AUBURN – “Living in Full Bloom” was the theme of National Cancer Survivors Day at Lost Valley on Sunday.
Approximately 50 survivors were honored, surrounded by friends and family.
Lin Caswell, 52, of Auburn still lives with cancer and is being treated for Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Dressed in her pink Mary Kay suit and wearing a cancer survivor sash, she’s been undergoing treatment for most of the last seven years.
“I’m up to my 10th or 11th type of chemotherapy,” she said. A believer in positive thinking and miracles, Caswell reaches out helping others who also live with cancer.
Now, in constant pain because the cancer has spread to her bones, she surrounds herself with positive thinking. The mother of a son, she and her husband, Larry, celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on Memorial Day.
“This allows you to really count your blessings and put your priorities in order and say no’ to certain things that will disturb that order,” she said. A Mary Kay senior sales director with a free car in her driveway, she says that faith keeps her spirit strong.
“Faith and fear cannot occupy my brain at the same time,” she said.
Andrew Varney, 51, of Turner took a break and indulged himself in a free massage at Lost Valley, surrendering himself to student massage therapist Debbie Buckley.
A former dairy farmer, he worked at the Sun Journal for nearly 10 years in the mailroom before his cancer diagnosis.
Living with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma for the past seven and one-half years, Andrew says, “It’s one of those things I will have as long as I will live.”
He and his wife, Pauline, are the parents of two sons, one in college and the other in high school.
Swollen lymph nodes lead to the diagnosis after a biopsy. He’s received chemotherapy, radiation and a stem-cell transplant of his own stem cells three years ago in Boston. But, the cancer’s remission only lasted 18 months.
Later this month, he’s got an appointment with his oncologist again.
“Whatever I can find to do is the key, to keep busy and occupy my mind and keep my mind off cancer. I’ve been on this journey for seven and one-half years. God is in control and I’m going to win this battle no matter what the outcome. This is not a losing proposition,” Varney said.
“Life has changed, but I’m still here taking nourishment. I’m still looking down at the grass. There are bends in the road that keeps bending and I don’t know when it will straighten,” he said.
Debbie McIntosh, 50, of Lewiston said she was diagnosed with a relatively unknown type of leukemia in October 2002. “My mouth started bleeding and wouldn’t stop. At the time, the 50-year-old mother was living in Texas and was hospitalized for six weeks for her first rounds of double doses of chemotherapy.
“I was blessed with a wonderful, wonderful doctor who had a positive outlook with hope and checked in on me twice each day,” she said. “I’ve met an amazing amount of wonderful people. You truly find out who your friends are. And you look at hope as a new concept, looking at positives versus negatives. This has changed my life profoundly, but not necessarily in a bad way. I just appreciate today, one day at a time from one minute to one hour to one day.”
“Though I still get tired, I’m out of treatment since February 2005.”
Disc Jockey Jeff Rockwell of Portland is a six-year survivor of head and neck cancer. “This has saved my life, which sounds corny. I didn’t like my direction in life, and all the stuff I thought was important, wasn’t. I like a lot more things now and pay more attention to my family. It’s an awakening for me,” he said.
Dr. Nicholette Erickson, medical director of Central Maine Oncology, said, “The spirit of this day is exactly what keeps doctors and nurses who are passionate about cancer care going.”
For many patients, oncology care is curative, while for others survival is a treatment challenge.
“It’s about living your life and your spirit. Surviving cancer maintains your humanity, your identity. You’re so much more than you think. But it’s sad at times. But universally, people want to live,” says Erickson. “Oncology has beautiful sides. It’s a personal and very intimate view of people’s life given in a limited trust.”
This is the 18th year that National Cancer Survivors Day has been celebrated. It’s now held in hundreds of communities in this country, Canada and participating countries, according to its Web site, www.ncsdf.org.
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