By DONALD WITTKOWSKI
Her first week with the Sea Isle City Beach Patrol this summer was particularly demanding for rookie lifeguard Devon Pytel.
She had to run a mile under 7 minutes and 30 seconds and complete a half-mile ocean swim during the lifeguard tryouts to win a spot with the beach patrol.
Then, as a 19-year-old lifeguard only a year out of high school, she had to assume the enormous responsibility of protecting the lives of so many beachgoers while performing her new job.
But Devon was also facing another challenge in her life at the same time: cancer. Coinciding with her first week as a lifeguard was her first round of chemotherapy treatments.
“It was challenging for anyone, even for someone who was not on chemo,” she recalled of the emotionally and physically grueling week.
Now in remission, Devon said she had a fantastic first summer as a lifeguard and plans to return to the Sea Isle Beach Patrol in 2022 after completing what will be her sophomore year at Clemson University.
“I absolutely loved it, especially all the friends I made,” she said. “I’ve been going to the beach all my life. It was familiar to me. I got to meet so many people.”
It was a remarkable summer for Devon, coming just a year after she had been diagnosed with brain cancer weeks before she graduated from Spring-Ford High School in Pennsylvania.
Devon wrote in a blog for her Alpha Phi sorority at Clemson that “my world was completely turned upside down” after her diagnosis.
She had to endure a 12-hour surgery to remove the tumor, followed by several weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
“They got the entire tumor,” Devon said in an interview Wednesday, while adding that she is in remission.
Marking another huge step in her recovery, she is on her last round of her chemo treatments and will officially be done in three days, she said.
Despite everything she went through with cancer, she chose to “fight it out” and leave her hometown of Schwenksville, Pa., to head to Clemson in South Carolina for her freshman year in 2020.
“I couldn’t be happier with my decision,” she wrote in the sorority blog.
She was an honors student in high school while maintaining a stellar 3.95 grade point average. At Clemson, she is majoring in biomedical engineering.
Devon chose her challenging major with the goal of working in cancer research to help other people with cancer live a normal life – just like her now, she said.
She has always liked science. Her interest in the medical field began when she watched knee replacement surgery as part of her studies in anatomy class in high school, she said.
Her freshman year at Clemson included continuing her chemo treatments. The treatments also continued right up to her first week as a Sea Isle lifeguard.
During her freshman year at Clemson, Devon’s mother, Sue Pytel, moved into an apartment about 10 minutes from the campus to be close to her daughter in case there were any medical issues.
Now, she is well enough to be at Clemson by herself. Wednesday was the first day of her fall semester. Her first day back included an engineering class.
In addition to her classroom studies, Devon plans to participate in club running at Clemson to keep in shape to return for her second year as a lifeguard in 2022.
Devon’s family has deep ties in Sea Isle. Her grandparents, Paul and Carol Touhey, own a Sea Isle home. Her mother and her father, Joe Pytel, have brought Devon to Sea Isle for summer vacations ever since she was a child.
Making her connections to Sea Isle even more special is that her brother, Matt, was also a rookie lifeguard with the beach patrol this summer.
Even when she was going through chemo and radiation treatments – which greatly reduced her appetite and energy level – Devon wanted to become a lifeguard. Last year, her bout with cancer made it too difficult.
But this summer, she prevailed.
“I’ve wanted to do it for years,” she said.
