Judy Rosen of Estes Park may be small, but she`s mighty like an oak — or perhaps a ponderosa. Five years ago, she followed doctor`s orders and had preventive mastectomies to reduce her high risk of breast cancer. She has survived the successive deaths of three sisters from breast cancer, her mother from colon cancer and faces her own mortality, currently in Stage IV of ovarian cancer. She was in remission from the latter until recently, when her tumor markers started rising. She more than maintains, though, working full-time as an interpretive ranger with the National Park Service (NPS) — she returned from a work trip to Tanzania this winter — and caring for her two, teen-aged children, along with her ex-husband.

“I have loved ones on both sides,” she said, smiling through tears, in a recent interview with the Trail-Gazette. “I`m good either way, with what happens. Either way, I`ll be cared for.”

When she found herself getting unexpectedly weepy, she said it was not because she was sad for herself, but because she missed being able to talk to her sisters about it. Now, her male relatives fill in, both brothers and brothers-in-law.

Then, there are the myriad of friends in the Estes Park community and her colleagues in the NPS.

“This community has helped me through,” she said. “I was healed by love. It`s been unbelievable to me. I`m totally overwhelmed. There are a lot of angels out there every day. On both sides. That`s important to know.”

Asked whether she will shave her head for the upcoming St. Baldrick`s Day event for children`s cancer research March 13 at Crags Lodge (see the feature in today`s Estes Inside & Out section), she said that she would support the event, but not shave her head.

“It took too long to grow this hair out,” she said.

Rosen`s last chemo treatment was on March1, 2010.

“It`s taken one year to get to this stage of hair,” she said, patting her short, curly locks.

Now she`s in “a whole new ball game. It`s a little journey.”

Two weeks after she finished chemo a year ago, she had surgery “to put my intestine back in.” Her bowel was perforated during surgery to debulk the tumors involved in ovarian cancer and she wound up in the ICU.

“You go into complete sepsis when your colon erupts,” she said. “My recovery (from the cancer surgery) would`ve been quicker and easier, otherwise.”

After a month, she was released to constant home health care and “an amazing family in this community.”

Her friends and colleagues from the park service were there for her, round the clock. “They nurtured me back to health,” she said. “I was healed by love alone. They walked me. Going for a walk in nature and being with my close friends were my top priorities. There`s a lot of gratitude.”

Rosen doesn`t want to be a statistic and tries not to look at statistics.

“Even now, I just take a step at a time,” she said. “Really, what else can I do?”

Slowing her down is a challenge, but the body has a wisdom of its own, she said. Her oncologist told her to take a year off work after the tumor debulking last year. Within four to five months, she was back to work full-time and travelling for work.

“The most amazing thing is I went to Africa,” she said. “It was on the date that my oncologist said I could go back to work, Nov. 1.”

This trip (on a previous trip, she climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro, in memory of her sisters, to raise money for cancer research) released creativity and energy.

“We have a lot of creative blocks, because we`re immersed in all the activities we do to meet the day,” she said. “….(Cancer) is a wake-up call to live fully. You can`t put off joy, postpone it. You can`t become a victim of being so busy. Learn it now. Live it now.

“Always take time for people. They`re so much more important than anything — work, a perfectly cooked dinner, whatever. Those people are going to see you though. Make time for your friends, your children, those people you love,” Rosen said. “You have to honor yourself.”

She`s an avid reader, an author of children`s books and she would like to write a book about her life.

“If my sisters and parents want it to happen, it will,” she said. “If I can share anything that might resonate with people on having this challenge — I don`t have any special insights, but I think it can be lonely for people who have experienced great loss and who have to navigate difficult choices. I`ve always appreciated when someone`s given voice to some of my own thoughts and fears.”

Rosen observed that when one of her sisters was very far along in her illness, her mother suddenly contracted colon cancer and died within six months. Her mother`s husband died a month later.

“We`ve been through a lot,” Rosen said.

Two days before discovering she had ovarian cancer, she had returned from more than two weeks of running the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon with a group of friends.

“Rarely had I felt stronger,” she said. “I was paddling every day.”

She remarked that she felt a little bloated. By the end of the trip, she felt her life vest getting tighter and tighter.

“I knew enough to go to the doctor (when I got back),” she said. “They did X-rays and suggested scans.”

Within days, they called her in.

“On the way over, I knew,” she said. “Sure enough, they showed me the results and I was loaded with tumors.”

That was a Friday night; on the following Tuesday, she was in surgery, during which her bowel was perforated.

“I lost close to 20 pounds,” she said. “I was in a whole lot of pain for about a month.”

Amazingly, she said, she`s never felt “Oh, why is this happening to me?” Rather, it`s, “Things happen, make the most of it,” she said.

Finding out her diagnoses stopped her dwelling on “myriads of things that are not important. There are gifts in everything, love shown in generosity. What seemed to snap me out of grief for my family was my own diagnosis. I didn`t have time any more to sit around and grieve and not make the most of every minute. I felt like I got to fight back for my life.”

<a href="http://www.eptrail.com/ci_17584502tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://www.eptrail.com/ci_17584502Fri, 11 Mar 2011 01:34:05 GMT 00:00″>Judy Rosen feels blessed by her angels

Tags: Mt. Kilimanjaro, ovarian cancer, suddenly contracted colon cancer, national park service, http://www.eptrail.com/ci 17584502tag, ball game, smiling through tears

1,893 Responses to “Judy Rosen feels blessed by her angels”