Witherspoon leans on support of family, community
Staff and students rallied around Owens Middle School employees at the pink-out pep rally.
As October marks National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the pep rally honored breast cancer survivor employees at Owens Middle School, Retha Barnhisel and Mary Gelski, and one warrior still in the fight, Jana Edwards Witherspoon.
“For the past 10 months, Jana has lived with Stage 4 metastatic cancer,” her husband, Bert Witherspoon, read aloud. “Some days she feels good; other days, simply getting through the day takes more strength than most of you will ever know. Yet she continues to give so much of herself; she loves these kids.”
Jana was pleasantly surprised when her family and service dog showed up at the pep rally, and when her husband read a letter from Jana's best friend, Jana Jones, and his own.
“Today's school is showing you what I hope you always know: your fight is our fight, Jana,” Bert read. “We seek you, we support you, and we, especially me, love you. God bless you.”
During the pep rally, Christopher Butler led several dance numbers.
He chose each song with the purpose of encouraging Jana to “keep fighting and staying strong.”
For Jana, Jan. 3 should have been another routine mammogram check.
It was something she stayed preemptive on given her extensive family history with cancer.
“Usually I hear back from them within like 48 hours that everything's OK,” Jana said. “And it had been two or three days. So I told my husband, ‘...I feel like something's wrong because it's been five or six days.’” That afternoon, she was told they had found a mass, and what followed was more testing and lots of waiting.
“It's just one thing after another of having to wait when I basically already knew,” Jana said.
She had tested positive for invasive ductal carcinoma, Stage 2.
“If I wouldn't have gotten that mammogram, I don't know what would have happened,” Jana said. “I don't know how long I would have waited and how long I would have gone with this cancer in my body without knowing it.” As bad as January was, March brought more rain; Jana learned that the cancer had spread to her bones.
A family of faith, they quickly jumped into action. Her husband called their church, and they met with both the prayer team and the pastor.
“I actually called my mom, who is a Stage 4 lymphoma survivor for 16 years,” Jana said, and her mom recommended a doctor.
Her cancer is estrogendriven; on top of that, she has a mutation that causes the cancer to grow at a faster rate than normal.
She started a trial that focuses on stopping the mutation, and so far the results are positive.
“I had a scan done at the end of June, and it showed everything was shrinking,” Jana said. “And then I had a scan done in August, and it showed everything was stable.”
Since she started taking her medication, the months of pain she was experiencing throughout her body lessened, and for the first time in a while she thought, “God, I feel so good. I'm so thankful.” Through it all, Jana has been sharing her journey online, what she’s learned, and, like the teacher she is, she’s also educating others and encouraging women to get a mammogram.
“I just want people to see Jesus through me,” Jana said. “So I've said several times, a lot of posts, if you don't have a relationship with the Lord, reach out to me, I’m able to say, ‘You've got every right to be bitter. You've got every right to question and be mad.' And trust me, … I go, every few days wondering why, asking why, but I also know that the Lord provides and he's going to be there with us through all this. And I don't know what I would do if I didn't have that relationship with him.”
However, navigating her own health while still trying to teach wasn't easy.
The district has a program that lets employees donate accrued leave to the sick leave pool for employees with severe or life-threatening conditions.
Within hours of the district- wide email alerting employees that they could donate to her sick bank, she hit the 30-day maximum.
“I was lucky to get that taken care of, so I didn't have to worry about missing a paycheck or any of the financial issues with that,” Jana said.
After she received her Stage 4 diagnosis, her friends/coworkers sought to get the sick pool days extended.
Then, at the Aubrey ISD school board meeting on April 15, the board approved increasing the sick leave pool from 30 to a maximum of 60 days for Catastrophic Sick Leave for employees.
She received an additional 30 days to prioritize her health and officially returned to work this August.
She thanked her community, the Aubrey district, McNabb and Owens, the ESL department and her coworkers/ friends.
“I believe that the Lord has placed people in our lives for a reason,” Jana said. “And I believe that I'm feeling the way that I feel now because of those people. And mostly because of the Lord.”
