AJ News

By T ’ Shaiya Stephenson Tstephenson@theabingtonjournal.com

Karen Arscott, 51, Waverly, will walk one half of a marathon in Providence, R.I., May 2. Walking alongside will be her husband, Jim Arscott, 54, and sister, Linda Sacco, 48, Scranton. Karen survived two battles with lung cancer after being first diagnosed in January 2006.

click image to enlarge

Linda Sacco, left, cancer survivor Karen Arscott and Jim Arscott will walk one half of a marathon in Providence, R.I.

Abington Journal/ T’Shaiya Stephenson.

Select images available for purchase in the
Times Leader Photo Store

To donate to Jim and Karen Arscott’s Team Lung Love fund, visit the Team Lung Love Web site at www.teamlunglove.kintera.org. On the left side of the page, there is an option to ‘sponsor participant.’ Click on the link. Under ‘enter participant’s name,’ the first name is Karen and the last name is Arscott. She lives in Waverly, Pa.

Jim Arscott said, “I remember the two of us looking at each other and saying ‘lung cancer’?”

Karen Arscott had never smoked cigarettes and was never exposed to secondhand smoke so it came as a shock, she said.

In 2005, she had a problem with her hand; it kept turning blue. Doctors performed an MRI and a PET scan and noticed she had a nodule in her chest but were not too alarmed. Five months after the tests, she returned for a follow-up visit to find the nodule had grown.

“It became ugly. When I saw it, I knew what it was,” she said.

Sacco said she was amazed. “She’s [Karen’s] a non-smoker. It’s not supposed to happen.”

“Initially I was scared, but we’re real spiritual,” Karen Arscott said. Rather than pray for the cancer to be gone, she said she asked God to give her the strength to battle it.

After the diagnosed of stage 1-A lung cancer in 2006, she traveled to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass. for surgery. Afterward, she did not sit in the hospital bed waiting to recover, instead she walked and sipped water to keep herself hydrated. Two days later, she was released.

Her family then accompanied her to Boston every four months for checkups.

During one routine visit , 16 months after her first surgery, she was diagnosed again with lung cancer. When her husband heard the news, he said, “The closest emotion I could think of was mourning for someone who died.” He had to remind himself that the fight wasn’t over. He left his job as an anesthesiologist to work in a surgery center to avoid being on call for work. He also was able to spend nights and weekends with his wife.

The second time around, Karen’s lung cancer was diagnosed as stage 3-A. She received chemotherapy for 12 weeks before her second surgery, and then chemotherapy and radiation treatments in Scranton for eight weeks afterward. The husband and wife did what they had to in order to keep their minds off of the fact she had cancer. They didn’t want to dwell on the fact and, according to Karen, “tried not to let it affect our future.” She added that they “lived in the present.”

They often went on walks together.

The Arscotts have completed two marathons together and will be walking, along with Sacco, for Team Lung Love at the Providence, R.I., marathon. Team Lung Love helps raise money for lung cancer research.

To prepare for the event, the Arscotts and Sacco average four to six miles per walk on weekdays and walk more on weekends.

The couple will be married for 29 years in August and have two children: Jim, 24, Jermyn, and Maureen, 22, who attends Marywood University. They also have a granddaughter, Alaina, 2.

Karen wants to tell others facing cancer to “live life in the present and enjoy it.”