Persevering through health woes

Did the stress of moving from Iowa to The Villages wreak havoc on Barbara Augustine’s health? It’s a question she has pondered since she experienced serious back-to-back health woes of asthma, a bad back, and breast cancer.

Before the new resident could find doctors, Barbara found herself in the hospital a few times with bad asthma. Fortunately, a pulmonary specialist provided the relief she needed.

“I quit my coughing,” she says. “I had been coughing for two years with asthma.”
Then came some painful backaches.

“I ended up to where I could hardly walk half a block because my back was so sore,” says Barbara, who was recommended to have back surgery. It was a success and Barbara was elated she could walk four miles without any pain.

Just when she thought she could enjoy The Villages lifestyle and make plans to learn to play golf, she discovered she was not done in making trips to the hospital.
“Two weeks before my mammogram was scheduled, I found a lump on my right breast,” Barbara says. She began the process of mammograms and biopsies. Surgery was scheduled at Moffitt Cancer Center.

“The thing that goes through your mind is, ‘Am I going to make it?’ And I’m sure that goes through any person’s mind when the word ‘cancer’ is given to them,” she says. “I was very lucky that a lumpectomy could be done, and they took two lymph nodes.”

After a trip to Iowa for her 50th class reunion, she began treatments. The surgeons at Moffitt Cancer Center referred Barbara to Florida Cancer Specialists for her chemotherapy treatments because they have a local outpatient chemotherapy infusion centers in The Villages, Lady Lake, Leesburg, and Clermont.

“Dr. Maen Hussein’s office is wonderful, and I couldn’t have found a better office to take chemo in,” Barbara says. “But when you go through chemo, you get very emotional, you have your ups and downs. I got very sick, lost the hair, and the pride of a woman goes through when she loses her hair.”

Chemotherapy was followed by 28 radiation treatments at the Sharon Morse Medical Center in The Villages, which she ended in March.

“The first few times, like everything, you don’t know what to expect,” she says, recalling she enjoyed interacting with the volunteer. “After I finished those treatments, I decided to volunteer there.”

Barbara goes every Tuesday morning for up to five hours, visiting with patients, especially women.

“Women have a little harder time than men because it’s more visible from losing hair and losing the breasts,” she says. “When I talk to them and tell them I have been through this whole thing, the first question they ask is, “How long did it take your hair to grow back?”

Barbara found it comforting to realize she was not the only person going through cancer, and she valued the support she received from her husband, Gary, and daughter, Lynn, who moved from Texas to be near her mother.

They motivated her to get out and not hibernate at home.

“You just keep pushing on,” Barbara says as advice to others going through health woes. “Life continues. Every day is special. Live your life like you’ve always lived it, because there might not be a tomorrow.”