Day: March 1, 2022

Arvella’s Story

Arvella and Casey, Arvella's husband mentioned in Arvella's Story, take a selfie during Casey's chemo treatment.

Arvella’s Story of Hope Transcript:

Casey Hill is the love of my life. We’ve been married for 31 years. Life was awesome. The last son was getting out of college. We thought we get to travel, we get to live, we get to do what we wanna do now. That semester he was to graduate, we found out Casey had cancer, and it totally flipped everything upside down in our lives.

I noticed him trying to get up he was gripping his chest and could barely move. So, we go to the emergency room, and the doctor comes out after they run the CT and says, “Well, the malignant tumor that is in your husband’s spine. We’re gonna go ahead and get him admitted and have oncology come down.” And I said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. We’re just in the emergency room for chest pain.” But it wasn’t a chest pain problem at all, it was the pain that was radiating from the malignant tumor that was in his spine. And we had no idea.

My struggle was trying to find someone to talk to and trying to find some help for my family. You feel desolate. You feel alone when you are having to deal with being a caregiver and everything that’s around it. So, when a person is diagnosed with cancer, their fight is with cancer. But the people who care for them, their fight is everything around the cancer. And it is difficult.

When my husband was diagnosed with cancer, about three months later, my sister was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. And she passed away in June of 2013. During that weekend, because she died on my granddaughter’s birthday, then I had to go into I gotta drive my husband to Little Rock for a stem cell transplant. As well as plan funeral services, as well as still try to celebrate my grandbaby and make her smile. It was tough.

There’s a lady, Carlene King, and I called her, and I said, “Carlene, I don’t wanna do this. It’s too much for one human being,” and she said, “You can do this.” She said, “I’ve seen you fight through some things in this life that this is nothing. You and God got this.” The strength of listening to someone say, ‘You can do this’ helped. And I know I can get that here at Cancer Care Services.

Transcribed by: Christina R.