Darrell Wood Beats Cancer at CHKD, Gives Back
Through two chemotherapy rounds and two surgeries, one to remove lymph nodes that left a 16-inch scar from his breastbone to groin, Darrell Wood kept pushing past his exhaustion.
Battling testicular cancer, the disease that struck his older brother at the exact same age (18 years, 4 months), Wood finished his senior year at Peninsula Catholic High School in Newport News, Va. He lost his long blonde hair and his appetite but performed the lead in the school’s musical, “Beauty and the Beast,” and appeared in shows at Busch Gardens. In his first semester at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Va., Wood earned a 3.2 GPA as a music and theater major.
He also found extra energy to give back to Children’s Hospital of The King’s Daughters, which he credits with saving his life. Wood has visited hospitalized kids in show costume, shared his story at hospital fundraisers and now hopes to create theater workshops for children.
“Cancer took a lot out of me, but I also learned how much I could still do,” says Wood, currently cancer-free. “I had ‘Why me?’ moments, but my message is to never let anything hold you back from pursuing your dreams.”
Doctors originally suspected appendicitis or a hernia when Wood went to an urgent care center complaining of abdominal pain in February 2013. Instead, he was shocked when they found a testicular mixed germ cell tumor—just what his older brother had faced about a year earlier. The family had no prior history of the disease.
A week later, Wood had surgery to remove the mass. In October, doctors found traces of cancerous cells in two lymph nodes and took out more than 25 as a precaution.
Wood was bald when he and the “Beauty” cast came to sing, play, draw and make friendship bracelets with CHKD patients, whose faces lit up at the prince and princess costumes. “Darrell showed those kids, ‘I’m making it through. I’m doing what I love.
I’m proud of my bald head,’” says Lauren Babashanian, a child life assistant at CHKD. “That’s empowering.”
Dreaming of a New York City musical theater career, Wood undergoes regular checkups (as do Robert and their younger brother Dillan, 17). Cancer has changed him in countless ways: his straight hair grew back curly, for one, and he suddenly loves spicy foods. He focuses on the positives and the big picture. “If this hadn’t happened,” he says, “I wouldn’t have gotten to meet so many amazing people.”
