ROCKPORT — Sherry Guarneri has been through a rough patch for the last seven months, from first suffering a herniated cervical disk by lifting a patient in the emergency room at Pen Bay Medical Center, to the subsequent discovery that she also had a brain tumor. Not to mention she was then diagnosed with lung cancer.

Yet, in September, her ear-to-ear grin pushed all those days of misery and anxiety out the window, as she took a deep breath and committed to a long-listed mission: To establish local support groups for people with lung and brain cancers, advocate for research, continue writing her memoirs, and advocate for the Red Cross blood drives, as well as bone marrow transfusions.

Most of all, she wants to help others navigate the often dark path that cancer forces patients and their families to walk when those diagnoses sock them in the gut. On Sept. 21, the Rockland Fire Department is hosting a fundraiser at the American Legion Hall in Rockland to help Sherry and her husband, David, cope with ongoing costs they have incurred over the months of treatment. The evening begins at 5 p.m. and includes a silent auction (see poster).

Sherry Guarneri wrote about her experience in depth. Read it in the attached PDF.

Guarneri is, at age 43, a giver by nature. She graduated at the top of her certified nursing assistant class in Augusta and now works as a technician in the hospital's ER, loving every minute of it. Because she does well handling the tougher cases — drug abusers, patients with Alzheimer’s disease, and those who are belligerent — she didn't think twice about helping a large man who arrived at the hospital last January, messed up and uncooperative.

"I had always been accommodating to difficult and mentally ill patients," she said, casting back in her memory to that January night. "The guy was swearing, he was unkempt, and had long fingernails. He asked for the remote, to turn down the lights and to adjust him higher on the pillows."

As she went behind him and attempted to haul the man higher up on the pillows, Guarneri felt a strong pain under her shoulder. She looked down at the man and saw he had no feet. Her back had sustained the entire effort of the lift; still, she continued to work the shift.

"It was embarrassing to me that I hurt my back," she said. "It is the first thing they always say in certified nursing school – 'don't hurt your back. Safeguard your back for your career."

For the next 10 days it hurt, so she opened up the phone book and called a chiropractor. That same day, she underwent an MRI to detect whether she had a pinched nerve, and suddenly, she was thrust into the role of a cancer patient: The MRI had discovered an unrelated tumor in her brain, as well as a herniated cervical disk. After a second brain MRI with contrast, the tumor in her brain was considered highly suspicious for cancer.

As she sat absorbing that news, she phoned her husband, David, a house painter who happened to be working at a nearby home.

"Houston, we have a problem," she told him. He put down his brush and joined her with the doctor, both of them in shock. She had Joe with her, her 1-year-old baby. That doctor, a woman, was cold and told Guarneri she needed to pursue a neurologist in Portland. She handed her a paper with some numbers on it and left the room.

"How uncompassionate can you be?" asked Guarneri, now reflecting on that day, a day when even the smallest details, such as the doctor's impassive face and her striped socks, all return in sharp relief. She laughed, "I don't know, maybe Joe messed up the papers on her desk or something."

The next night, her new neurologist, Robert Stein, called her to see how she was coping.

"He was so lovely," she said.

A week later, she was back for a second MRI; after that, more tests, including the diagnosis that the cancer was also in her lungs.

Two weeks later, on Feb. 8, she was in Portland at Maine Medical Center, undergoing a craniotomy.

"Will they take a needle and aspirate it?" she had asked the doctor with the striped socks.

"No," she told her. They were going to cut a part of her skull away at the cerebellum, just above where her spine connects with her head, and take out the tumor, which by then had grown to the size of a small one-inch grape. Then, they would insert a titanium plate with screws, which will remain with her the rest of her life.

Ultimately, she learned she had a slow-growing adenocarcinoma, a form of cancer that tends to afflict women under 45. The doctors figured the cancer started in her lung and then traveled to her brain via her bloodstream.

At one point in her journey, Guarneri was told she could expect to live five more years. That spurred her and David to get a second opinion, this time at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where the Dana Farber Cancer Institute kicked into high gear for her. She underwent a mediastinoscopy and bronchoscopy in the Waterville Hospital, the results of which indicated cancer was not hiding behind her sternum. On March 25, Dr. Scott Swanson at Brigham's conducted a lobectomy on her right lung upper lobe, televised so that medical students could see how he used a camera at the end of an instrument to go into her lung, capture the tumor with a bag and pull it back out through an incision hole.

"We're looking to cure it, not treat it," she was told.

As she lay there on the operating table, she envisioned her father, who died when he was 34 in a car accident, holding her left hand. Holding her right hand was her mother-in-law, Susan, who died at age 55 from Parkinson's disease. A spiritual person, she had Jesus holding her head. All of them were helping her extinguish the cancer.

Radiation and chemotherapy

While the diagnosis of cancer takes one's breath away, the treatment, the driving to and from radiation labs, the infusions of chemicals into an increasingly embattled immune system, the pain and nausea, and the nervousness about results for ongoing tests are all the endurance ordeal that patients and families face for months, if not years.

In Sherry's case, she traveled daily to Augusta for radiation to her head, each day slipping on that macabre protective mask that cancer patients who are forced to wear know well. Then, it was time for four months of intensive chemotherapy, a combined dose of Navelbine and Cisplatin, as well as shots of Neupogin due to neutropenia, the destruction of bacteria-finding white blood cells.

She had three blood transfusions, and because she has the rare Type O blood, she was acutely aware of the need for blood donation drives.

For four days following each chemo treatment, she felt awful, exhausted and had no appetite for food. She lost her taste and just quietly lay on her bed, playing with Joe, who helped to keep her mind off the misery.

"After brain surgery, David and I switched roles," she said. "Wait," she laughed. "That came out really wrong."

David became Mr. Mom, and told her: "My job is this — everything. Your job is to get better."

He took time off of work, with the compassion of his employer, Peter Berke of North Atlantic Painting. Sherry's mother and friends paid for the daycare for Joe.

"I think I was the youngest patient at chemotherapy," said Sherry. "That was when I realized there were no support groups for lung cancer."

"All these people die [from lung cancer] more than any other cancer," she said.

Through the months of treatment, she rode the high waves of anxiety and discomfort, suffered the panic attacks, lost 25 pounds, took Ativan to sleep and O&P for nausea, lost her voice, possibly from as the result of the bronchial tube, and all the indignities of being very sick.

And the entire time, she continued to be a mother, a mother to her baby, to her teenage daughter in high school, to her son, who is serving with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. They all are coping in their own ways.

"I think they are afraid I am going to die," said Sherry. "But I am not."

Moving on

In early September, Sherry had finished her last chemotherapy treatment and the tests had come back clean. She carried a beautiful smile wherever she went.

"I have learned to treat every day as your last day," she said. "I smell the roses. I hear the scrunch of a caterpillar as it scrunches across the leaf. The little things don't bother me anymore. I'm here. I am alive."

She grinned at her husband, who sat with her at the Market Basket in Rockport, customers coming and going at the deli counter behind them.

"I'm the worrier, now," laughed David. "I am going to worry until everything is fine."

For the cause, he went to Rockland and got a large tattoo on his arm, denoting Jeremiah 30:17: "For I will restore health onto thee and I will heal thee of all thy wounds, sayith the Lord."

"I was really controlling before," said Sherry. "Now I want to start a group for anyone who has cancer - not limited to one cancer and specifically for a younger crowd."

She is motivated to do this for two major reasons: No one should be told they have lung cancer on a Friday afternoon in an office by a cold doctor. And no one should be told they have a limited life span.

"I don't want someone telling me when I am going to die," she said, spitting tacks.

"I grew up Catholic in New Haven," she said. "I was always spiritual, and we were always praying. I believe in divine interventions, and I am the person who can do something about this."

While she was undergoing treatment, she received three blessings from priests, the anointment of the sick.

"I always think, 'I am not alone,'" she said. "I pray."

She remembers Pen Bay radiologist Charles Crans with affection and respect.

"He's the one who found the cancer," she said. "He said come sit down next to me and review the slides. One by one, we went through them methodically until the slide with the cancer appeared."

She smiled wryly, "It was the most beautiful thing. It was an image of a white star. 'That's your problem right there, Dr. Crans said.'"

Despite the unnamed doctor with the striped socks, and the other oncologist who told her she had but five years to live, the Guaneris have nothing but gratitude for the hospital and a broader community that came to their aid.

"People just came out of the woodwork," said Sherry. "Doctors and nurses, technicians and even strangers. The support was unbelievable."

"I'm surprised by how many people know her," said David. "She gives and gets hugs. Every time we turned around someone was giving us something.

They gave gas cards, cards for diapers, a few dollars here and there, and they organized a supper train."

"You saved us, you saved our livelihood," said Sherry. "It makes us believe that there are good people."

"If we have to go to New York, we are going to New York," said David. "If we have to pay them 50 bucks a month for 300 years, we'll do that."

And if she has to go back for more surgery, you can bet she'll take a cake to whomever is in the operating room. It's something she just does.

"I appreciate what I have a lot more," she said.

"I appreciate her a lot more," said David.

To reach Sherry: 542-1302

Editorial Director Lynda Clancy can be reached at lyndaclancy@penbaypilot.com; 706-6657.