AUGUSTA ? Sarah Gerstenkorn will graduate next week from Augusta High School with a 3.8 grade point average and a diploma of distinction. But her greatest accomplishment may be simply living long enough to graduate.

Doctors expected Gerstenkorn to die 6 1/2 years ago when the then 12-year-old girl had a failing kidney, a collapsed lung and internal bleeding, among other illnesses.

A specialized radiation treatment in California could not beat the life-threatening tumor in her back. Doctors held out little hope for her survival.

The Make a Wish Foundation arranged a flight home from California to Augusta to allow the girl to die at home.

Today, she talks as if her survival was no big deal. The 18-year-old doesn’t remember much about being so close to death.

“I wasn’t fully aware of how sick I really was,” she said. “It doesn’t seem like it really happened. … It’s very surreal.”

In the spring of 1998, Gerstenkorn’s parents thought she had a sports injury. Months later, an MRI showed a mass on her sacrum, the triangular bone just above the tailbone. It was a benign giant cell tumor. Such tumors aren’t cancerous but grow so quickly that doctors treat them as if they are.

Surgery didn’t work and the tumor metastasized, then more tumors appeared.

Most people with her kind of tumor live five years at most, her mother said, and it looked as if the end was near until 2001. Gerstenkorn’s health improved when she started getting weekly injections of interferon to suppress the tumor.

“I think sophomore year is pretty much when I got out of the wheelchair,” she said.

That was the year a school counselor told her, “You’ll never graduate with your class.”

But she took extra clases to make sure she would graduate. This semester her workload included physics, government, college algebra, college English, Spanish, composition II and college history.

On May 22, she will get her high school diploma with an extra 21 credit hours from Butler Community College.

She plans to transfer from Butler to Wichita State University to seek a degree in social work. She was inspired by Angie Jennings, a social worker now living in Colby, who helped her work through her illness.

Gerstenkorn isn’t cured though. The tumor is still there, but it’s not growing. Her lungs have about 100 small tumors, but they’re stable and scans show that some have shrunk.

A physical therapist has helped her work on the pain, but she’ll never play sports again. She will be monitored for the rest of her life, and she doesn’t know whether to expect a normal life span.

“I have no idea,” she said. “I take things more seriously. Appreciate things more.”