SALEM – If anybody asked Angela Akers what she would be doing this week while on a break from her latest round of chemotherapy, she would say, “I’m going to Disney World!”
The free trip arranged by the Dream Foundation is a bright light for the 40-year-old Salem resident who is fighting a rare lung cancer for which doctors say there is no cure.
PCA Pharmacist Laura Carroll, left, helps present a bon voyage cake to lung cancer patient Angela Akers on Feb. 22, at the Salem home Akers shares with her mother, Gay Littrell, who is holding the family dog, Abby. Photo by Meg Hibbert
The trip to Disney World, Sea World and Universal Studios for Akers and her mom, Gay Littrell, came about through the efforts of Akers’ pharmacist and a pharmaceutical representative. This week’s trip is the first time for both Akers and Littrell to visit those Florida attractions.
Students at area schools are helping a Michiana man fulfill his dying wish.
William Morton Sr. grew up in Michigan and now lives in Springfield, Illinois, where he is on hospice care. He’s terminally ill and only has a few months to live.
His nurses encouraged him to apply to the Dream Foundation, which grants wishes to sick adults.
Morton Sr. wanted children to learn about boats similar to the ones he watched float across Lake Michigan growing up. Now, that wish is being granted.
“His final wish was a book named ‘Mail by the Pail’ would be reread to children all over the Midwest, perhaps all over the country,” said his son and John Glenn High School Principal William Morton Jr.
BARTONVILLE- They say you should treat each day as though it were your last. But how many of us actually do that?
For one Bartonville woman, that’s the only way to live because death is a very real possibility.
Angela DeVries values nothing more than time with her family.
That’s because she doesn’t know how much time she has left. Angela has terminal colon cancer.
“So now on we’re looking at kinda’ like chemotherapy for the rest of my life. It makes you sick but it keeps me here longer for the kids,” DeVries said.
She can’t do much anymore. Even simple activities with her husband and five children are difficult.
Nearing the end of her life, Julie Beck has a simple wish: for her three children to have a fun-filled weekend at Disneyland without having to worry about her worsening cancer.
The 43-year-old Oceanside resident couldn’t afford the trip, so the Dream Foundation stepped in to help.
Volunteers with Genentech, a drug company that has teamed up with the nonprofit group, came to her house Wednesday afternoon with a gift package that included a hotel room for four nights and tickets for two days at Disneyland and one day at Universal Studios.
“I had it in my ribs, my pelvis, up and down my spine, my shoulders,” he said.
Rodney was 20 when he was first diagnosed. It is frightening to face cancer so young.
It’s lonely too.
“When you’re in your 20’s and have cancer, or even in your teens, there’s no peers you can talk to who understand what you’re going through,” Rodney said.
Across the state, 230 miles away in Bellingham, Lynsie Rainford faces a similar fight.
“They did a bone marrow aspiration and the next day they found out it was leukemia,” she said describing her initial diagnosis when she was 15.
Lynsie beat the disease but relapsed at 19 years old. She still travels to Seattle Children’s Hospital for monthly check-ups.