Where do you find the un-lost? There are no words. Where do you find where the true love is? Where do you find belonging back again? Where?
Scott Fornek
Deb Schuler
Hilary Rothert
Kathryn Jamison
Georgie Beck
Evan Disney
Pat Lacey
“You need some distraction so you’re not sitting at home going “Oh, that next treatment’s coming up. I don’t wanna do this” or “The last one was horrible” or “Nothing tastes good.” Beyond that, the hard ones are the people that don’t have a lot of family. We have a few people who will sometimes meet and go and sit with them while they’re going through chemo. It’s a mental game. You just remind them, it does get better.”
Audra Popp
“Coming to a support group –I think you can get a lot of information networking with people who have already gone down the path that you’re about to go down. Cancer education centers, the American Cancer society is really great. They have a 1-800 number even if you need to call someone to talk to someone at 3 AM they will be there to answer the phone.”
Richard McKinney
“The story, as with all of ours who have had cancer, is that, sometimes, the cancer is not the defining point. It is maybe the element that gets our story told, but, truthfully, the story is about the lives that surround us and the lives we can touch through it.
For me, the cancer brought things out about myself that I never knew, and never would have. There was a purpose, and I believe that things do happen for a purpose. And I believe that sometimes the journey at night is through a dark, horrible forest, but during the day it is a gorgeous, beautiful wooded area that has a clear lake with a reflection. Perspective is a marvelous thing.”
Nancy Shelly
“It looked like they were going to be passing away at the same time, but it didn’t turn out that way. I was able to gain strength and know that this was my place. I needed to be able to help them and do the best that I could to love them, get them the medical care, and take care of them the best I could. This was to give them a fighting chance.”
Joanne and Robert Gernon
“We really need to help those who can’t afford cancer treatment because cancer is very expensive and it can financially drain you if you’re not prepared for it. Which we weren’t prepared, but thank goodness I had wonderful medical coverage. Because that’s what got me through. So I was very fortunate, too, that I was able to have sick time that I had on my own that I could rely upon to be out. And I almost had enough to cover me from June of last year until March of this year.”
Brad and Patty Moomey, Kathy Graham
“Talking with fellow workers and other people in the community, towards the end of life or retirement, there are two biggest things that affect your life. One is retirement and the other is the loss of your spouse. And that hit me really hard. That’s when I hit the realization that things were as dire as they were. The cancer had progressed so rapidly through her body that it was going to be a real challenge and a good possibility that it wasn’t going to be a winning challenge, that anything was going to work for it. And that was a very difficult thing to overcome. But we did. She took the drugs well; she responded to the drugs. And six years later, we’re still here. We’re still here, and we’re here together. And that’s where I keep saying, the hope, the faith, and the love are the key factors.”
Mike Mullen
“I think I stay positive because of the philosophy that I hold. Things just get rolling when you die. Some of my good friends – two of my good golf buddies – have died in the last two years and I’d kind of like to see them again, those assholes. They’re up there playing golf every day and I’m down here. And everybody is going to die. As we all know, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So that’s a problem. At this stage of the game, I’m not as afraid of dying; I mean, that’s the least of things.”
Brenda Schreiner
“Sue called me at 3 o’clock in the morning and said, “I wanna go home. I wanna be with my husband.” He passed away before she did. And I said, “Well, you’ll go home. You’ll see him again someday.” Little did we know that she stopped taking her medicine and she wanted to go home. And that’s really hard, with somebody close – it just really, really hurts, you know. She mourned her husband. He had Alzheimer’s. And now she’s with him. I know they’re all together now.”
Marilyn Wyss
“It’s perfectly okay to sit down with a cancer patient at any age and if they feel like crying, just cry with them. On the other hand, if they want to do something to completely avoid thinking about what’s going on, do it with them. Arrange anything you can that will be joyful to them, any wishes they had – I always wish I could have done this or that – make it happen.”
Mark Zimmer
“I tell my friends all the time that what I do is look through the front of the windshield; I don’t look in the rearview mirror. You know what this is: you have to see the obstacles in front of you, and you go through them; they’re speed bumps. Some are bigger potholes; some are bigger bumps. You know, you gotta slow down a little bit more, from that standpoint, but there’s no use looking in the back. What’s behind you is behind you, and then look forward.”
AnnMarie Cross
“I got ready to go to school, I went to say goodbye to Mom, but she wouldn’t wake up to say goodbye to me. I left for school, and couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. I knew something wasn’t right. Whatever power you’d like to say was involved, my mom knew that I needed to know, and I needed to get to say goodbye. The doctors said that she should never have woken up that day, she should’ve been gone first thing in the morning, that when she went into the coma, she should’ve been gone at that point, but when I got home from school at 10 after 3, she opened her eyes and said goodbye to me. She was gone at quarter after 3. She waited for me, to say goodbye.”
Thelma Frerichs
“We have always been close. My sisters and brothers and children all live close here. We have always been a close-knit family. So we got a lot of support from everybody.
Everybody was very kind to us. And when you live in a smaller community you get a lot more support because you know a lot of people. Even the doctors and nurses were kind, and then the contributions – they gave us gas money to go to Rochester. So that was a great help because it was very expensive, all those trips.”
Ryan Reardon
“They don’t want to be treated like they have cancer, because it’s not something they want to identify themselves… I mean maybe I’m just speaking from a personal stance, but it’s important to realize they’re still just the same as you. And while they have all this fundraising for them, it’s for the greater cause. You don’t want to be singled out as like the bald kid and all that other stuff.”