Hampton keeps positive outlook, even with loss of eye

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- "More importantly I have learned that life's too short, and if you have your health, you have everything."

Those are words of wisdom from 39-year-old Dawn Steinhaus Hampton who grew up in New Ulm and left shortly after graduating from high school to find her fortune in California. Her parents, Donald and Carol Steinhaus, and her sister Amy live in New Ulm.

She's also found a lot of truth in the old adage that if life hands you a basketful of lemons, make lemonade.

Her world was shattered in 1994 when she was diagnosed as having cancer in her sinuses on the right side of her face.

Doctors call it Esthesioneuroblastoma, and it's an aggressive bugger whose progress can be measured in days and weeks. It's a rare cancer that usually strikes men in their 70s who have had long careers in shoemaking, furniture making or woodworking.

Hampton thought she had a super-sized toothache but, with the discovery that she had a bulge in the roof of her mouth, she was told to get to a medical doctor as fast as she could.

On May 12, 1994, she underwent surgery at UCLA hospitals in Los Angeles that would radically change both her appearance and her view of life. She lost her right eye, part of her face surrounding the eye socket and was left with a large hole in the roof of her mouth.

A surgical team led by Dr. Thomas Calcaterra, who -- Hampton was delighted to learn -- is married to actress Sandy Duncan, removed a tumor about the size of a small orange, reconstructed her face with skin grafts taken from her right thigh and created two prostheses, one for her eye socket and the other for the roof of her mouth.

"I lost my eye, my eyelids, my eyelashes, my under eye bone, most of my cheekbone, 60 percent of the roof of my mouth, the right half of my upper jaw bone and the attached teeth," she told former classmates at a recent get-together.

Money for the eye-socket prosthesis was raised at a benefit organized by her family and friends in New Ulm.

But, for her, the worst was yet to come. She began seven weeks of intensive radiation therapy, 35 treatments in all, in which she lost 70 pounds and which severely burned her face, neck and interior tissue.

"I was sad, I was scared, and I was angry," she told her classmates. "Did I ever think about joining (classmates who had committed suicide)? You bet I did."

But that all happened eight years ago. As she recovered, with the help of her husband Terry and her family, she began processing that lemonade.

Getting health care insurers to live up to their obligations in paying the medical bills was almost as tough as going through the surgery and radiation treatments, Hampton found.

But she schooled herself in understanding the health care insurer "lingo," and she persevered in cutting through the red tape. So well did she do in learning to deal with the medical insurer monster that she started her own business in 1997.

She now represents others who are having the same problems in getting medical claims paid. She says much of the problem arises in communication between insurers and with the patients.

"When information gets scrambled, no one will tell you what the problem is," she said.

The most important lesson she learned was that life is too short so you must become pro-active to get the most out of it. She also learned not to be afraid to attempt anything. She has since going skydiving, she's learned to shoot guns, and she got up the courage to write a business plan and start her business.

"Along with all the shoulds and coulds we place on ourselves, I believe it's fear of risking that keeps most of us from fulfilling our dreams."