“I don’t feel like I’m dying,” she tells me. “I’m at peace with this.”
June is 81, and the doctors tell her she has pancreatic cancer. She was diagnosed something over a year ago and the cancer cells have moved from her pancreas to her arteries to her lungs. She has a pretty aggressive chemo treatment – 6 hours in the hospital, every other week for six months. This new regimen is the fifth such treatment in her battle.
And it is a battle. Her feet hurt, her arms tire, her back aches. Fatigue is a constant problem for her, the hardest symptom for a woman used to keeping up with women half her age or younger. But June hasn’t given in yet, or given up.
She’s sitting at her kitchen table with her husband of 61 years, Al. It’s a good Saturday morning. No pain, no fatigue yet. The remains of breakfast (blueberry and banana nut muffins) sit in pans on the table. A half-full blue ceramic coffee mug sits next to her Bible.
“‘Do not worry about your life’,” she quotes to me. “‘Or about what you will eat or drink, or about your body’. That’s my favorite verse now. I’m still worry-free and depression-free.”
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