Cancer survivor Sandra Jackson – LOVE by your side
October 1, 2010 by Las Vegas Black Image Magazine
Filed under Highlights
When a life-or-death crisis struck Sandra Jackson of Courage Unlimited — she co-founded the Las Vegas-based women’s health support and education organization — it made all the difference in the world to have the love of her life standing by her side.
Jackson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 — earth-shattering news that was just the beginning of a health nightmare. Fortunately for her, Paul Brown — a member of Las Vegas’ Soul Brothers Motorcycle Club — was there to hold her hand through a difficult and frightening experience.
“In the traditional sense, we are not married. But we have been together for 22 years,” Jackson said. “I met him in New York after a very difficult divorce, and our interest in riding motorcycles was the link that tied us together.
“Paul was in the doctor’s office with me when I first received word that I had breast cancer, and my first reaction to him, while we were riding in the car going home, was ‘Why don’t you leave now?’ I told him I wanted us to break up … because I knew that I needed someone to help me through the situation. I did not want him to wait around during my chemo treatments and then tell me he couldn’t handle it and leave me when I really needed him. I remember him looking at me like I had lost my mind and he said, ‘You were a pain in the … with two breasts, so one does not make a difference.’” (Laughing)
Jackson underwent a mastectomy, and she vividly remembers waking up in the hospital and opening her eyes to find Paul already there. “I could hear his words asking me over and over again, ‘Are you OK baby? Are you OK?’ He always asks me this, given any situation, and when I heard the love and care in his voice, it gave me immediate hope that all was going to be fine.”
That loving bedside manner has helped Jackson through a series of health crises.
“I couldn’t look at myself, and on the third day (after returning home from the hospital), Paul said, ‘OK, we have to change your bandages.’ And then I knew once he saw what was under my bandages, he would be disgusted and leave me, and this way I could tell him it was OK if he left,” Jackson said. “And when he removed my bandages, he immediately put his hands on my chest where my left breast had been removed, and said, ‘You are beautiful.’
“I tell people every day who don’t understand my positive attitude — after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 1996, then again being diagnosed with cancer in 1997 behind my chest wall, and recently suffering from two strokes — that it makes me smile to know that I still have somebody by my side telling me I am a beautiful person.”
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