Penny Cota and the Relay for Life

Jeff Green | May 31, 2012

Photo: Penny Cota ringing the bell at the cancer centre, to mark the end of her treatment.

This year the Central Frontenac Relay for Life will have an extra meaning for Penny Cota.

She has participated in the relay each time it has been held in Parham, helping out with the cooking and other activities, and she was at the relay for a while last June, but at that time her participation was limited mostly to the Luminaria lap, her favorite part of the event.

During last year’s relay Penny was in the midst of her own cancer treatments, but this year she is feeling quite a bit stronger, and is looking forward not just to the Luminaria lap but to the Survivors' lap as well, for which she is one of the organizers as well as a participant.

Penny spent most of 2011 in treatment for breast cancer.

In retrospect she realizes that the whole thing started for her back in August of 2010 when she contracted mastitis, which is rare for women who are not breastfeeding. One thing led to another, and finally in January Penny decided to take a mammogram, which led her to Hotel Dieu hospital. The mammogram led to a biopsy, but Penny still wasn’t worried, the nurses had been reassuring.

That all changed late on a Thursday afternoon. Penny was home with her son and father-in-law after working all day at the Child Centre in Sharbot Lake where she is a play group co-ordinator. The phone rang and it was the Family Health Team calling.

“They told me I had cancer, that I had an appointment with my cancer nurses at Hotel Dieu the following Tuesday, and with my surgeon that Friday. I phoned Tim [her husband] at work and said, 'It’s not good news. You’d better come home'. We took our son Will to his hockey game that night. I didn’t know what to think.”

The shock of the news led to a series of meetings, two surgeries, chemotherapy for 16 weeks between May and August, and radiation treatments in September and October.

Penny ended up taking time off from her job, partly because her doctors were afraid that during chemotherapy and radiation Penny’s immunities were low and exposure to young children was a threat to her well being, and partly because of the impact of the treatments themselves.

But she carried on, making sure Will made it to all of his hockey and baseball and soccer games, and maintaining her habitual 5 km walks whenever possible.

“The only real fight I had with Dr. Lofters, my doctor at the cancer centre, was over the Canada Day Walk in Sharbot Lake. He didn’t want me to do it, but I told him I was already walking the same distance all the time. ‘OK, as long as you just stroll,’ he said. I told him I don’t stroll, when I walk I walk,” Penny said.

When her hair was going to fall out during chemotherapy treatments, she was told she had to hurry and get fitted for a wig.

“It was summer time, it was hot; the last thing I wanted was a wig. I was sitting at the computer one evening and my hair started falling out. I told Tim it was time to shave my head, and that was that.”

Although Penny had a lot of support from family and friends, she did make use of some of the services offered by the cancer society, including the transportation service, when she was undergoing daily radiation treatments.

“I was lucky that I wasn’t that sick during treatments, and that Tim, Will and I had so much support, but even so, having support from the cancer centre and the cancer society was important,” she said.

Her treatments ended on October 15, and all the test results since then have come up clean. She will undergo mammograms and will meet regularly with her oncologist and her radiation doctor for five years to make sure the cancer does not come back.

Penny went back to work on November 15, but before that she went to an organizers' meeting for the 2012 Relay.

“I just wanted to see what it was like. I really didn’t have time to spare because of my other commitments, but I went back to the second meeting and said alright I’ll go on the committee. They asked if I was going to do food, which is what I always do, but I said I wanted to help out with the Survivors.”

When the Survivor lap starts up on June 15 at the Parham fairgrounds, Penny Cota will be rushing around making sure all the Survivors are well taken care, and then she will be joining them for the lap.

“Every dollar raised at the relay is going to make a difference for somebody, whether today or tomorrow or a few months down the road. For everyone to see me there is to see that another person has beaten cancer, and there is some power in that.”