Peggy Free (right), from the Grace Brethren church in Seal Beach, California (Don Shoemaker, pastor), wrote an article for the church’s newsletter entitled “Laughing Through Cancer.” Here is a short excerpt. For the entire story of how this courageous woman’s wacky sense of humor helped her through a crisis, click on http://mysite.verizon.net/resw2g2p/stagegirlpeg/id1.html
If you happened by the Relay for Life table last month in between services, you may have noticed some odd pictures of a woman with a blue head.
Well, that would be me. If you’re curious as to why someone would paint their head blue, I’ll try to explain.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer on January 12, 2007 at the age of 41. I found the lump myself on Christmas day. God was already preparing me the previous November when I chose a new health insurance plan that didn’t require referrals to specialists or approvals for tests. This allowed me to get into the best doctors right away.
When I met my surgeon January 19th, she told me “We’re going to cure you” and I believed her. I knew the road would be rough. Chemotherapy is no picnic. But I knew I would be ok in the end. Who I would be in the end, I didn’t know. Life’s events had already made me a strong woman, like steel. Apparently, God had titanium in mind.
I’ve always liked to entertain and make people laugh. I do community theatre in my spare time when I’m not working as an Avionics engineer at Boeing. As I progressed through my chemo treatments, many tests and surgeries, I needed to find humor and fun wherever I could.
God blessed me with a sense of humor and my doctor told me that is how I deal with things. I needed to make myself laugh to relieve the “little bit of stress” I was under.