Cancer behind her, she's front & center
Sunday, May 11th 2008, 4:00 AM

Adams IV for News
Julie Reed as Ulla on Edward R. Murrow HS stage where, 18 months ago, she collapsed with cancer.

Adams IV for News
Reed made a stellar recovery.

Anybody who saw 18-year-old Julie Reed return to the Edward R. Murrow High School stage last week had to be struck by the incandescence of her smile.

But only those who knew of her long ordeal understood they were witnessing a triumph of all that is best in her and her city.

"My family, my friends, my teachers, the doctors, the people at Sloan-Kettering," Reed said Friday.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital was a realm apart from anything Reed had experienced 18 months ago, when she last appeared in a show at her Brooklyn school.

She had been suffering abdominal pains her pediatrician could not explain and her usual stage fright had been joined by the fear she would collapse during the opening performance of "Gypsy."

"I felt like I was going to pass out at any minute," she recalled.

But she kept on until the final curtain, giving a memorable performance as Tessie Tura, the "respectable stripper."

"When you really want to do something, your mind is stronger than any other force," she later noted.

Only when she went backstage did she collapse. She still had on her stage makeup as she was rushed to one hospital and then another, where a specialist performed emergency surgery.

She remained intubated afterwards, but managed to communicate her foremost desire.

"She's asking with hand signals and on pads can she go back and be in the performance," recalled her mother, Stacey Chanin Reed.

The mother had to tell her daughter that she had a rare abdominal cancer that would be best treated at Sloan-Kettering. She began months of intense chemotherapy.

"It would kill an elephant," her mother said. "A kid can somehow manage this."

Her body's natural defenses were lowered and despite every precaution, she suffered an infection that scared even the doctors.

"Julie's shaking like a tree in a hurricane," her mother recalled. "I'm trying not to cry in front of her. She says, 'Mom, it's okay, I'm not in pain.'"

Julie Reed survived thanks to intravenous antibiotics administered through a needle so large even she cried a little. She still had the cancer to fight and she relied on the same force that got her through the opening performance.

"Mental strength," the teen said.

That power was backed by the astonishing devotion and kindness of the people at Sloan-Kettering as well as the love of her family and friends and the dedication of her teachers, who came on their own time to help her keep up with her studies.

By June, she had finished her treatments. She had also completed all her classes, including advanced placement courses in English and American History.

In the summer, Reed worked as a counselor at a camp for kids with cancer. She was back at Murrow when the theatrical director announced the school would be the first in the country to put on "The Producers."

The show's only female lead is the Swedish bombshell, Ulla. Reed rehearsed the character's big song at home until her mother knew all the words. She was among those called back after the first auditions.

"I would have been happy just being in the show," she said.

When the cast list was posted, Reed sent her mother a one word text message.

"Ulla!"

The opening performance was on Wednesday, and Reed stepped on the same stage where she had struggled not to collapse 18 months before. One surprising result of her ordeal was that she no longer experienced stage fright.

"I'm like, 'Why am I so relaxed?'" she recalled.

Reed, who had declined to wear a wig during the months she had lost her hair, wore a big blonde one as she wowed everybody with Ulla's big song, "Ven You Got It, Flaunt It."

She flashed that incandescent smile, an early Mother's Day present, the best a mother could ever get.

"That smile, that's who she is," her mother said.

mdaly@nydailynews.com