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Lisa Welsh
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By Lisa D. Welsh
www.CHEERMaD.com
Kim M. Wheeler of Jaffrey, N.H. is the kind of CHEERMaD that always has a smile on her face and appears to have the sunniest disposition. From afar, Kim looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
That’s why I was so surprised when I learned that when I met Kim three years ago, she was fighting breast cancer.
Like many CHEERMaDs, Kim marks events in her life by where it falls in the cheer season, even cancer. For instance, she put off chemotherapy until after a competition in Virginia Beach in which her daughter Brooke, who was 13 at the time, would compete on a senior level 3 team.
CHEERMaD Kim
In the fall of 2008, in her first year as a middle school cheerleading coach, her doctor found a lump during a routine physical, but nothing showed up on an ultrasound, MRI or mammogram. Three months later, Kim could feel the lump herself and when an ultrasound technician believed Kim rather than what she could see on the screen, the technician found the lump. She had micro-surgery in December and was diagnosed on New Year’s eve with breast cancer which had spread to her lymph glands and is estimated to have doubled in size.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about that…what if I had missed that appointment or was so busy, as most of us are, and I had cancelled that appointment,” Kim said. “No matter what, I tell everyone, don’t cancel your appointment just because you are busy like I always did.”
Kim would undergo six rounds of chemotherapy, one every three weeks. Had the lump been diagnosed when the doctor first felt it, she says she would not have needed chemo. What’s more, as the chemo program began her partner Jim, who was going to care for her while she was sick, had a bad car accident and spent the next three months in a wheelchair.
Not surprisingly, it was two other CHEERMaDs who helped.
“Karen Gallo and Julie Aikey and I met when our daughters cheered on the same team for Montachusett All Stars,” she said. “You know how you spend time with each other while the girls cheer, well that’s all it was really but they were unbelievable.”
In addition to providing support for Kim and rides to practice for Brooke, Karen and Julie held a fundraiser at a cheer tournament in April 2009 where they sold pink t-shirts with the MAS logo and a cancer ribbon on it.
Although she was in chemo at the time, Kim wasn’t attending the tournament as a CHEERMaD; she was there as the coach of a middle school squad where she was also a teacher.
“I was bald, wearing a wig of course, but when I walked into the gym every single person was wearing my t-shirt,” she recalls. “All I could see were stands and stands filled with pink. I couldn’t believe it was for me. I remember thinking, ‘All this, because of Karen and Julie.’ They had kept it a secret, had even gone to sell shirts at my school unbeknownst to me.”
The t-shirts were also emblazoned with the words Team Wheel, the nickname the group gave themselves when they participate annually in the “Walk for a Cure” breast cancer fundraiser in Boston.
It was from pictures of one of those walks a couple of years ago ~Kim smiling, her hair really cropped short, peeking out from under the tall, pink felt top hat she was wearing~that I realized this woman, who was always smiling, had cancer.
“It changes your perspective on what other people would consider to be a bad day,” Kim explained. “You can’t be woe is me. If you feel sorry for yourself, it would be easy to get depressed. I know I would.”
When I tell Kim about my first impression of her, she waves off any notion of inner strength.
“There were days at home, when you are by yourself, you get tired, you get mouth sores, heartburn, they only tell you about your hair falling out, it’s tough but what’s the alternative?” she said.
Brooke and Kim
After two years in remission, Kim says she’s starting to bounce back and is feeling good now but “prays to the Lord, ‘Please don’t give cancer back to me’” something she says she’ll worry about for the next five years before the odds of cancer returning decrease.
“So you just do it. You just get up everyday, you can not ‘not,’ you just ‘do.’ The only option is not get up, and you can’t do that.”
By Lisa D. Welsh
www.CHEERMaD.com
Kim M. Wheeler of Jaffrey, N.H. is the kind of CHEERMaD that always has a smile on her face and appears to have the sunniest disposition. From afar, Kim looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world.
That’s why I was so surprised when I learned that when I met Kim three years ago, she was fighting breast cancer.
Like many CHEERMaDs, Kim marks events in her life by where it falls in the cheer season, even cancer. For instance, she put off chemotherapy until after a competition in Virginia Beach in which her daughter Brooke, who was 13 at the time, would compete on a senior level 3 team.
CHEERMaD Kim
In the fall of 2008, in her first year as a middle school cheerleading coach, her doctor found a lump during a routine physical, but nothing showed up on an ultrasound, MRI or mammogram. Three months later, Kim could feel the lump herself and when an ultrasound technician believed Kim rather than what she could see on the screen, the technician found the lump. She had micro-surgery in December and was diagnosed on New Year’s eve with breast cancer which had spread to her lymph glands and is estimated to have doubled in size.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about that…what if I had missed that appointment or was so busy, as most of us are, and I had cancelled that appointment,” Kim said. “No matter what, I tell everyone, don’t cancel your appointment just because you are busy like I always did.”
Kim would undergo six rounds of chemotherapy, one every three weeks. Had the lump been diagnosed when the doctor first felt it, she says she would not have needed chemo. What’s more, as the chemo program began her partner Jim, who was going to care for her while she was sick, had a bad car accident and spent the next three months in a wheelchair.
Not surprisingly, it was two other CHEERMaDs who helped.
“Karen Gallo and Julie Aikey and I met when our daughters cheered on the same team for Montachusett All Stars,” she said. “You know how you spend time with each other while the girls cheer, well that’s all it was really but they were unbelievable.”
In addition to providing support for Kim and rides to practice for Brooke, Karen and Julie held a fundraiser at a cheer tournament in April 2009 where they sold pink t-shirts with the MAS logo and a cancer ribbon on it.
Although she was in chemo at the time, Kim wasn’t attending the tournament as a CHEERMaD; she was there as the coach of a middle school squad where she was also a teacher.
“I was bald, wearing a wig of course, but when I walked into the gym every single person was wearing my t-shirt,” she recalls. “All I could see were stands and stands filled with pink. I couldn’t believe it was for me. I remember thinking, ‘All this, because of Karen and Julie.’ They had kept it a secret, had even gone to sell shirts at my school unbeknownst to me.”
The t-shirts were also emblazoned with the words Team Wheel, the nickname the group gave themselves when they participate annually in the “Walk for a Cure” breast cancer fundraiser in Boston.
It was from pictures of one of those walks a couple of years ago ~Kim smiling, her hair really cropped short, peeking out from under the tall, pink felt top hat she was wearing~that I realized this woman, who was always smiling, had cancer.
“It changes your perspective on what other people would consider to be a bad day,” Kim explained. “You can’t be woe is me. If you feel sorry for yourself, it would be easy to get depressed. I know I would.”
When I tell Kim about my first impression of her, she waves off any notion of inner strength.
“There were days at home, when you are by yourself, you get tired, you get mouth sores, heartburn, they only tell you about your hair falling out, it’s tough but what’s the alternative?” she said.
Brooke and Kim
After two years in remission, Kim says she’s starting to bounce back and is feeling good now but “prays to the Lord, ‘Please don’t give cancer back to me’” something she says she’ll worry about for the next five years before the odds of cancer returning decrease.
“So you just do it. You just get up everyday, you can not ‘not,’ you just ‘do.’ The only option is not get up, and you can’t do that.”
