Cancer and heaven can wait

You won’t find Dorothy Robichaux climbing the big tree next to Upper Little Caillou School in Chauvin. The house she grew up in sat where the school is now, so she has no reason to be around there.

Neither will you find her selling cigarettes and sandwiches, sodas and beers at the little convenience store by the Chauvin Post Office, because her working days are over, and lately standing isn’t such an easy thing.

You will find her in Thibodaux, in the little pre-fab house she shares with her daughter, Carla, one of the many relatives who helps out, especially now that Dorothy – everybody calls her Miss T-Loo – has been having a rough time health-wise.

A few years ago there was a big Christmas Eve party at her home in Chauvin – not the one near the school, but a rent house – from which the aroma of gumbo was so heedy the neighbors for blocks away were jealous, and they made pretty good gumbos themselves. The nephews and nieces, grands and great-grands, sons and daughters, everybody made sure to come by because they weren’t sure if they would have this ever-smiling woman with the soft, sweet face and shining bright eyes around for another Christmas, and if that was the case they sure didn’t want to miss it.

It was the cancer, of course, which required so much work from the doctors and the nurses, but the big radiation gun did their jobs, somehow, and everyone was just going to have to eat way too much gumbo again in the coming years, which is just what they did.

“She beat it,” Carla said.

But more recently there has been another type of cancer, this time in the lungs and it has been a chore for the doctors. They are using chemicals for this.

“She is very strong for someone who is 78,” Carla said. “She’s trying it with all her might. I tell her all the time I am so proud of her.”

She keeps her good humor when she can breathe and laugh at the same time, Carla said.

But there is another wrinkle in the cancer equation.

Lisa Callahan, Dorothy’s other daughter, is also being treated for cancer.

“She is a fighter, too,” Carla said.

Mother and daughter don’t just talk about fighting this cancer together, they actually do fight it together. Often mother and daughter are at the cancer center where they receive treatment, the drugs entering their systems so that there is hope, and both women will tell you that as long as they can hang on, there will indeed be hope.

There has to be. Not just for themselves, but because of knowledge that another family member, Carla and Lisa’s brother, Bruce, was also claimed by cancer. Nobody knows why there is so much of it in these communities. But there it is.

There was the time not so long ago when Lisa started losing hair, because of the chemo, as a lot of people do, and so she just cut it all off. She shaved it.

Dorothy has chosen to cut her own hair, and as the two sit with the ports taking in the medicine they are like that together. It is because of support for each other, and for the hope that they won’t disappoint family members who help right now so much,

“I am not done what I need to do,” the 53-year-old Lisa told relatives. “I still have grandchildren I need to tend to.”

They believe her, as they believe Dorothy when she says similar things.

“It’s my family. I can’t go anywhere without my kids,” says Dorothy, explaining that this means heaven can wait.

They are both certain their God believes. Now they keep hoping they can get the cancer to understand the same thing.