer," he said.

Last spring "was an incredibly emotionally trying semester," he said. "It was just like a descent into darkness. I was investigating all the treatment options that were possible and going to school this entire time, continuing to work, living in Berkeley. It was very draining, those months."

And so, under those conditions, how did he still manage to walk away with the Class of 1997's top academic honor?

Ryanen-Grant smiled wryly and shrugged. "The irony is I'm much more content with my life than I was before. I now know what's important in the grand scheme ... basically, solid and fulfilling personal relationships.

"My mother, for example -- we now see each other all the time, we talk on the phone every day or every other day, she drives me to the doctor. This has reinvigorated (our) relationship."

Which "doesn't mean that essays and classes and tests aren't important, but they exist in a limited sphere," he said. "I realized in five or 10 years, it's not going to matter one whit whether I got an A or a B on a particular French examination, say, but my friends, this community, will affect my happiness for the balance of my life."

When he does study these days, he looks on the process differently.

"The learning I did to understand my melanoma I knew might have a very big life or death impact for me. That makes viewing learning a lot different," he said.

Ryanen-Grant is not sure if his future plans will revolve around the history he has studied. But for now his main concern is to complete a year of experimental interferon treatment begun after prior approaches failed and the cancer spread.

"There's no real way of telling if it's going to work or not," said Ryanen-Grant, "but it's the only FDA-approved treatment for this stage of melanoma. It doesn't have an overwhelming success rate."

Yet Ryanen-Grant remains hopeful.

"In general I keep a very positive demeanor," he said. "With all these health problems, I have realized everything in life I still want to do. Having melanoma and being faced with losing that future and the possibilities of doing the things I want to do has increased my hope exponentially. But it's really a rocky road. I would say I'm hopeful, positive, anxious -- no, not anxious -- curious."

UC Berkeley