Benefit helps 25-year-old postal worker
Oxford pushes her son Arrol, 20 months, on a swing.
Sarah Oxford helps her son Atreyu Bowman, 3, climb up a playground set in a park at Empire Estates west of Kalispell on Wednesday afternoon. Oxford, 25, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a rare cancer for someone her age this past December. Her first thoughts were of her children Atreyu and Arrol. "Having young children, you have all these emotions," she said. "Am I going to be able to watch them grow up?".
At 24, Kalispell postal worker Sarah Oxford never dreamed that her vague symptoms of aches, fatigue, breathlessness and insomnia added up to acute myeloid leukemia.
“They think I probably had it for about 18 months before I was diagnosed,” she said. “I found out on my mother’s birthday, Dec. 23.”
It was the busy holiday season when a surge of mail hits all post offices. Oxford had worked 13 straight days of 12-hour night shifts up to the Saturday when she went to the doctor.
The mother of boys Atreyu, 3, and Arrol, 20 months, she knew she was run down since she had come down with every virus that hit the valley in the last year. But her last week before diagnosis was particularly troubling with long-lasting nose bleeds.
“She could only walk a couple of steps and she would have to stop to get her breath,” Andrew Bowman, her husband, said. “It was crazy scary.”
Her first tests at a local clinic on Dec. 18 showed she had just a quarter of the blood of a normal person. Additional lab work including bone marrow tests was performed to discern the reason for the blood loss that accounted for her severe fatigue.
“The doctor was amazed that I was even moving,” Oxford said.
Her mother was with her when she got the news two days before Christmas that she had acute myeloid leukemia, a rare cancer for someone her age. The news penetrated slowly.
“I did good for a couple of minutes, then I broke down crying,” she said. “I was glad my mother was with me.”
Her first thoughts were of her small children. She asked if it was hereditary.
She was relieved when her doctors said no.
“Having young children, you have all these emotions,” she said. “Am I going to be able to watch them grow up?”
Oxford had little time to think about the financial ramifications as the only bread winner for the children since her husband, a cement worker, hasn’t worked in two years. In two days, Oxford was in Seattle for treatments at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and inpatient care at the University of Washington Medical Center.
Under leukemia experts Dr. Elihu Estey and Dr. Jack Lionberger, she began a month of chemotherapy before coming home for about a week.
“I’m in a study where they’re testing a new type of chemo,” she said. “It’s a lot harsher.”
Oxford, long an advocate of helping medical research, agreed to participate in three test groups during her more than three months of treatment. Along with the new chemo, Oxford gave additional bone marrow for research as well as joined an “early release” test, leaving the hospital earlier than the standard protocol.
“If they can learn something from your experience, why not do it? You might as well help someone else,” she asked. “My doctor made me feel real comfortable with it.”
Oxford was really sick in spite of all the anti-nausea medicine. Her hair fell out in the first month.
“I miss it but I wasn’t broken up about losing it,” she said. “It’s just hair.”
She has to live with uncertainty, waiting for the results of each bone marrow test. When it shows no cancer, she is declared in remission.
Oxford, now 25, endures long separations from the children and pays a hefty $90 a day charge not covered by insurance to stay at a special facility with a shuttle to the medical facilities. She also has travel expenses and long ago exhausted her sick and annual leave.
Oxford has no idea when she can go back to work at the post office where her father and mother, Jefferson and Michelle Oxford, also work. She said her other co-workers have been more than understanding.
Fellow worker Veronnica Perry organized a chili feed and benefit auction that begins at 5 p.m. Saturday, March 19, at the Eagles in Kalispell.
“It’s $5 for a bowl of chili,” Perry said.
The live auction begins at 6 p.m. with a wide variety of merchandise from art prints and paintings to ceramic sculptures to gift certificates and gift baskets.
“We have a gum ball vending machine and we have end tables,” Perry said. “Plus we’ll have a 50/50 raffle.”
Other donations will serve as prizes for low-dollar raffles.
Perry said she was really worried about having enough merchandise up until two weeks ago. Businesses began contributing and people started showing up at the post office with anonymous donations.
“It’s really awesome how people have come through,” she said. “We have a lot of amazing donations.”
Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com .