This article is in our local paper today. Hilda is a
57-year survivor!! She even had a recurrance in 1992. When I was born in 1953, her family lived on our block. I went to grade school and high school with all three of her children. Hilda was sweet enough to come with another "old neighbor" to my Mom's funeral in 2005 -- an hour's drive away -- when she was 91. In all these years, I never knew she had breast cancer. She is the definition of Hope and Survival and Joy ... and incredibly wonderful Quality of Life!
Survivor Overcame Cancer Twice
July 15, 2009
Hilda Poppe relaxes at her apartment in Sherburn. The 95-year-old great grandmother has survived two bouts with cancer, the first coming in 1952.
SHERBURN - You hear about 5-year cancer survivors, 10-year survivors, even 20-year survivors. One 95-year-old great grandmother in Sherburn, though, has survived 57 years since her bout with breast cancer, and defeated another round 40 years later.
It was 1952, and Hilda Poppe, a hairdresser and busy mother of two little girls, was expecting her third child. She was about five months along in her pregnancy when she discovered a lump in her breast. Being 1952, women weren't aware of breast cancer like they are now, but Hilda had learned from her sister-in-law that it could be a sign of something bad.
They waited until the baby, Gerald, was born, and then took action. Her doctor did a biopsy and found it was cancer. She had a mastectomy in Trimont, then had 24 X-ray treatments in the course of one month in Mankato, while her mother-in-law took care of the baby and her nieces helped care for her small daughters, Marilyn and Eileen.
"Many prayers were going up," said Hilda, still sharp, neatly dressed and coiffured, and living on her own in an apartment in Sherburn.
She's a sweet, modest woman, who was worried people would think she was making too much of herself by agreeing to do this interview, and who frequently said, "Don't put that in."
Survival rates for breast cancer patients in the 1950s were lower than they are today, and treatments were less sophisticated. Cancer was, for many people, a death sentence.
At the time, she thought, "It's all in the Lord's hands. I just wonder how it'll turn out," she said. Back then, they didn't do therapy after surgery, and Hilda's arm was slack for about a month - not easy for someone with three small children who did hair for a living.
She recovered, and many years went by - Hilda raised her children, ran her business (she remembers when she charged $10.50 for a permanent) and went about her life.
In the intervening years, she had other surgeries, and cancer took a toll on her family. In 1998, she lost her husband Clarence, who had been a smoker, to lung cancer. She's also lost two brothers to the disease - Alfred to brain cancer, Leo to cancer of the esophagus, and another brother, Martin, suffered colon cancer but didn't die from it.
In 1992, 40 years after breast cancer, Hilda went to Rochester for a bladder repair. She had come back home where her doctor called and said, "How come you went back home? You come back. We found something." She had developed cancer in the other breast and in her uterus.
"They took it all," she said, followed by radiation treatments. When she was ready to go home, her daughter Marilyn Poppe and her pastor came to visit her in the hospital, and she was dealt a different kind of blow. She learned her grandson had been killed in a farm accident.
"People couldn't figure out how a body could take all that," she said.
"She got out of the hospital Thursday and went to the funeral Friday," said Marilyn. "We made it through; we pulled each other through.
"I think 99 percent of her strength comes from her Christian belief, and from her German heritage - they're a strong breed."
"She's gone through a lot," said her daughter Eileen Morrow. "And through it all she's been marvelous. She's very caring, very religious. Just a really sweet lady."
Hilda said she handles life's difficulties with her strong faith and with the support of her family.
"I'm so happy with my family," she said. "They've been wonderful, wonderful. I thank God every day for that."
Marilyn said she is not just a mother to her own three children, but has nieces and nephews who call her Mom too.
"She's the nicest lady I ever knew," said Ronnie Studer, who has been friends with Hilda since they became next-door neighbors in 1955. "She always wants to do something for someone else."
The two of them are still neighbors - now in the same apartment building. They've helped each other through the years, and lately Ronnie has helped Hilda by driving her to her appointments.
"She's happy-go-lucky," Ronnie said. "She's full of fun."
All three of her children check in with her regularly to make sure she's OK. Daughter Eileen lives on a farm nearby and calls every day. Marilyn, a travel agent, lives in Rochester and helped care for her she was in the hospital getting radiation in 1992. And Gerald, who works for a TV station in Florida, calls regularly. She wears an alert necklace around her neck to call for help if she needs it.
Since 1992, there has been no sign of cancer, but she admits that once in awhile, if she doesn't feel quite right, she thinks, "Is it that? Is it that?" It hasn't been. Since then, it's been, "so far, so good," she said.
But then she reminds herself, her humor still intact, "There's nothing left to check. They cut everything out."
)
Threaded Mode