(CBS News) The many changed present is something that won’t fit underneath a Christmas tree: It’s a present of caring, comfort, care and above all, a present of time. Seth Doane reports a Cover Story:
Any vacation is a passing mangle from routine, a possibility to relax and make memories.
But for a Curtis family, visiting this 3,000-acre dude plantation in southern Arizona, their time together seemed some-more changed than ever.
When asked what it was like for her to get out of a slight she was in during home, Teresa replied, “Very nice. Undescribable.”
For 4 days progressing this month, a Curtises left existence behind behind in Woodburn, Ky. – where Teresa Curtis said, “You always consider we have a lot of time. You always consider we will do something later.”
At slightest until 18 months ago. That’s when Teresa, mom to Sally and Levi, and mother to high propagandize swain Jeff, perceived a depot diagnosis.
“I have stage-four breast cancer that has metastasized to a bones. The biggest thing is my spine . . . there is during slightest one lesion in each vertebrae,” she said.
Chemo was devastating. She has her hair behind now, that during slightest creates her look healthy. But cancer is always a partial of their lives.
“It’s always there. And we know it’s always on a kids’ minds. It’s always on Jeff’s mind,” she said. “But it never goes away. It’s like a large elephant in a room. But during slightest we speak about it.”
Teresa’s doctor, Vanderbilt Medical Center oncologist Vandana Abramson understands that families like a Curtises face some-more than only medical problems.
“The hardest partial of all of it is that they have to be scheming for life but one primogenitor in a future,” she said. “So there’s a lot going on with these families. A lot that’s outward a area of what many normal families have to understanding with. There’s a lot of stress for a whole family.”
So along with a hypnotic and hydrocodone, Dr. Abramson called for something we can’t find in any pharmacy.
“I prescribed this outing for Teresa since we suspicion she and her family indispensable a possibility to get away. Needed a possibility to be together – not consider about her cancer diagnosis, not consider about anything else. we consider they indispensable something special.”
Which is where a Jack Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation comes in.
“We call it a time out from cancer, since that’s accurately what it is,” pronounced Jon Albert, a foundation’s founder.
“A time away, a distraction?” pronounced Doane.
“And an event to take live. To live life.”
Albert’s non-profit raises income to send families like a Curtises on an all-expense-paid vacation.
Source: Health Medicine Network