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Shedding cancer’s scars
Canfield woman models for calendar to celebrate survival
By APRIL ANTONELLI
CANFIELD
Murphy Wills awakes from his nap with a burst and flies through the family kitchen.
His mom, Staci Wills, scoops him up with a fluid sweep of her arm and directs him toward his toys in the living room.
It’s a moment of joy, vibrance and family that does not show a hint of the cancer that just one year ago nearly killed the 34-year-old mother of three.
In 2009, Wills lost control of her life in many ways because of Stage III colorectal cancer.
In 2010, she began to get her life back.
And now, a family ice-cream social in their Canfield home marked the one-year, cancer-free anniversary for a life that, while certainly changed, is once again hers.
Life is so much hers that she’s chosen to become a calendar model for a national survivors’ group that calls itself The Colon Club. It’s website is www.colonclub.com.
The group’s unabashed irreverence extends to its calendar — which it calls a “colondar,” with photos of colon-cancer survivors showing off their sizable abdominal scars.
Wills will be featured in the 2012 calendar along with Hubbard resident Tim Maiorca.
The pair recently joined a photo shoot in New York for the 2012 calendar, which will be available Sept. 1 through www.colondar.com, or from the models. Calendars dating to 2005 can be seen at the website.
HUMOR AS THERAPY
Fighting, crying, loving and supporting have been constants for Wills the last two years, along with a strong dose of humor.
“I was naked from the waist down, kneeling over a table, being poked and prodded with a scope,” she says. “I looked up at the doctor and said, ‘This is an awkward way to meet somebody.’
“But the whole time I just prayed to have this burden taken from me because I had no more strength. I’ve literally prayed my way through every horrific moment. Comedy is also my way out. If I didn’t laugh about this stuff, I would be crying.”
Make no mistake — it started with tears.
In July 2009, Wills made an appointment with a specialist in Poland after she experienced some blood in her bowel movements.
Life was busy that day, she said. She taught vacation Bible school at Common Ground Church Community in North Lima. She had three small children to raise with her husband, Chris.
“I went for my first consult and exam, wholeheartedly thinking ‘This is in my mind, and the doctor will tell me all is well,’” she said.
Not so.
Wills was told she had Stage I rectal cancer. She and her husband decided to go to Cleveland Clinic for a second opinion. After more exams, she was told her tumor had penetrated the muscle wall of her colon and caused irregularities in the lymph nodes.
Her diagnosis was revised to Stage II cancer.
Chris remembers the moment.
“I started crying, and she didn’t,” he said. “It sounds clich , but I was worried about the kids.”
By August, Wills was in a six-week treatment regimen of chemotherapy pills and daily radiation treatments, followed by surgery to remove the tumor. The side effects of chemotherapy and radiation used to remove cancerous cells left in her body were debilitating and demoralizing.
The couple had planned to have a fourth child some day. Cancer robbed them of that dream.
Her uterus became useless from the results of radiation. That loss of fertility was one of the hardest things to accept.
“Knowing that everything in my body that a woman has is going to be useless [was upsetting]. If it’s useless, then what the heck am I here for,” she recalled asking herself.
CANCER WORSENS
News did not get better by November 2009. During surgery at the Cleveland Clinic to remove the tumor, her cancer had progressed to Stage III. It was a much more serious diagnosis with longer treatments — and a reduced chance of survival.
Wills was outfitted with a colostomy bag to begin doing the work of her body’s waste system. She also was told she would have to undergo more chemotherapy and radiation because of suspicious cells in her lymph nodes.
Incorporating a colostomy bag into an active lifestyle has proved challenging on occasion for Wills. She laughs now about one incident when the family was shopping at a Target store.
“I felt a wet spot on my shirt, so I looked down and I see this brown spot. I told my husband, and he said, ‘Just go out to the car.’ While I was walking, the stuff from the bag was dripping down my jeans and on my shoes.”
Incidents like that do not bother Chris. “It’s the bag, or it’s her life,” he said.
Chemotherapy and radiation from January 2010 to May 2010 brought on weight loss, extreme sensitivity to coldness, inability to eat or drink anything that was not lukewarm, intense migraines, diarrhea, nausea, fatigue and the onset of menopause.
A huge support network grew from family, friends and church.
At times when she could not get up from the sofa, neighbors dropped off casseroles and desserts.
When she despaired about how she would see her children off to school, her aunt volunteered to take over. Her mother, Sue Fithian, came to many of the radiation treatments at clinic, which ran Monday through Friday.
Fithian said watching her daughter endure the rigors of treatment has often been difficult.
“Sometimes I just wanted to lean against a wall and slide down like an accordion,” Fithian says. “But my job was to be with my daughter, so that’s what I did.”
Wills says her husband has been her biggest source of strength and support throughout her ordeal, helping her recover while driving daily to work in Pittsburgh and taking graduate courses at Kent State University. “He’s my rock,” she says.
ADVOCATE FOR SCREENING
She said she discovered that becoming proactive in her recovery and an advocate for early colorectal screenings has helped her to cope with the hardships of the past two years.
She created a blog to chronicle her experiences. While she first did this as a convenient way to update her family on her physical status, her blog has received more than 30,000 views from all over the country.
“It’s humbling to know so many people were checking your updates,” she says.
And now she’s a model for the 2012 Colondar — putting her abdominal scar in full display.
“I told her, ‘You can do this, and I expect to see your picture in here next year,’” Chris said.
Hubbard’s Tim Maiorca has been in remission for seven years. He was diagnosed in 2002 with the same disease that killed his dad. When his dad was diagnosed, he was warned to get checked.
“It all went in one ear and out the other. I thought, ‘I don’t need this. I’m healthy.’ If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to get a colonoscopy. It’s a piece of cake. If I would’ve known how easy it is, I would turn back time and tell myself to get one.”
Molly McMaster, president of The Colon Club, which produces the calendar, said it’s unusual that they ended up with two models from the same area.
It’s a reversal of sorts for Tim.
“When I first had the surgery, I was self-conscious about my scar,” he said. “But now I don’t care. It’s like a coming-out party.”
Wills looks at the calendar as a key benchmark.
“This has been the longest journey of my life, but it also feels like it was just yesterday. Being a model for the colondar is just another one of those grateful moments. I have the opportunity to be here and to see that what I’ve been through has been worth it.”
Wills is adamant that people under 50 should take signs such as bloody stool and persistent abdominal pain seriously.
Fithian says many of her friends now have had colonoscopies as a result of her daughter’s experience.
“If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone,” she said.