A support group emerges
Sandy Eckert’s support group begins with the instinctive reaction of a friend.
On a layover at the Cincinnati airport while winging her way back from a Hawaiian vacation, Cynthia Tyger powers on her cell phone.
There’s a voicemail from Sandy. She needs to talk. It’s urgent.
Cynthia redials her longtime friend and receives the life-altering news amid the din of the busy terminal.
“I have this abdominal mass,” Sandy tells her. “I need to see an oncologist.”
Cynthia’s reply is immediate.
“When’s the appointment? I’ll go with you.”
Sandy’s Angels take wing from there.
The first make-or-break moment comes in November 2008. Sandy is undergoing surgery to remove her tumor at Hershey Medical Center. The outcome will determine her prognosis.
Despite the high stakes, Cynthia can’t be there.
In an ironic twist, she’s with her husband, Joel Hersh, at Harrisburg Hospital. Having beaten colon cancer, he’s having his colostomy reversed.
Unfortunately, the news isn’t as positive for Sandy.
Surgeons are able to remove only 80 percent of Sandy’s cancer. Her fate is uncertain.
Cynthia gets the unsettling news just as the Harrisburg Hospital medical staff is preparing to wheel her husband to the operating room for his procedure.
She bursts into tears.
“I’m crying and the attendants look at me and tell me, ‘We’ll take good care of your husband. He’ll be fine’,” Cynthia recounts.
She recalls thinking, “That’s not the issue.”
Cynthia now knows that Sandy faces the fight of her life.
The only comfort is realizing that Sandy won’t go it alone. Sandy’s growing network, much of it rooted in the women’s group “QueenSpirit” at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg in Swatara Township, will see that Sandy has support from all quarters.
Over the next 18 months, Sandy’s volunteer support group becomes a finely tuned system that weaves plenty of moving parts into a seamless net of compassion, companionship and care.
“Every time Sandy had a chemo appointment or a doctor’s appointment, it involved at least three people, sometimes four,” Cynthia explains. “Somebody brought her to the appointment. Somebody took her home, and somebody met her there.”
Typically, it’s Cynthia, with her nursing background, who is in the exam room alongside Sandy, notebook and pen in hand.
“I was the second set of ears, and I asked the questions Sandy didn’t ask. That was my job,” she says.
It becomes a well-oiled routine.
Along the way, serious cancer research is conducted on the Internet as Sandy and her angels weigh treatment options and attempt to pin down facts. At the same time, this heavy homework is leavened by irreverent cancer jokes told en route to rounds of chemo. Each joke teller tries to top the last in terms of political incorrectness and bad taste.
For the most part, Sandy’s spirits are high. She’s determined to beat her disease.
But when her blood work fails to pass muster and she’s forced to delay a scheduled chemo treatment, Sandy can get down. Doubts creep in.
Is the cancer growing? Is she fighting hard enough?
In these moments, Sandy needs a break.
As important as her angels are in supporting her battle, they also relish in whisking Sandy away on pleasurable distractions totally unrelated to her diagnosis.
Some of these light-hearted outings fall to Kate Quimby of Harrisburg. More of a casual acquaintance when she began shuttling Sandy to chemo treatments, Kate soon finds herself drawn to Sandy’s many interests.
“I enjoyed the time so much when I was driving her that we started doing things socially,” says Quimby, who, at 63, is Sandy’s age.
When Sandy mentions a movie at Harrisburg’s Midtown Cinema, Quimby doesn’t hesitate.
“Let’s get tickets,” she says.
And when the two get to discussing what a shame it is that the art collection at the Barnes Museum outside Philadelphia will soon be moving, they promptly decide that they positively have to see it.
That spring outing stands out as a golden memory.
“We would look at the art for a while, then we would wander around in his garden,” recalls Quimby, a cultural and relational communications professor at Messiah College.
“We were just oohing and ahhing over the art and the trees,” she says. “What food for the soul.”
The strong support of friends, coupled with two rounds of chemo, translates into triumphant news.
In January 2010, Sandy’s cancer goes into remission. There’s “no tumor activity,” her oncologist declares.
Sandy’s e-mail chain chimes with good cheer and well wishes. She and her angels revel in a hard-won victory.
“It was joyous — a celebration,” recalls Cynthia. “People were like, ‘Way to go girl!’”
As sweet as it is, the joy doesn’t last.
During a routine checkup later that spring, Sandy’s blood work comes back with a problem. Her doctor wears a look of concern as he prepares to check Sandy over.
The sterile paper on the exam table crinkles as Sandy lays back. The room is silent as the doctor presses on her abdomen. Without a single word being exchanged, Sandy knows. It’s the way the doctor’s fingers focus on a certain spot.
He feels a lump through her flesh.
The cancer in Sandy’s belly has reawakened. This time, it’s returned with a vengeance.
Tests results come back, and the news couldn’t be worse. The tumor has spread to Sandy’s liver.
Without hesitation, Sandy’s growing group of angels gears up for the fight of their lives.