'Just not ready to die yet'

[Adminஐﻬ]

~NOTE- She started off living with Lupus, then she got cancer. But I thought her story was worth sharing here as an inspiration to others, never give up.
'Just not ready to die yet'


Thursday March 01,2007



Vickie Dennis has one word to describe death.
"Final," the 50-year-old said Tuesday. "It's final, that's all there is to it."

It was 10:30 a.m. and Vickie was seated in front of a desk in the back room of the Wonder-Hostess Thrift Shop on Grand Avenue.

She smiled and brushed the bangs of a brown wig with her left hand. Vickie didn't look like someone dying of cancer.

"I have terminal lung cancer," Vickie said. "I found out on February 8 last year. The doctors had been treating me for Lupus for seven months and finally I went up to Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota.

"When I got up there, they said I had six months to a year to live. I was dumbfounded. How can you be dying and not really know? I would have rather had Lupus."Vickie looked down at her desk.

"I couldn't tell Dave, my husband, how long they gave me. When we went back to Mayo, I took him with me and had the radiologists tell him.

"I couldn't tell the man I had been with for so many years that I had six months or a year to live."

The woman in the wig smiled again.

"Anyway, here it is a year later and I'm still here. I'm in stage 4 and I just finished my last radiation treatments. The cancer had spread from my lungs to my brain and then to my spine. Then it spread to my pancreas and to my spleen.

"I think this last round of radiation got it all - but we'll wait and see."

A stream of customers gave the front of the Wonder-Hostess Thrift Shop a kind of steady, shuffling rhythm.

People bought boxes of Donettes, packages of Donut Bites and assorted loaves of bread. A woman from Connie's Restaurant in Knoxville carried out flats of buns and bread, while another woman purchased five bags of hot dog buns.

Vickie stayed calm while the minor storm of customers swirled in the front of the store.

"I've been here 22 years and the Wonder-Hostess people have been really good to me," she said. "I'm determined to live. I've got a 19-year-old son and I'm determined to see him get married.

"He's in no hurry to do that, so I'm going to have to hang in there a while."

A UPS delivery man brought a package and the Coca-Cola man was busy restocking the shelves in the cooler.

"I've been in this store for 22 years," Vickie said. "It gets busy like this when people think bad weather is coming - especially after the storm we had. Monday morning we had people lined up outside before we even opened the doors."

Dorrie Johnson, the cashier who handled the rush in the front of the store, popped in back for a tray of buns.

"Vickie saved my life," Dorrie said as she held the tray against the shoulder of her right arm. "Let's see, I would have retired from Maytag after 27-and-a-half years this Sunday. That didn't happen.

"Vickie saved me after I lost my job at Maytag. We've known each other since we were 10 years old."

Dorrie disappeared to the front of the store.

"I'm just not ready to die yet," Vickie said after she watched her friend leave. "I watched my dad die of cancer - lung and colon cancer - and I never want to go like that.

"I don't think about what will kill me."

The woman in the wig smiled again.

"I think about my son and my husband and my family. Everything else is minutiae."

Vickie paused and laughed.

"I would also like to have new living room carpet before I go. What I have now I just wouldn't want to leave behind."