Dorothy Callison

Pancreatic Cancer

Colon Cancer

Kamiah, ID

Biography

Dorothy was diagnosed with pancreatic and colon cancer when she was 28 years old. She was suffering from the flu and simply could not get over it. After some tests doctors eventually discovered cancer first in her colon and then in her pancreas. Dorothy did not have insurance at the time and was placed in a clinical trial with 500 other individuals. She fought cancer for the next 14 years of her life, with six weeks on and four weeks off as a cycle. The chemotherapy would leave her violently sick and doctors would give her medicine that would knock her out for the next 24 hours to alleviate her from the pain that ensued from the chemotherapy.

At times during her fight she wouldn’t even be able to keep a drop of water down and her weight fell to 68 pounds. She is currently in a wheelchair because her bones are so brittle. If she were to walk around her bones would break, as her ankles did when she stepped down from her daughters porch. To this day, only 2 people from the original 500 in the clinical trial are still living. She has fought for years and is finally in full remission.

Keep Faith

Spiritually I have grown, spiritually I was away from the Lord when I first came down with cancer, I had walked away from the church because I had gotten a divorce, I got excommunicated from my church, so I walked away from the Lord too, until the cancer struck me down again and then I went back more or less. I had a dear friend that tried to get me into the church, her pastor came and sat beside my bed for 3 and 4 days in a row and held a puke bucket there and sat and prayed. That kind of showed me that there still were people out there that were true, and were godly people or not just hypocrites, and so when I got around to getting better enough, I went back into the church and I’ve been there ever since, it’s where I belong.

Fight

Fight, don’t let it get you. Fight. I had grandchildren born the whole 10 years, I had something to fight for, I had new babies, my daughter’s got seven kids and the only reason she has 7 is because she had them all during the whole 10 years, she was pregnant the whole time pretty much. Fight. Don’t just let it go. Even though I am where I am, I’m alive. And I have done a lot in the last 13 years that have helped other people. Some people just figure they have cancer and that’s it. Fight. Don’t let it get ya’. They’re curing an awful lot of it these days.

There’s a Reason

All the chemotherapy killed the cancer, and I’m thrilled with that. I’m one of the every few people alive with the kind of cancer I have and I really feel that God kept me here for reasons and there’s been reasons and things down the road I know, different people I’ve been involved with and led to the lord, and my second husband had Alzheimer’s and if I hadn’t been around, hadn’t been alive there’d be no one to take care of him.

I know there are reasons God kept me around, for some reason anyway.

It seems like everybody that I know that has had pancreatic cancer hasn’t lived and it’s like “why Lord, why did I?” you know there’s got to be something special, there was 500 people in that clinical trial I was in and to this day there are only two of us alive.