Matthews, Mint Hill cancer survivors featured in annual calendar
Matthews cancer survivor Jeff Davis with his teenage daughter, Jessica, will appear in this year’s Stories of Survivorship Calendar produced by the Presbyterian Buddy Kemp Cancer Support Center to help raise cancer awareness and money to help support the center. (Photos courtesy of Presbyterian Hospital)
Nolan Hargis of Mint Hill was six months old when he was diagnosed with cancer.
Jeff Davis of Matthews was 42.
While the two are as different as can be – from their ages to the types of cancer they were affected by – they do have something in common. Both are cancer survivors and both are featured in this year’s survivor calendar offered by the Presbyterian Buddy Kemp Cancer Support Center to help raise awareness about cancer – and money to help support the center.
Each year for the past four years, staff at the center have nominated survivors who have impacted them in some way. The list is whittled down to 12 survivors and those people are featured in the Stories of Survivorship Calendar.
On each page, survivors like Nolan and Davis are pictured, along with a short summary of their journey through cancer.
Diagnosed in October 2010, Nolan was just six months old when his pediatrician referred him to a pediatric neurologist for a suspected hernia. After two weeks of tests, Nolan’s mom, Jessica, got the worst possible news. Her son had neuroblastoma – a type of cancer usually affecting young children and typically found after age 1.
Nolan Hargis of Mint Hill, a cancer survivor at just 2 years old, is all smiles with mom, Jessica, in the background. He’s also featured in this year’s calendar.
“It was unreal,” Jessica Hargis said. “We didn’t think it could ever happen to us. Once you get over the initial shock, you get really strong, you put on a brave face and you just go for it.”
That determination, along with Nolan’s happy personality and ability to make everyone at the cancer center smile, got him nominated for the calendar. When she was asked if Nolan could participate, Jessica was honored.
“This is a good way to get the information out there,” she said. After Nolan’s fight with cancer, Jessica Hargis became an advocate for the Presbyterian Blume Pediatric Hematology & Oncology Clinic and pediatric cancers. “It was really touching that they selected us, too. We are truly blessed and thankful that it was found early,” she said of her son’s cancer.
A few decades ahead of little Nolan, survivor Jeff Davis, who was diagnosed with gastric cancer in May 2011, just thought he had stomach problems.
“I was having stomach issues and I started losing weight,” he said.
Always a healthy guy, the truck driver knew something was wrong, but never suspected cancer.
“I’ve always been in the perfect health, always worked out; I didn’t even smoke,” he said. “It was just a real shock for me and my family.”
And after the diagnosis, he did something out of character.
“I got scared,” he said. “I had heard about (cancer), but when I heard cancer (for me) it was like a death sentence.”
Davis said all he had ever heard about cancer was negative, and it was only with the help from the hospital’s patient navigators and his family that he finally stood up and did what he always does – fight. “They have made me feel much better about it.”
While his tumors are still there – they’ve shrunk about 50 percent since he started treatments – Davis said his prognosis is good. He decided to do the calendar so that people could learn more about cancer.
“People that are newly diagnosed with cancer need to know more about it,” he said. “They can give you really good information.”
Want a calendar?
The Presbyterian Buddy Kemp Cancer Support Center offers its 2012 calendar for free, but accepts donations to provide emergency assistance to cancer survivors in need.
Order a calendar online at www.presbyterian.org/buddykemp or pick them up at 242 Colonial Ave. Calendars can be mailed to you. Call 704-384-5223 for more information.
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