Not yet
Young mother fights back
By Anne Marie Kyzer Staff Writer

Demetria Washington

No one plans to die when they're 32.

Demetria Washington didn't. So the wife and mother couldn't believe it when doctors gravely told her of the cancer that was attacking her liver.

Six months ago, the former Burke County High School cheerleader was the picture of health. Her husband, SSG Michael Washington, had just returned safe and sound from a tour in Iraq with the National Guard. He was back at work as a security officer at Plant Vogtle, and Demetria was just a couple of months away from completing her bachelor's degree in technical management.

They both kept busy with the job of raising their four young children, between the ages of 6 and 13.

Then, Demetria started to itch. Every inch of her body became irritated. Her nose, her ears, her scalp, even the bottom of her feet itched tortuously 24 hours a day.

"It felt like my blood was poisoned," Demetria remembers as she runs her hand down her arm and shudders with the thought.

After more than a few desperate trips to different doctors, Demetria made an emergency stop at Waynesboro physician Dr. Joe Jackson's office one day. He was immediately disturbed by her condition and referred her to a specialist.

Though he refuses to take credit, Demetria thanks Dr. Jackson's quick thinking and swift action for her survival.

"Aside from God, Dr. Joe saved my life," she says. "He truly cared. He didn't just pre- scribe something and brush it off."

A CT scan would soon reveal the large shadow on her liver.

Two allergy experts and one oncologist later, an Emory surgeon diagnosed Demetria with liver cancer and told her and Michael they would operate immediately.

Two weeks after her dia gnosis, Demetria was lying on an operating table as surgeons prepared to remove a tennis ball sized tumor from the left side of her liver. Her family prayed with her before she slipped into unconsciousness.

A couple of hours into the surgery, doctors broke the news to her family that she might not make it.

But the team of surgeons, some of the nation's best, poured over her open abdomen for 11 hours and eventually extracted the noxious growth from her liver.

She had been ripped from her breast to below her navel. For days, she cried out in pain with every move.

The biohazard waste bin beside her bed overflowed with needles and tubes from the countless injections and IVs that followed.

But Demetria was determined to heal, and Dr. Jackson said her attitude helped her overcome the odds.

"If you stay positive like she did, your chances of recovery are a whole lot better," he said later.

Nothing has been the same since her diagnosis.

With the day of her last chemo treatment inching closer and a clean CT scan just last week, Demetria feels like a different person.

Her body has coped well with the trauma over the past few months and she is feeling better. She doesn't itch anymore and her incision is healing nicely.

But even more, it's her outlook on life that's evolved so dramatically.

Demetria said she knows now where her real strength lies.

"This experience showed me who was in control," she says. "It made me appreciate life. It made me open up my Bible."

She's ringing in the New Year with her church, where she says they'll "celebrate not only for a new year but for life itself."

She's closer than ever to those who stuck by her during treatment.

"God showed me who I could count on in my darkest hour," she says, listing off family members, teachers, principals and neighbors who reached out to her.

Now, Demetria's determined to help others who may be headed down the same rocky road.

Freshly signed up for a committee with the American Cancer Society, she plans to make others more aware of possible signs of cancer.

She wants others to have the same fighting chance she was given.

"I used to be so vain," Demetria says.

She pulls the neck of her button up blouse to the side and touches her fingers to the port on her chest where chemicals are injected to fight the cancer. Two small scars loom just above.

"These marks show me that I'm alive," she says nodding. "They are nothing compared to life."