By Janice Gaston, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.
Jun. 14–Two years ago, Karen Steers, 43, celebrated what she thought would be her last Mother’s Day with her five children — her 18-month-old daughter, her 8-year-old triplets and her 16-year-old son.
Three days before the holiday, doctors had told her that the lump in her side was a tumor caused by stage-four colon cancer, as bad as it could get.
Yesterday, Steers, now in remission, celebrated life with about 300 other cancer survivors, caregivers, advocates and health-care professionals from all over the state at the N.C. Comprehensive Cancer Program Survivorship Summit. The free, daylong gathering at the Marriott in the Twin City Quarter included seminars and informal sessions that covered the physical and emotional aspects of cancer.
Steers, who lives in Holly Springs, is one of more than 300,000 cancer survivors in North Carolina. Walter Shepherd, the Comprehensive Cancer Program’s executive director, delivered some sobering statistics in the opening session. Each day, 119 people in North Carolina are told, “You have cancer.” And each day, 46 people with cancer die.
But the emphasis in yesterday’s program was on living, sparked by the keynote speaker’s speech on hope and healing. Wendy Schlessel Harpham, a doctor from Dallas, Texas, has undergone repeated treatments for recurrences of non-Hodgkins lymphoma since 1990. She is the author of several books on life after cancer.
Participants also had a chance to send a message to legislators about the need for better health care for cancer patients by signing the Fight Back Express, a charter bus sponsored by the American Cancer Society. Thousands of people around the country have signed the bus in honor or in memory of loved ones who have battled cancer.
Steers and her family turned to hope and faith in May 2006 after doctors told her that the tumor on her liver was cancerous and then found that the primary site of her cancer was in her colon. They removed her gall bladder and portions of her colon and liver. The initial diagnosis was jolting, she said, but then she told herself, “I’m going to be OK.”
She and her family were in the process of moving from Maryland to North Carolina when Steers started chemotherapy, and her insurance company required that she receive all her treatments in Maryland. While trying to settle into a new house, get her children adjusted to a new town and new schools, she flew to Maryland every two weeks and spent three days in treatment.
Steers tried to keep up with her children’s activities as much as she could and to help her husband with their Internet business. She stayed so busy that she didn’t have time to worry and get depressed, she said.
She finished her treatments in December of 2006. Since then, tests run every three months have shown no recurrences.
“It’s an amazing miracle,” she said.
Now, she speaks out about people being allowed to receive medical treatment wherever they need to, not where insurance companies tell them to.
Marie Miranda of Raleigh, 38, is living her own miracle. She will soon become the mother of an adopted child. Miranda was 28, single and living in her native Puerto Rico when she underwent a complete hysterectomy for cervical cancer.
“Being told, at 28, that I was not going to be able to have babies — I was heartbroken,” she said. Because her cancer was caught at an early stage, she did not have to undergo chemotherapy or radiation.
“I was blessed,” she said.
But cancer has taken a toll on her family. An aunt died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Her grandfather died of intestinal cancer at 51. A cousin died of breast and bladder cancer at 32. Her mother has just celebrated five years of survival after a bout with breast cancer.
Miranda is the public-health consultant and training coordinator for the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health and Health Disparities. She is also an avid volunteer with the American Cancer Society.
At yesterday’s conference, she led a session on working with diverse cultural and ethnic groups, during which she talked about her pride in being a cancer survivor.
“Survival is the first step,” she said.
“Living is what matters.”
Janice Gaston can be reached at 727-7364 or at [email protected].
—–
To see more of the Winston-Salem Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.journalnow.com/.
Copyright (c) 2008, Winston-Salem Journal, N.C.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
NYSE:MAR,
Comments