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Local residents Pat Archuleta and Jo Ann Schaefer both discovered a way to strengthen their faith, family bonds and their values of life.

Not without a cost, though.

Both women are survivors of breast cancer, a life threatening disease that permanently transformed their outlooks on life.

“Surviving breast cancer makes you appreciate life a whole lot more,” Archuleta said. “It makes you realize how mortal you really are, and you realize what’s really important in your life.”

It all started with suspicious lumps in their breasts.

“When I noticed a lump in my breast, I didn’t think too much of it and scheduled a mammogram,” Archuleta said. “Then I noticed it was growing, and I felt like something was wrong.”

Archuleta and Schaefer both were diagnosed with breast cancer in their mid-fifties.

“When I was diagnosed, I thought ‘I don’t want to die’,” Schaefer said. “Then I instantly thought ‘what can we do to stop it’?”

The answer to her question? Chemotherapy.

“After receiving a treatment, I would feel like I had the flu for weeks on end,” Schaefer said. “Just when I would start to feel better, they would give me another treatment. I had never really been sick before that, so it was a rude awakening.”

Archuleta received two different kinds of chemotherapy.

“I got really sick in between treatments because chemotherapy uses poison to kill the bad stuff as well as the good stuff,” she said. “I developed Neutropenic fever and had to stay in the hospital for days. But I knew if they didn’t kill the bad stuff, it was going to kill me.”

Schaefer said the side effects of the treatments were devastating.

“When I lost my hair, I was completely shattered because it was a huge part of me and then it was gone,” she said. “I started to rationalize with myself and wonder if my hair made me who I was. I also got infections under my nails, and lost three fingernails and two toenails.”

Unfortunately, a mere wig could not completely solve the women’s hair loss problem.

“I lost all of my hair, including my eyebrows, eyelashes, arm hair, everything,” Archuleta said. “There was no hair anywhere on my body. I didn’t have to shave my legs for six months, which was nice actually.”

Even though these side effects were drastic, both women still maintained optimistic attitudes.

“There are actually advantages to being bald,” Schaefer said. “It takes you less time to get ready when you don’t have do your hair or put on mascara. Just slap a hat on your head and do your thing.”

Archuleta even found a way to make her great nephew, Nathan, accept her bald condition.

“When I started losing my hair, we had a hair shaving party,” she said. “Nathan and I played games with wigs and scarves so that he would never be afraid of me. It worked.”

But as much as they tried to laugh things off, difficult times hit the women as well.

“The hardest part was having to wait,” Archuleta said. “Wait for them to find out what kind of treatment, when to start treatment, and most importantly, your results. That was very frustrating to me.”

Schaefer felt confusion as to why she developed the breast cancer.

“I was a person who watched my weight, exercised regularly and I never smoked,” she said. “I tried to eat healthy and I still came up with cancer. Cancer doesn’t care about color, age or economic situation. It can get anyone.”

Which is the exact reason why having a yearly mammogram is so essential for all women.

“One year there was nothing wrong with me, and in 12 months the cancer had already formed and was spreading,” Schaefer said. “If I hadn’t of gotten my mammogram, it would’ve spread to other places. I believe it saved my life.”

Longtime Clarendon College Board of Regents member Doug Lowe, who lost his wife in 2008 to ovarian cancer, knows the severity of cancer and encourages women to receive their yearly exams.

“Some people don’t want to know if they have cancer, but they should,” Lowe said. “They shouldn’t be afraid. Early diagnosis is the key. With any kind of cancer, the earlier you get it diagnosed, the easier it will be to get treated.”

Thankfully for Archuleta and Schaefer, their cancers were caught, treated, and eliminated. Both believe that surviving breast cancer has made them stronger.

“If you live through the possibility of dying, it makes you stronger,” Schaefer said. “You learn to not take life for granted, and the loved ones around you become even more precious. You know that you can either sit there and cry about it, or laugh through it. And you make it, one day at a time.”

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Please join the Clarendon High School Student Council in supporting the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation by wearing a “Think Pink” T-shirts on Pink Out Day, which is October 12.

The money from each “Think Pink” shirt sold by student council members will be donated to the Breast Cancer Awareness Foundation.

The Hedley Senior Citizens Center volunteers are constantly working, asking for donations and doing fundraisers in order to keep their facility going.
But that is still not enough.

They are working in a 105-year-old building that is falling apart, and their only hope to continue their service is to build another building before it is too late.

“It’s going to fall down,” said Kathy Spier, bookkeeper for the Senior Citizens Center. “There is absolutely no other place in town we could serve the elderly if something happens to this building.”

According to Spier, the Senior Citizens Building might not make it through this winter.

“Right now as it stands, if we get a heavy snowstorm our roof may cave in,” she said.
The building, which is one of the first built in Hedley, has fallen six inches on the south side, has a condemned second story, and has no central heating or air.

“The wall furnace we use just doesn’t keep us warm enough during the winter,” Spier said. “And we just now got our evaporative cooler to work. We went through the summer without any air conditioner.”

It is also not handicap accessible.

“We’ve had elderly people that have fallen trying to get up the high steps,” Spier said. “And our restrooms aren’t handicap accessible either, so they aren’t able to use them.”

Spier said that they received permission to use five lots across Main Street from their current center to build a new building from scratch.

“The new building will definitely be handicap accessible, energy efficient (which our current building is not), have central air-conditioning, a good dining room, two handicap restrooms, and doors wide enough for wheelchairs,” Spier said. “It could also be used as a community center for showers, school programs, reunions and birthday parties.”
The total estimated cost of this project is around $200,000.

“We have to have everything from the ground up, which includes concrete, electricity, plumbing, and we will probably need some new equipment, like freezers,” Spier said. “We will use as much as we can, but there will have to be some new stuff.”

The center feeds around 60 people a day, and delivers to about 20 homebound people.
Since they cannot legally ask anyone over the age of 60 to pay for a meal, they request a donation of three dollars. But they rarely receive it.

“There are a lot of elderly people that can’t even pay that, but they need the food,” Spier said. “This whole area is under the poverty level. For some of the homebound people, that is their one meal for the entire day.”

Spier said that many people believe that the state pays for the center’s food expenses and the employee’s salaries, but she said that is “far from the truth.”

“It costs us about $5.90 to make a meal, and the state reimburses us less than half the cost of that,” she said. “The center spends between $3,000-$5,000 a month for food. And this is not like New York and California. We can’t have $10 plates.”
In many cases, the money they manage to save up has to go towards bills.

“For the last five or six years we’ve been saving up for the other building, but at one time we didn’t even have enough money to pay the bills,” Spier said.

“Our savings are very little because we have to use most of it for food and utility expenses. So we don’t have a lot saved up, but we’re still working on it.”
Spier said state money seems to ignore small towns like Hedley.

“It’s like all the money that is out there is geared toward large towns,” she said. “It seems like they think small rural areas don’t matter, so they try to help the masses. But our little elderly people are just as important, and we need help just as much as the big towns.”

The center received a good response from an article about their predicament in the Amarillo Globe-News back in August.

“Since the article came out, we’ve received $5,000 from the Jay O’Brien grant, and besides that we’ve received $2,500,” Spier said. “Besides the money, we’ve gotten a lot of encouragement and ideas as well.”

To make donations to the Hedley Senior Citizens Center, either call Kathy or Patsy Spier at 806-856-0143 or e-mail [email protected].

“The people in this community are so supportive of the senior citizens,” volunteer Roger Hagar said. “They’ll always help and support us, and we owe a big thanks to them, as well as the people of Clarendon and Memphis.”

The center’s next fundraiser is October 9 at the Cotton Festival. They will raffle off a Judge pistol, as well as sell hamburgers.

“Please come out and support our Senior Citizens program,” Spier said. “We need all the help we can get.”