Vim & Vigor - Winter 2012 - University of Virginia - (Page 6)

by KeLLy Casey A Winning Hand 1 Year, 3 CanCer Diagnoses L When life dealt her three bouts of cancer, Jude Campbell made having fun a priority ike many adults, Jude Campbell of Charlottesville, Va., had mostly left behind having fun, along with childhood. But after battling not one, but three, unrelated cancers, she makes sure playfulness is a bigger part of her life. “I’m a fairly serious person,” says Campbell, 71. “But I’ve really learned the importance of living with some humor in my life. I can be very playful with my 2-year-old granddaughter. But I needed to be more playful with myself. I have to work at it.” Campbell now makes a point of sharing joyful moments with her husband, other cancer survivors and even inmates at AlbemarleCharlottesville Regional Jail. On Monday mornings, she visits with inmates, leading them in prayer and also games of cards or dominoes. When she learned from the jail chaplain that no volunteer ever came to simply have fun with the inmates, “then I knew it was where I was supposed to be,” she says. “It has added a new dimension to my life.” In December 2009, Campbell came close to dying. Feeling sicker than she had ever felt, she called on a neighbor who was a doctor. He knew she needed to get to UVA right away. But with more than a foot of snow on the ground, an ambulance couldn’t get to her house. A fire chief’s SUV had to bring her to the ambulance. At UVA on that snowy day, surgeons saved her life but had to remove her entire large intestine. “When I woke up in the morning, this wonderful doctor who had saved my life was holding my hand,” Campbell says. The reason she felt so sick was that her large intestine had burst after being blocked by a cancerous tumor that had originated in either her ovary or her uterine lining. That was far from the end of her journey. She would need to have her uterus and ovaries removed and then surgery to connect her small intestine to her rectum. She also went through several months of chemotherapy. All of this happened just a few months after having surgery to remove cancer in her bladder and then a minimally invasive procedure to freeze a gumballsized tumor in her kidney. Never having faced a serious illness the first 69 years of her life, it was extraordinary, she says, to be hit with three cancers back to back to back. > 6 Vim & Vigor • w i n ter 2 012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vim & Vigor - Winter 2012 - University of Virginia

Vim & Vigor - Winter 2012 - University of Virginia
Contents
Life in Balance
Reveal a More Vibrant You
A Winning Hand
Because I Said So!
What’s Wrong with This Picture?
The Future Is Now
Everyday Hero
What Does 200 Calories Look Like?
Johnny Be Good
In the Driver’s Seat
We’ve Got Your Back
Bank on Your Health
Virtual Health
Through Snow, Rain or Any Obstacle
A Father’s Gift
Be a Model Patient

Vim & Vigor - Winter 2012 - University of Virginia