Toiling away with two positions in two different departments at N.C. State, Mindy Sopher’s job is to help students. She’s here to make their academic lives flow smoothly. She teaches a few classes as a lecturer in communication, and she serves as an adviser.In her private life, her job has been much more complicated these last eight years. Sopher has battled cancer three times since 1999. And although she’s always worried about it coming back, Sopher loves waking up each morning.”I can’t walk like I used to, my teeth are falling apart, I’m overweight, my hair is not what it used to be, I have breathing issues — but life is wonderful,” she said.Sopher is 49, though she’ll turn 50 on April 21. She’s a native of western Pennsylvania, and she’s been at State since 1989. Sopher’s family has a history with cancer. Both of her grandmothers died of cancer — one at age 30 from breast cancer, and the other of liver cancer despite never drinking alcohol. Her father has had skin cancer and blood cancer. Her uncle has had three different types of cancer. And three years ago, Sopher’s mother died of bladder cancer.Doctors diagnosed Sopher with breast cancer on Sept. 2, 1999. On Sept. 9, 1999, she underwent surgery to remove a cancerous lump from her left breast. Over the next several years, she underwent surgery three more times: to remove a lump from her lymph nodes, to remove seven spots from behind her sternum and heart, and then last spring to remove a lump from her breast that turned out to be cancer-free.She said the battle’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. And, when asked where the battle begins, Sopher closed her eyes and slowly pointed to her head. “That’s it. And finding the spirit and the heart. That’s where the battle begins.”
The Big ‘C’
Sopher said no one ever prepares themselves for the possibility of dealing with cancer. To this day, Sopher said she always considered herself more likely to be hit by a car than to be diagnosed with cancer. But, for Sopher, it happened. “There’s a lot of crying,” she said. “You have to remember to breathe. I convinced myself I’d be able to handle it.”Sopher said other people “freaked out” more than she did.”Other people said, ‘Oh my God, Mindy’s going to die,’ and they tried to do things to make me happy. I got a lot of free trips and flowers. I had to tell them, ‘The flowers are beautiful. I love flowers, but I’m not dead yet. Save them for my funeral.'”Sopher said there was a lot of praying involved, and one particularly tough phone call to her father.”Because my dad had it, I called him and said, ‘Well, I’ve got some bad news,'” she recalled. “I couldn’t get the word out. My throat was dry, and I was shaking. And I said, ‘I’ve got cancer, but I’m going to beat it.'”Sopher said she always the “I’m going to beat it” mindset.”I can’t say there weren’t moments where I doubted myself, but I didn’t tell anybody about it,” she added. “I’d tell people I was scared. But I always kept a good front.”
Chemotherapy
Throughout all three of Sopher’s encounters with cancer, she had some type of chemotherapy. While trying to describe the experience of chemotherapy, Sopher came up with an analogy.”Think of it like Pac-Man,” she said. “It’s going through your veins eating. It’s supposed to be eating the cancer. But the Pac-Man doesn’t know whether it’s a cherry, an evil ghost or a little pellet. It just eats everything. That’s why your fingernails fall off and your hair falls out. I still can’t feel my fingertips or toes on the left side of my body.”Sopher then pointed to just below the collar bone on the right side of her body. “Here touch this,” she said. “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt me.” A little silicone and titanium nub sits just under her skin. “It’s shaped like a mushroom,” she said.”It’s tied into my veins, and the doctor puts the needle into it. The medicine goes in there. In my arms, I can feel it burn when it goes in. It’s a designed cocktail for you, depending on what you need. The doctors check it all the time, and they adjust.”
Changes
Sopher’s fight has changed her life – sometimes in dramatic ways. One particularly dramatic change involved her mother. As parents often do, Sopher’s mother wished for the chance to take away her daughter’s suffering.
Oscar Wilde once said, “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.”
In a most cruel act, Sopher’s mother had her prayer answered. “My mom kept saying, ‘I wish God would take this away from you and give it to me. I would take it in a heartbeat. You don’t deserve to be going through this stuff.’ And then my mom got cancer and she died.”Throughout a multitude of emotional and psychological changes caused by battling cancer, Sopher said none of it would have been possible without the love and affection of an English bulldog named Missy. “I had my dog there the whole time,” she said. “She was the love of my life. She just died in September. She got me through a lot of it, and I miss her every day. I had her for 13 years. I would have been dead without her.”Sopher said she can look back now and see the whole experience as a gift because it forced her to adapt. She’s become a different person.But most of all, she said she’s been able to accept her fate – whatever it may be.”I’ve got peace,” she said. “I know if I kicked today, I’d be OK. When you look death in the eye a couple of times, and just once is enough, you just say, ‘OK. If it’s my time, it’s OK.'”As for cancer, Sopher’s thoughts are quite simple. “It didn’t kill me, so it must have made me stronger,” she said.
