News Photo by Darby Hinkley Lucas Moquin discusses his cancer diagnosis recently in downtown Alpena.

ALPENA — When you’re in your early 20s starting your career, the last thing on your mind is that a life-threatening disease could stop you in your tracks.

But that’s what happened to Lucas Moquin, now 28.

In 2015, he was diagnosed with melanoma, skin cancer, which then metastasized to his lymphatic system, becoming lymphoma.

“I was diagnosed, officially — my physician called me Sept. 23, 2015, to tell me that a biopsy that she did came back positive for cancer,” he said.

He then had his first surgery, which was “just a skin excision of the tumorous area,” he said. “And then they also tested the sentinel lymph node, which is basically the first lymph node, in my case, in the leg, which receives that lymphatic fluid.”

According to cancer.gov, the sentinel lymph node is “the first lymph node to which cancer cells are most likely to spread from a primary tumor.”

He said the cancer was stage III once it metastasized to the lymph nodes.

Only 23 at the time, Moquin recalls calling his mother right after receiving the initial diagnosis.

He was in shock.

“I was like, OK, what do I do? Do I still go to class?” Moquin said recently. “So, I called my mom and I explained what happened. And, that’s when I started breaking down. It hit me as soon as I told her, ‘Mom, I have cancer.’ And then it was like, ‘Whoa.'”

He was floored, because he thought only older people got cancer.

“That was the one thing that I remember thinking through the whole process,” he said, “That this doesn’t happen to people younger than 50.”

No indicators were present to show how Moquin may have developed the cancer, he added.

There was no clear cause.

“It was just kind of surreal, the whole time,” he said.

In Moquin’s case, the cancer had spread from the skin on his right leg to the lymphatic system, which required additional surgeries and treatment, including a drainage bulb he had to wear for three months.

“It was nuts,” he said of the time period in which he was undergoing cancer treatment.

He still kept acting and going to college classes when he could.

While he was undergoing treatment, Moquin said one of his nurses told him that the nurse was diagnosed with a different kind of cancer at age 17.

“So, then I started thinking, ‘Well, geez. I don’t even have it that bad,'” Moquin said.

“Melanoma is the easiest cancer to beat, especially if you catch it early enough,” he added.

“I was able to have it caught fairly early, and, even though it metastasized to my lymphatic system, as far as any of the doctors knew, it didn’t metastasize farther than any of the lymph nodes that were up here,” he said, referring to his upper leg. “Everything got taken out that was up here.”

He also had an adverse reaction to one of the post-op medications, which caused his liver to begin failing.

“The short version is, my immune system started attacking my liver, which is the rarest reaction you could have,” Moquin said. “Not only that, but it was the most severe reaction of the rarest reactions to this drug.”

So, he ended up being hospitalized at the Alpena hospital for severe dehydration because his liver was shutting down but he didn’t know it.

“Then, I had to be hospitalized at (University of Michigan) in Ann Arbor,” he added. “I was seeing a physician up here, and he called me and said my oncologist told him I have to come in for an emergency steroid injection and then I have to go to the ER in Ann Arbor today … I was very fortunate to have a wonderful community member drive me all the way to Ann Arbor, and then drive my car all the way back.”

He was at the University of Michigan hospital in Ann Arbor for eight days.

“While I was there, they were pumping me full of steroids, just to try to get everything stabilized,” Moquin recalled.

That was summer 2016.

“So, I was going about my daily business, but, also, unbeknownst to me, dying of liver failure,” he said.

He was cleared of cancer in November 2016, and he is healthy now.

Throughout the whole cancer experience, Moquin learned a lot about himself and life.

“I learned that, no matter how bad you think things are getting, they can always get worse,” Moquin said. “That being said, when you are going through a particularly traumatic experience, or a particularly difficult time, lean on the people around you. That’s what they’re there for. That’s why they are in your life.”

Now that he’s cancer-free, Moquin reflected upon his experience, passing along words of hope to others.

“You’re a lot stronger than you think you are,” he added.

Moquin came to Alpena as a professional actor at Thunder Bay Theatre in 2015, and has been a permanent resident here since 2019. After acting for several seasons, Moquin became the artistic director at the theater, but things slowed down in summer 2020 when, amid the coronavirus pandemic, the building adjacent to the theater, John A. Lau Saloon, burned to the ground.

Shortly after that, Moquin was released from his duties at the theater because no programming was happening, because of the pandemic and all the smoke and water damage to the theater building.

He now works at Family Enterprise and Thunder Bay Winery, both located in downtown Alpena. He is also active in the Alpena Civic Theatre and will be directing an upcoming play in February.