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A hand up Coping with cancer can be tough, but you don’t have to face it alone. STORY: ROXANNE BROWN
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ancer not only indiscriminately attacks your body, but every other part of your life, which is where organizations like the Greater Clermont Cancer Foundation (GCCF) prove beneficial. Just ask Clermont’s Oscar Martinez, 62, whose life was turned upside down a couple of years ago by a stage 3 colon cancer diagnosis following a visit to the hospital because he “just wasn’t feeling good.” “I tried to be as optimistic as possible through it all, but cancer, it’s tough,” Oscar says, adding that it would have been an even tougher journey to endure without help from nurses and doctors, his friends, family, and people from the GCCF he met along the way. At the hospital ER in October 2018, Oscar found out he was septic, and later, that he had cancer. A few days after that, he underwent a necessary surgery. For two years, he has had chemotherapy treatments, and most recently, a colostomy reversal. Today he is cancer free. Oscar kept working through his ordeal, but he struggled financially. He credits the GCCF for helping him hang onto some very important things – his home of 28 years he’d nearly paid off and his sanity. “I’m on third base coming towards home now; I am blessed every day. But it was a stressful and interesting journey. You work your whole life for the things you have, and you can lose everything because cancer just takes over everything,” Oscar says, explaining that GCCF volunteers have remained in contact with him throughout his care to ensure his needs are being met. The GCCF, a non-profit foundation whose sole mission it is to support the citizens of South Lake County as they cope with emotional and financial aspects of dealing with cancer, was founded in 2004 by Phyllis Hutcheson and her husband Vic, now deceased. The couple moved to Florida because Vic’s sister had cancer. In dealing with her doctors
