A lung cancer survivor's story
She thought of her cancer as a boxing opponent. And before she licked it, she trash-talked it.
When Bobbie Palmer of Yardley turned 50 last year, she went for a routine physical exam, expecting to learn that she had high cholesterol. Instead, she found out that she had advanced lung cancer.
Because she had no symptoms, Palmer was shocked to hear this news. After months of treatment at a local hospital, she transferred to the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania, where she received both chemotherapy and radiation. Palmer, who's now in remission, spoke with Kirstin Lindermayer for the Daily News.
The moment she found out
"When I went, [for my physical]I spoke to my doctor: 'Oh, something's going to go wrong. Everything's always good.'
"And he was like, 'Why are you always waiting for the shoe to drop?' So, when I went back the following week, he said, 'The shoe dropped.' And I said, 'What?' And he said that I had Stage 3 lung cancer and that it had went up into my lymph nodes and windpipe. I had no signs. No symptoms at all.
A grim prognosis
"I went to a local hospital. And I went through chemo, and I had surgery...and they said it grew back. And I said to them, 'Am I going to die?'
"They didn't say, 'Go home and die in three months.' They said, 'Statistics say you have 3-12 months.' "
Not so fast
"I went to see Dr. Tracey Evans, an oncologist, and Dr. Ramesh Rengan, a radiation oncolgist, [at Penn]. And they're like, 'You know, even if we can't cure you, we can treat you. This is not a death sentence.'
"So, with that, I started. They had to get a new pathology test, and then I went for chest radiation and for chemo all over again. And then I had to go for brain radiation."
Why me?
"I never said, 'Well, why me?' I always thought, Well, something good will come of it. And if I help one person ...
"And, actually, toward the end, I think I did help one person. There was a lady crying the day I left, when they told me I was cancer-free. I said, 'I'm sorry. Are you OK?'
"And she said she just found out her husband had lung cancer. And I said: 'Then I'm just the person you want to meet. I came here with Stage 3b lung cancer, and I'm leaving today cancer-free, so, you know, there's hope.' And she cried and hugged me. And I don't know if I helped her, but I think I did."
But, really, why her?
"They didn't know [how I got lung cancer]. I did smoke, but I quit years ago. And that's the first thing, 'Oh, you smoked.'
"I grew up in Trenton by where the factories are. We didn't have a lot of fun, so when the bug sprayer trucks went by, we all got on our bikes and rode through the insecticide. So that was probably real good for us, too.
"So, it could have been anything. Or everything. I got real bad family history, too. My father died of lung cancer. My sister's a breast cancer survivor, and my mother is on her fifth [bout of] ovarian cancer, which they call chronic. So, we don't know if we have bad genes because we get it or good genes because we survive it."
Treating cancer with kindness
"Dr. Rengan said that I would have to go through a brick wall. And he said, 'But don't go alone. I'll go with you.' And he did. My doctors were the kindest.
"He said he was a hugger, and, if I gained weight, he would just hug me twice. I gained a lot of weight because I was on steroids, and I would laugh and say, 'Aren't you glad you didn't say you would hug me by the pound? We'd be here for a week.'
On losing her hair
"The radiation itself wasn't that bad, except that I don't have my hair. I work in a hair salon, so, you know, hair is sort of, kind of, a big part of my business and my life.
"I've always had nice hair. Nice, thick, I'd say blond, but not natural. Now, it's coming back black. It's growing back in patches, and it's really hysterical. It's like I have a ball field on the back of my head. First, second, third, fourth base.
"And I look like my father. I have that horseshoe ring around it and nothing on the top. So you do have to laugh, and I do think it's my sense of humor and my attitude that got me through this, you know.
"If you can find any humor in it, find the humor. You do have to keep laughing. You can't just crawl into a hole. You just can't. It's scary, but it's true. You just can't, or the hole's going to get you."
On chemo and goulash
"You can only eat what you can tolerate. One day, my mom called me and asked if I wanted soup. And I told her I'd already ordered a hoagie and french fries from down the street because really that was all I could tolerate. That's all I wanted.
"It was like the funniest things that people bring you, like goulash, and it's like, I'm sick here. When you're laying in bed, everything you look and see and smell makes you sick — thanks, but no thanks.
Why Charlie Brown needs Lucy
"Tom [her boyfriend, Tom Moran] never missed an appointment. He wrote everything down for me in case I couldn't remember. Because a lot of times, when you have the cancer, it's sort of like Charlie Brown's teacher that you just hear, 'Wah, wah. Wah, wah.'
"So, he wrote a lot of things down, made sure I had everything I needed."
Trash-talking cancer
"Tom's a boxing manager. He gave me a pair of boxing gloves and a sweatshirt that said Everlast on it. And I went [to chemo] every week with that Everlast boxing sweatshirt on because I was fighting that cancer.
"We named my cancer: Funny Jim. And we were taking him down. [He] was our opponent, and he's gone. We took care of him."