Colon Cancer Survivor Becomes Activist

Grace L. Butler, PhD, has acquired dozens of honors and awards, met with President George W. Bush, and even thrown out the primary pitch as Hometown Hero at a Houston Astros game, all in reputation of her work to increase get entry to to colon screening tests in Harris County, Texas, and reduce colon cancer deaths.

But she didn’t set out to be an activist. Butler’s avocation began one Saturday in 1999 while she changed into 60 years vintage and experienced unbearable pain in her side. Two days later, she became recognized with degree III colon cancer.

According to Butler, when she received the news, she smiled earlier than she cried. She’d recognized for months that something was very wrong with her, however she just couldn’t positioned her finger on it. Once she had a diagnosis, as serious as it become, she knew what she became up against and she become determined to survive. She turned to her neighborhood American Cancer Society workplace and to the internet site cancer.Org for data and support.

“I had an insatiable appetite. I had to recognize what was going on, what become taking place to me, what become available, and the way I ought to be treated,” said Butler. “I turned into tantamount to a person who is drowning. I turned into taking place for the third time and American Cancer Society was the lifeline that provided a wealth of data approximately the sickness and its remedy.”

Called to serve

Butler’s treatment blanketed surgical treatment to do away with a tumor in her colon followed through 8 months of chemotherapy. Most of the time, she tolerated the remedy properly with few facet effects, but sooner or later of her healing stands out. She become so vulnerable and sick, it took her all day to work up the energy to get off the bed for a glass of water.

“On these days I cried out to God, ‘Lord what do you want me to do for you with this assignment in my life?’ and it become as although he entered my room and spoke, and the message become, ‘Go forth and serve my children who’ve been touched with the aid of cancer.’”

Once Butler felt stronger, she began a most cancers ministry through her church. With help from the nearby American Cancer Society workplace and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the ministry held instructional workshops approximately most cancers that had been open to each person within the community.

Word spread about Butler’s undertaking and she or he turned into invited to serve on a panel in Houston that blanketed legislators and doctors. At a press convention in 2000, the panel announced March as Colon Cancer Awareness Month. After the press conference, the vice-president of MD Anderson Cancer Center asked Butler to serve on a statewide making plans committee to increase a strategic plan to deal with colon most cancers in Texas.

Hope Through Grace

The making plans committee met for approximately a year. At one meeting, a key leader of a prime hospital announced it no longer had the assets to keep a patient navigation application for underserved communities. The software would have to end. Butler asked what would happen to folks who trusted the program for medical care and a health practitioner advised her they may die.

“I left that room with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat. I stated, ‘Somebody’s were given to do something positive about this,’” said Butler. “I changed into handiest a survivor. I didn’t understand medical doctors or network activists. But the tape in my head would now not prevent playing. As time went on, I remembered God’s answer to my prayer; I realized I turned into the only who need to do something. You need to be a courageous soul to step into this river of water while you don’t recognise how to swim, and I didn’t recognize a way to swim. I were given approximately 4 or 5 humans collectively in my kitchen and that’s how we started out Hope Through Grace.”

Hope Through Grace is a nonprofit corporation committed to disposing of colon most cancers through prevention and early detection. They provide workshops, seminars, and other training applications to educate people a way to decrease their hazard for colon cancer. They additionally help pay for colonoscopies for folks who can’t have the funds for them. Their target populace is anybody who is at risk and has now not been screened, however their primary recognition is the running poor.

A reason in life

Butler says that even though she’d never wish to get most cancers, and doesn’t want it again, the experience has given her life added meaning.

“Having most cancers gave me another motive in life, a motive of serving, counseling, advising,” stated Butler. “I am on a project. I were so splendidly blessed as a consequence of getting most cancers. It gave me a way of claiming my authentic selfhood. I have constantly been someone to look out for people who needed a further hand. Cancer has allowed me to be there for folks who had no other vicinity to go.”

She has served on many boards, committees and an advisory panel to the Director of the National Cancer Institute. And she’s been named a Purpose Prize Fellow. The Mayor of Houston offered Butler a proclamation and exact March 4, 2014 as Grace L. Butler Day inside the City of Houston. It happened to fall not simplest at some stage in Colon Cancer Awareness Month, but also on Butler’s birthday.

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