article
Lots have happened since I last blogged....Easter, reorganizing the house, and I was in the paper. First, please pray for Ms. Linda, a friend of Holly's who is in her final days with cancer. Please pray for her family, because I know that is who she is worried the most about. Second, hope yall had a great Easter....I'll put a pic of Robert and the girls tomorrow night. Now onto the article...I was interviewed back in Janurary for the Relay for Life...they ran it last week. I was nervous after it came out because I didn't want to come off as cocky because I made it when there are so many who loose the battle, and I was blessed to have fought and won mine, but if I can help someone then it was worth it (oh, and the pic that was with it is the one on this blog...the one Eme took! Her pic made the cover of the paper!)....here it is....
Portland woman a miracle cancer survivor
By Scott Wilson
swprogressive@bellsouth.net
Faced with the fact she had cancer, and it was in her lymph nodes and on her heart, Rena Brackin-Loza acted funny.
Amazingly she wasn’t going around depressed all the time. She wasn’t questioning why it had to happen to her and she wasn’t blaming it on anyone.
Loza was smiling! She was actually smiling.
“My faith has always been strong. I don’t think you can go through cancer without having faith. I have a strong support from my family, my friends, my church and they prayed for me,” said Loza. “I never did the why me? I had been sick for so long that I had always been the type of person that accepted the worst possibility and the worst possibility is to go to heaven. The hard part of that was I may have to leave my children.”
Loza, who has been cancer free for just over three years, has been a poster child of sorts locally for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. The Portland Relay for Life is scheduled later this fall.
For Loza, the cancer was spotted after she had been sick for some time, multiple test done, and finally had a test done that showed something.
“I had been fighting a fever for about eight months and I had been sick on and off,” said Loza. “I went to see a lot of doctors and they had insinuated that it was all in my head. But finally they did a particular test and found the cancer.”
Loza said cancer does run in her family. She said her father, and maternal and paternal grandmothers had cancer.
“My cancer is typical for women who are the average age of 30 and I took my first chemotherapy treatment the day before I turned 30 in Sept. of 2005,” Loza said. “The problem I had was standard therapy wasn’t getting me anywhere. With my particular type, it will move to the kidney, liver or brain if it is in your body for two years without cure. We didn’t know how long I had it when we found it, so they said we have to be aggressive.
“On Jan. of 2006, I started the stem-cell transplant process” Loza said. “A little over two weeks into it I had one type of chemotherapy I was allergic to, but the funny thing was when we went back to the doctor; he wanted to do another scan before we started with more chemotherapy and radiation and he came back and told me the cancer was gone.”
And Loza can only explain the drastic change one way and that’s through Christ.
“I had a miracle healing. I harvested my own stem cells, which you take a drug that causes the stem cells to come out of your body,” Loza said. “It usually takes 10 days to get a minimum of two million stem cells. I actually harvested in five days with seven million stem cells. It gave me a better chance to be healed because of the number of stem cells available.”
Loza said she approached her condition different than some cancer patients do. She never questioned why the cancer had gotten into her body. Instead, her thoughts were always on her family.
“In looking back, when we were told we had cancer, it was very hard on my family. No one thought I might have cancer. For me, with the pain I was going through at the time, I thought it could be anything, including cancer. I knew my body well,” Loza said. “When I found out, for me, it was kind of a relief because I finally knew what I had. I just wanted to move on and treat it. If you have a diagnosis, and you know in your heart that’s what you’ve got, you can form a plan of action to fight the monster.”
And fight it she did.
The battle was tough for Loza. However, she never tried to hide her cancer from her family.
Loza said if a parent gets cancer, they must, even while working with their own health problems, consider their family.
“For me, one of the mistakes I think parents with cancer make is to hide it completely from the children. To the extent you tell them, is different. But you need to let them know what is going on,” Loza said. “When I told my kids, we went out on the porch and told them that mommy was sick and that I had a booboo they couldn’t see. I told them we were going to fight it, but I didn’t make any promises.”
And Loza said one of the most important aspects in a cancer patient’s battle is the support of their friends.
“When I was battling cancer, I know how I wanted the people to react. I know how I react differently now. When I see someone with a scarf on (cancer related), I look at them differently,” Loza said. “If they seem approachable, I just try to tell them I am praying for them. When you tell us that, we understand. I would hope and pray that you don’t act any different to a cancer patient than you did before you knew they had cancer. We don’t want your pity, but we also don’t want you to ignore us. That hurts the most.”
Portland woman a miracle cancer survivor
By Scott Wilson
swprogressive@bellsouth.net
Faced with the fact she had cancer, and it was in her lymph nodes and on her heart, Rena Brackin-Loza acted funny.
Amazingly she wasn’t going around depressed all the time. She wasn’t questioning why it had to happen to her and she wasn’t blaming it on anyone.
Loza was smiling! She was actually smiling.
“My faith has always been strong. I don’t think you can go through cancer without having faith. I have a strong support from my family, my friends, my church and they prayed for me,” said Loza. “I never did the why me? I had been sick for so long that I had always been the type of person that accepted the worst possibility and the worst possibility is to go to heaven. The hard part of that was I may have to leave my children.”
Loza, who has been cancer free for just over three years, has been a poster child of sorts locally for the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. The Portland Relay for Life is scheduled later this fall.
For Loza, the cancer was spotted after she had been sick for some time, multiple test done, and finally had a test done that showed something.
“I had been fighting a fever for about eight months and I had been sick on and off,” said Loza. “I went to see a lot of doctors and they had insinuated that it was all in my head. But finally they did a particular test and found the cancer.”
Loza said cancer does run in her family. She said her father, and maternal and paternal grandmothers had cancer.
“My cancer is typical for women who are the average age of 30 and I took my first chemotherapy treatment the day before I turned 30 in Sept. of 2005,” Loza said. “The problem I had was standard therapy wasn’t getting me anywhere. With my particular type, it will move to the kidney, liver or brain if it is in your body for two years without cure. We didn’t know how long I had it when we found it, so they said we have to be aggressive.
“On Jan. of 2006, I started the stem-cell transplant process” Loza said. “A little over two weeks into it I had one type of chemotherapy I was allergic to, but the funny thing was when we went back to the doctor; he wanted to do another scan before we started with more chemotherapy and radiation and he came back and told me the cancer was gone.”
And Loza can only explain the drastic change one way and that’s through Christ.
“I had a miracle healing. I harvested my own stem cells, which you take a drug that causes the stem cells to come out of your body,” Loza said. “It usually takes 10 days to get a minimum of two million stem cells. I actually harvested in five days with seven million stem cells. It gave me a better chance to be healed because of the number of stem cells available.”
Loza said she approached her condition different than some cancer patients do. She never questioned why the cancer had gotten into her body. Instead, her thoughts were always on her family.
“In looking back, when we were told we had cancer, it was very hard on my family. No one thought I might have cancer. For me, with the pain I was going through at the time, I thought it could be anything, including cancer. I knew my body well,” Loza said. “When I found out, for me, it was kind of a relief because I finally knew what I had. I just wanted to move on and treat it. If you have a diagnosis, and you know in your heart that’s what you’ve got, you can form a plan of action to fight the monster.”
And fight it she did.
The battle was tough for Loza. However, she never tried to hide her cancer from her family.
Loza said if a parent gets cancer, they must, even while working with their own health problems, consider their family.
“For me, one of the mistakes I think parents with cancer make is to hide it completely from the children. To the extent you tell them, is different. But you need to let them know what is going on,” Loza said. “When I told my kids, we went out on the porch and told them that mommy was sick and that I had a booboo they couldn’t see. I told them we were going to fight it, but I didn’t make any promises.”
And Loza said one of the most important aspects in a cancer patient’s battle is the support of their friends.
“When I was battling cancer, I know how I wanted the people to react. I know how I react differently now. When I see someone with a scarf on (cancer related), I look at them differently,” Loza said. “If they seem approachable, I just try to tell them I am praying for them. When you tell us that, we understand. I would hope and pray that you don’t act any different to a cancer patient than you did before you knew they had cancer. We don’t want your pity, but we also don’t want you to ignore us. That hurts the most.”
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