Have you ever had cancer? Do you know what it’s like to receive treatment? The isolation and the chemo sessions and the sickness so severe it feels like you’re going to die? Are you aware of the toll it takes on not just your body but your mind and spirit, too—the general, virulent fear of the end that spreads from your head to your toes?
I bet you know by now that cancer doesn’t discriminate. Everyone’s susceptible. Even those essential to society. Even teachers. Or people who want to be teachers.
Julie Hammond knows. She’s 42 now, and for the past 20 years she’s lived in Boulder City, with half of those years spent working at Martha P. King Elementary School as an instructional assistant, and in March 2006 she was diagnosed with cancer. Stage-three lymphoma. Non-Hodgkin’s. A perilous disease. A terrifying experience (above all because Hammond has had five family members pass away on account of cancer). And, furthermore, a critical interruption in her life.
That’s because she aims to be a teacher. She’s been working toward her certification, piecemeal, ever since she resolved to become a teacher seven years ago, while working two jobs and raising two of her own children. “Just helping kids,” she says. “It’s what I’m meant to do.” The cancer interrupted her pursuit. The cancer had disintegrated her immune system, and so she had to take a leave from work at King, where kids and kids’ germs are rampant. The chemo sessions—six rounds, every three weeks, two-day treatments—left her head bald and made life horrible for her, and so Hammond had to decelerate her progress through Regis University’s fast-track teacher education program to a slug’s pace.
“It was like having the worst flu ever, times 10,” says Hammond. “I was very scared.”
How do you overcome that?
I’ll tell you how Hammond says she was able to do it.
Her angels. She is infatuated with the concept of angels and so considers everyone dear to her heart angels without wings. When the news of her cancer caught wind in Boulder City, her school, other schools and the town at large rushed around her.
They threw a carnival in her name to raise money. Middle school and high school kids volunteered their time without anticipation of any external reward. Little girls cut off their hair and donated it to children with cancer who are bald just like Hammond.
Hammond’s husband started a website to keep everyone updated on Hammond’s condition, and the folks of Boulder City filled it with notes of support and affection.
“In this way,” Hammond says, “my angels got me through it.”
That was August of last year. Through it all she maintained the aim to teach. Now she is on course to complete her student teaching by the end of this 2007-2008 school year. And—now that the cancer is in remission and is without signs of reoccurrence—she plans to have her own classroom come August next year.
Last week, the Clark County School District began the new school year 363 teachers short. Next year, I bet they’ll be at least one closer, and to the students of the unconquerable Julie Hammond, it will make all the difference.