A photo from 1975 shows Tonie Auer as a 6-year-old in a hospital bed, trying to smile for the camera but unable to lift the left side of her mouth — because of a growth spreading from the corner of her mouth to her eye.

DRC/Al Key

Tonie Auer is shown before her haircut Friday.

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Auer, 41, is a childhood cancer survivor.

“After going through all this, I am glad to be 41,” she said.

Now, she’s found a way to do something for children in similar straits.

She and best friend Tiffany Schwind joked about the past and shared updates on their children as hairdresser Keith Beauchamp prepared to lop 10 inches off Auer’s hair at Finishing Touch salon on Friday.

Auer chose that day for her haircut because her husband was out of town, and he didn’t want to be there for it. She was a little nervous because she’s had long hair most of her life.

“It will grow back,” she said.

The ponytail that Beauchamp cut from Auer’s head will be sent to Locks of Love.

The nonprofit organization provides wigs for people younger than 21 who have lost hair because of a medical condition. It takes six to 10 ponytails of donated human hair to make one wig.

DRC/Al Key

Tonie Auer is shown after her haircut.

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Although Auer never lost her hair, she remembers those around her who did.

The only visible reminder of her disease is a slight scar on her left cheek.

It began as what appeared to be a cold sore on the left side of her mouth in the spring of her first-grade year.

Her parents took her to several doctors to try to determine what the growth on her cheek was, but none of them was sure.

Then one morning her mother, Patricia Miller, thought 6-year-old Tonie was hiding a jawbreaker in her cheek.

“You know you can’t have candy for breakfast,” she told her daughter, but she didn’t have candy in her mouth.

Auer had a series of surgeries — two in Fort Worth and five at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in 1975.

“I think they sent me to M.D. Anderson to die,” she said.

She spent 28 days there and was given three months to live because of the rate at which the cancer was growing, Miller said.

Auer doesn’t remember too much about that period.

“My memories come through a cone of a child’s vision,” she said.

DRC/Al Key

Tonie Auer holds up her hair after it was cut by Keith Beauchamp at Finishing Touch in Denton on Friday. Tonie donated her hair to Locks of Love, which makes wigs for ill people who have lost their hair.

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She believes the situation was harder on her parents, who had to watch her go through the ordeal of treatment.

At the hospital, she was around children who died, but not all of her memories are sad.

During one of her operations, she lost her tooth and was excited that the tooth fairy would pay her a visit.

Auer said her ordeal made her empathetic — but not sympathetic, because she doesn’t believe feeling sorry for people does anything for them.

“It has shaped who I am,” she said. “It has made me more compassionate.”

There were certain movies that bothered her, including The Mask and The Elephant Man, because they were about disfigured people who were laughed at and she knew how it felt.

As the tumor continued to grow, doctors talked about removing Auer’s left eye to give her a couple more days because the tumor was swelling the eye shut and they didn’t want it to spread into her eye, Miller said.

She thanks God they didn’t have to go to that extreme.

“I’m glad they took a gamble there,” Auer said.

One night at M.D. Anderson, Miller decided to pray over her daughter. What Miller found out later was that several churches also were praying.

The next morning, a doctor came in and asked Miller what she had done to her daughter, and she told them, “Nothing.”

But Auer’s face showed a visible change, so doctors took an X-ray and found that the cancer was gone.

Medical staff could not explain why, but her doctor said it was as close as he had ever seen to a miracle. He told the family he didn’t believe in miracles.

The growth returned halfway through Auer’s second-grade year, but this time doctors didn’t think it was cancerous. She had one last surgery to remove it, she said.

Since it has been gone so long, she is considered officially cured.

When Auer was about 16, doctors determined it would be the best time to do cosmetic surgery because she was almost done growing.

But they decided in the end to not do anything, because the teenager had requested that the surgeons make her unaffected cheek look slimmer, like her scarred cheek, and they were reluctant to perform that extra operation.

“It has made me a little bit of a hypochondriac as a result of it,” Auer said.

Auer now writes for an online media outlet. She and her husband, Jesse, have three children — Dylan, 15; Robert, 10, who was named in part after one of Auer’s doctors; and Sarah, 7.

Auer had wanted to cut her hair and thought she might as well do it for a good cause.

She was also encouraged by her niece Hannah, who donated her hair after losing a friend to leukemia.

“If Hannah can do it,” Auer said she thought, “I can surely cut off all my hair.”

Schwind, her friend since childhood, came along for moral support and to take pictures.

“This is typical Tonie,” Schwind said. “She would do anything for anybody.”

As for Auer’s husband, he will see her new bob when she picks him up from the airport Monday.

RACHEL MEHLHAFF can be reached at 940-566-6897. Her e-mail address is rmehlhaff@dentonrc.com.

HOW TO HELP

Hair for donation to Locks of Love must:

* be at least 10 inches long

* be bundled in a ponytail

* be dry and sealed in a bag

For more specific guidelines and information, visit www.locksoflove.org.