Lola Sawyers

Below is our Dad's recognition of our mom and... Well... Have a look for yourself :-)

From Jimmy (A.K.A Dad/Paw Paw):

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize my wife as a Strong Black Woman that has been through more in the last 15 years than most people go through in a life time, someone who has given so much of herself to so many people, including myself, and ask for so little in return. Lola was planning on retiring this year from Chesterfield County School System here in Virginia and she did. However not on her terms because in April of this year Lola was once again, for the 3^rd time, informed that her cancer had returned, and this time it had moved to her lungs where it was causing fluid to accumulate causing it to be hard for her to breathe. She was sent to the hospital and while there they removed the fluid. When they did they found cancer cells in the fluid. She was admitted to the hospital and shortly there after her heart started racing uncontrollably. She was then sent to ICU for observation until they could get it under control. Well a week later she was released from the hospital, after spending her entire spring break in there. The next week we went to her oncologist, and she took her out of work for the rest of the year so she got an early retirement but all the traveling, visiting and celebration of retirement has been put on hold for visits to the doctors office and treatments of chemotherapy.

You see, back in March of 2004 Lola was diagnosed with Breast Cancer for the second time. The first time was in 1997, only two years after she had lost her mother to Breast Cancer, at which time she had a complete mastectomy of the left Breast and Tram Flap reconstruction at the same time. The second time the cancer was found in the Lymph Nodes also on the left side. After much prayer and talking with her Oncologist Lola decided to have the Stem Cell Transplant which would allow for a much better quality of life rather than going every week for chemotherapy. This procedure required for her to be out of work for at least six months. You see, Lola was a High School counselor in the public school system in Albany Ga., and she loved every one of her students as if they were her own. So that she could work from home I set up another computer at the house and had her show me what we needed to do and we worked on her students schedules for the next year from home and I would deliver them back to the School the next day. During the Stem Cell procedure Lola had to be at the hospital everyday for six to eight hours and at one point had to be admitted for eight days to have the Stem Cells replaced. Not once has she complained about anything. Now she gets through the Stem Cell and has to have radiation treatments for two months still not complaining. Almost completely done with radiation and a case of Carpal Tunnel develops, not in one hand but both. By now it’s the middle of November and she wants to go back to work by the first of the year. She had surgery on one hand the first of December and the other the middle of December. You would think that that was enough, nooo, right after her second Carpal Tunnel surgery she got a case of the Shingles all over her back. Which healed fine and she went back to work.

I am doing what I can, but all that I could do wouldn’t be enough to show her how much she is loved and appreciated by everyone whose life she has touched. She is my world and the best and most caring counselor in any of the public school systems she has worked in Texas, Georgia or Virginia, just ask any of her students or their parents. And on top of it all she has not fallen short on being a loving Wife, Mother, Grandma and friend to us all