After eight months, Terri Decker’s husband, Mark Rimmer had lost his battle with leukemia. Then, one short year later, she was diagnosed with lymphoma.

“He was diagnosed in June 2016,” Terri, who was born in Thompson Falls and grew up in Plains, explained as she sat at a small kitchen table in her Alberton apartment. It was a sunny day and the balcony view was of the Clark Fork River. Trees along the bank popped with autumn colors of red and gold as she explained the past two years of dealing with cancer, both her own and that of her husband who she had been with for over 12 years.

She’s a thin woman with a shy, easy smile who spoke about how the couple loved to hunt and gather wood. She still owns the home they had up Southside Road in Alberton.

Mark had gone into the doctor because of an abnormal heart rhythm and it was during that routine physical they found the cancer. The doctors suspected that he had it for the past two years and was immediately put into treatment. The couple spent nearly a month in Seattle waiting for Mark to get well enough for a bone marrow transplant. But the operation never took place. He wasn’t well enough and was sent home. He passed away in January 2016. They had met in Frenchtown where she bagged groceries at Broncs and he worked in construction.

It was not the first marriage for either one of them. He had a daughter, Christie Corby who lives with her husband and their four kids in Helena. She had two daughters, Sierra Berg who has two children and lives in Great Falls and Cecily Bean who is married with three children in Alberton.

“I didn’t know I had it. I just went in with a swollen gland in my neck and was diagnosed. This was in January and I started treatments immediately at the Montana Cancer Center in Missoula,” Terri said.

The cancer had attacked the lymph nodes on the left side of her neck and chest area. Lymph nodes are small, bean-shaped glands found throughout the body. They carry fluid, nutrients and waste material between the body tissues and the bloodstream and is the body’s defense system against disease.

When cancer is present in cells they grow out of control and become invasive. Causing havoc on the body’s immune system, organs, tissues and other cells. After seven treatments in Missoula, she traveled to Spokane, Washington to start the process for a stem cell transplant. For a week they removed and froze 6.8 million stem cells. The cells are then put back into the body after chemotherapy treatments.

“They warned me that it would literally feel like I was dying because it wipes out all of your white cells and everything, clear back to zero,” she said.

Chemotherapy is the use of drugs, given intravenously to kill cancer cells. But the treatments also destroys stem cells in the bone marrow that make new blood cells. After chemotherapy, the transplant of stem cells is done to replace the ones that were destroyed.

Terri shows a video on her cell phone of the blood transfusion and the white stem cells can be seen with the naked eye as they snake their way through the plastic tube.

“I felt fortunate because the chemo treatments didn’t affect me as badly as some patients,” she explained. She was tired and had a loss of appetite but she didn’t feel the nausea and overwhelming sickness that some patients encounter. “When Mark had chemo is was just horrible.”

She had tried to go back to work full-time at her job as a high school custodian in Frenchtown where she has worked for 11 years, but it proved to be too much and the treatments left her fatigued. She ended up cutting her work load back to three days a week.

“They have been so supportive through all of this,” she said of the administration and the students at the school.

Terri has no idea why she, or her husband, got cancer. Scientists don’t know the causes of lymphoma but some prominent characteristics are males who are over 60. They may have a weak immune system, have relatives with the disease, or were exposed to benzene or chemicals that kill bugs or weeds.

Symptom include swollen glands, often in the neck, armpit or groin. A cough, shortness of breath, fever, night sweats, stomach pain, fatigue, weight loss and itching according to the American Cancer Society. Terri is an ex-smoker and according to the Lymphoma Association the link between smoking and the disease is not a strong one.

In Spokane Terri was treated by Dr. Hakan Kaya at the Cancer Center Northwest. Originally from Turkey, he studied medicine at the University of Oklahoma and has been at the center since 2004. In addition to performing stem cell transplants he provides the latest treatments for myeloma. He also teaches and gives lectures to other oncologists around the country describing the newest advances in the field.

The transplant required another 21 days in the hospital, followed by rounds of radiation. The radiation was done in Missoula. Terri described that the mask they use for the treatments was a piece of soft plastic that they softened in warm water and then molded to her face. While getting the treatments, they strap her down to a table while a huge machine scans over her head and chest. The mask is used to protect her face. The process only lasts about three minutes but it left dark patches on her neck and chest much like a suntan.

She finished treatments two weeks ago and that, along with her 56th birthday, was celebrated last weekend. Organized by her daughter Cecily, Terri was surrounded by around 25 close family and friends at the town’s community center. She was given a white sheet cake decorated with a green ribbon which simply read, “Warrior”.

“I just want to have a normal life,” she said. From this point she has three more years of continued maintenance before being declared cancer free.

As for the cost, the bills are just starting to come in with one bill a shocking $185,000 and another for $76,000. Her insurance will cover most of it but what doesn’t get covered are things like travel, food and hotel expenses. According to reports the cost of stem cell transplants alone can be $350,000 to $800,000.

Through it all she said it’s important to stay positive and don’t give up, “keep going, don’t sit around and cry about it. Giving up isn’t going to do anything. Always remember that there are people out there who have it worse off than you,” she said.