The option to live
One local family promotes Gardner area Relay for Life to give others hope By Lindsay Sauvageau JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT

Donna and Ned Cheesman spend time together on Plum Island in August 2004. Donna passed away from pancreatic cancer on Jan. 28, 2005.

The Mayo Clinic calls pancreatic cancer "one of the most serious of all cancers," as it spreads rapidly and is rarely detected in its earliest stages. Signs and symptoms often don't appear until the disease is quite advanced and is likely to have spread to other parts of the body making surgical removal no longer an option.

When pancreatic cancer took away Donna Cheesman's options on how to fight it in January of 2005, her daughter, Sarah, and husband, Ned, found a way to make sure their loved one's death was not in vain.

"We created a Relay for Life team in Donna's memory right after she passed away," said Ned, 51, of Lunenburg. "We did it with a bunch of friends and family. Our logo was a goose chasing a dog, her catering (business's) logo and the name was ChickenWolf."

Donna, who owned a popular catering company in Ashburnham for many years was an animal lover.

"ChickenWolf was my mother's e-mail handle. She didn't know anything about the Internet and when I was setting up an email account for her I asked her what she wanted for a name and she didn't know. I asked her what sort of things she liked and she said chickens and wolves so that became her name," said Sarah.

Donna Cheesman

ChickenWolf raised over $5,000 that year first year during the Greater Gardner Relay for Life on the Mount Wachusett Community College campus but disbanded soon after.

"It was a lot of work and trying to do it ourselves was too much with everything else we had going on," said Ned.

Since then, both father and daughter have joined separate Relay teams. Sarah has been working with One in the Spirit organized by Susan McBride of Ashburnham and Ned has been raising money for the Christ Church Striders in Fitchburg. One in the Sprit is an ecumenical team comprised of four churches of which Sarah's parish - Ashburnham Community Church.

Advocating for separate teams isn't a problem to Sarah and Ned- it's not about the team, but where the money goes that matters.

"It doesn't matter where the money goes or which team a person decides to donate to. I think sometimes that what we do individually isn't going to amount to anything but if it means the money allows a family somewhere to have just one extra day with their loved one, then it is all worth it," said Sarah.

Much in the same way as many who suffer from pancreatic cancer do, Donna spent long months in and out of doctor's offices, being diagnosed with everything from I.B.S. (irritable bowel syndrome) to celiac disease before any real signs of her cancer became apparent.

"Donna put it off as much as the doctors did. I think it was a little bit of denial. She was always looking for organic reasons why she was sick," said Ned.

It was when Donna and Ned traveled to New Hampshire to see Sarah - who was then about to join the Peace Corp. - at the camp where she worked when Donna's health problems came to a head. After talking to Sarah for several minutes at the camp Sarah noticed that her mother's eyes were yellow (the jaundice a sign that the bile ducts in the gall bladder were blocked).

"I was embarrassed," Ned said. "I had spent the whole afternoon with her and never noticed … it was the sort of day that started out as a nice jaunt and ended up with me in flip flops and shorts pacing the waiting room at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital wondering what was happening to my wife."

"It was the only time I had gone over my minutes on my cell phone bill," added Sarah.

That's when doctors told Donna that they had found a large mass in her pancreas. Upon further scrutiny they found that the tumor surrounded a large artery in the area and they could not do any surgical procedures.

"In a day and a half all of our optimistic options were removed. We drove out to Plum Island and all we had were graham crackers and water because that was all Donna could eat. Donna never gave up but that was the day she knew she was going to die," said Ned.

The chemotherapy, which Donna began in September, was immediately debilitating. Because the radiation had to make it through the stomach and intestines, making Donna sicker and sicker. Eventually she decided to stop the treatments because the chemo was going to kill her before the cancer did. She stopped the treatments in October and doctors weren't sure if she was going to make it to Thanksgiving. Not only did the family spend their holiday together but Donna was still with her family, with the help of hospice specialists, when Christmas rolled around.

"The Relay isn't just a great fundraiser but it's a perfect time to revisit, heal and remember," said Ned. Though he did say in his first year, there were a lot of emotions being at the Relay. Watching the survivor's lap, Ned said he felt angry.

"I didn't want to get angry and I had fought so hard not to, but seeing all of the survivors was so overwhelming. kept thinking 'damn it, why do they get to do this, why do they get to be survivors and not Donna."

Now he says, he watches the survivors and remembers his wife and why he is such an advocate for the Relay.

"It's an intense experience. It shows the power of life, that possibility, that hope," he said. "I work for a pharmaceutical company and I'm an R.N.D. I know we are making progress and that the money and research is making a difference, we just have a long way to go."

To find out how to make a donation to the Relay for Life visit www.cancer.org.

"It doesn't matter where the money goes or which team a person decides

to donate to. I think sometimes that

what we do individually isn't going

to amount to anything but

if it means the money allows a family somewhere to have just one

extra day with their loved one,

then it is all worth it."

- SARAH CHEESMAN