Jacky Dalmy's Story

My maternal grandmother died of ovarian cancer when I was 10 years old. That was my first experience with cancer, and quite frightening at that age.

My first cousin developed breast cancer when she was in her 30’s and died when she was 40 years old. Even though I hadn’t seen her for years, I talked to her only daughter, who was 14 years old. She was so upset and was estranged from her father so I offered to let her come and live with me. She finally decided to live with her grandparents.

In 1987, my oldest sister called me in a panic. She went for a mammogram and found out that she had a tiny spot that needed to be biopsied. She was worried but I told her not to panic since it could just be a benign growth. As soon as she found out it was cancer, our lives changed forever. I lived in New Mexico and my sister lived in New Jersey. She had separated from her husband and had a 2 year old daughter and a 4 year old son. I spent the next two years, mostly in New Jersey. My sister got 6 months of chemotherapy and was too sick, often, to take care of her children. She had elected to get a mastectomy and chemotherapy instead of a lumpectomy because she didn’t want to get radiation treatments. She never asked her prognosis, I think because she feared the worst and there was no way she was going to die with two small children.

About 2 months after chemotherapy was over, she got a horrible back ache. The cancer had metastasized to the base of her spine. Because we were all new to this stuff, we had no idea if it was a death sentence or something that could be cured. I will never forget the day I walked in to her doctor’s office to find out her prognosis. The doctor was very cold and almost arrogant when he replied, “oh, she’s not going to live past Christmas”. I, of course, was totally shocked, devastated, etc. and I started to cry. He then said, “You need to quit crying. She can’t see you crying so you better get a hold of yourself before you go into her hospital room”.

My sister agreed to have a hole put in the top of her head so that she could receive the chemo therapy drugs there instead of intravenously. She also got radiation. Luckily, she had a wonderful boyfriend who took her to all of her treatments and helped her while I took care of the children.

In September of 1989, I got a call from the hospital saying that my sister only had about 24 hours to live. The first round of chemotherapy, not only put her in menopause but also damaged her heart. Myself, my husband and 2 other sisters went to New Jersey right away. For two weeks, we spent all day, every day at the hospital. Every evening, her boyfriend would come and we would go back to her house. We felt like we were living some horrible nightmare and of course spent hours crying and grieving. One evening, when we were leaving, my sister and I noticed that the urine bag was filling with blood and we knew that she was really dying. We somehow, just didn’t have the heart to stay. She died that night at 4:00a.m. at the age of 42.

My youngest sister died about 8 years later at the age of 43 of colon cancer, leaving behind a 14 year old son who developed colon cancer at the age of 22 and is now undergoing chemotherapy.

Having gone through the horrible anguish, depression, etc., of losing a loved one I feel very strongly that I want to do anything I can to raise money for research for this disease.

In 2003, myself and 2 of my sisters did the 3 day, 60 mile Breast Cancer Walk and want to do it again.