JEANNA DUERSCHERL The Roanoke Times

Brooke Smith laughs during a benefit held for her recently.

Offers of help are pouring in for Brooke Smith, the victim of a rare cancer whose story appeared in The Roanoke Times on Sunday.

"I want to thank everybody for their support; it means a lot. It's awesome," said Smith, 21, who hasn't been able to work much at her waitressing job lately because of the effects of radiation treatments. "Honest, if it wasn't for people's help, I would barely have money to live on."

Smith and her doctors are reviewing information about the clinical trials of various experimental drugs to treat alveolar soft part sarcoma, which oncologists describe as a slow-moving cancer that may not take its final toll for 10 to 15 years.

Although Smith's mother, Becky Smith, who works as music director at Church of the Holy Spirit, carries her daughter on her health insurance policy, and that covers the majority of her medical bills, the coverage doesn't extend to costs related to clinical trials, including transportation.

The most promising research of her disease in which patients participate is being conducted at hospitals in Boston and Houston, Brooke Smith's doctors said. Treatment in such trials is subsidized by a federal grant, but patients have to cover their own transportation expenses.

The Smith family hasn't established a fund for donations, because Becky Smith said she would rather not have to shoulder the oversight responsibilities of that account.

Nevertheless, people touched by Brooke Smith's story are offering contributions to the hairstyling school she attends, the St. Pierre Day Spa Salon and Academy in Salem.

More than $5,000 has already been raised, most of it through auctions held at Montano's International Gourmet restaurant in Southwest Roanoke County, where Smith works part time.

This week, the American Cancer Society offered free lodging for Smith in Boston if she goes there for treatment in a clinical trial of a new drug.

The cancer society also helps pay gasoline costs for patients commuting to experimental treatments and cooperates with an organization called Angel Flight that helps arrange free airfare on commercial flights for such therapy.

The cancer society doesn't have a free lodging facility in Houston but does make arrangements with certain hotels for medical discounts on rooms.

There is currently no known cure for Smith's affliction; radiation and chemotherapy only seem to slow it. Relatively little research has been done on the disease because there are only about 100 cases a year in the United States.

"Her best chance is probably something that's under development," said Dr. William Fintel, a Salem oncologist who has treated Smith.

Fintel has located clinical trials that are accepting new patients at hospitals in Boston and Houston. Smith has been tentatively accepted into the research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

The disease arises mainly in children and young adults, according to the American Cancer Society. A report by the group describes alveolar soft part sarcoma as a series of slow-growing tumors that "can easily" spread through the bloodstream, often ultimately to the brain.