Local couple battles disease together with help from United Way gifts
KATHY and BUD WATKINS
“In sickness and in health.” That line was in the wedding vows Bud and Kathy Watkins professed to one another 31 years ago.
Never could the rural Bellefontaine couple have envisioned just how prophetic it would be. After living a healthy first quarter-century together, both Bud and Kathy were stricken with violent forms of cancer four years ago. It’s affected their lifestyle and depleted their savings. Through it all, the couple maintains an incredible positive attitude and devotion to one another.
“We make all kinds of jokes about it,” said Kathy with a resigned smile. “We put the ‘can’ in cancer. And the family ‘that cancers together’ stays together.”
The reality is no laughing matter. Kathy, owner of the awardwinning Razz M Tazz Dance Studio, started with a case of whooping cough around Christmas four years ago that landed her in the hospital. It was there where doctors discovered she had ovarian cancer and removed a watermelon-sized mast. Since then, she’s been plagued with issues from a wound vac, endless rounds of chemotherapy, and multiple side effects. Almost simultaneous to Kathy’s diagnosis, Bud started getting scratchy rashes and blotches on his arms and legs that he says felt like a million bee stings.
“I used every hand cream, every lotion,” he said. But no relief. On the same day a determined Kathy had rehabbed enough to walk in the 2015 Logan County Relay for Life, Bud found out he has a rare condition known as CTCL T-cell lymphoma.
“I finally got better, and he got way worse,” said Kathy. “He could hardly walk. So as soon as I was well, then I was the caregiver. Then turn around and in 2017, I’m feeling the best I’ve been in a long time and I go in for a checkup and my numbers are back up. I have cancer again. So here we go again.”
Read complete story in Friday’s Examiner.
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