Battle with cancer can’t keep this good woman down

By Deanna Brown

Daily Sun

It would take more than the word “cancer” to cause Leecia Arnett to break stride.

Because, quite frankly, this lady eats adversity for breakfast.

Married for 23 years to Brad Arnett, the couple weathered many years of Brad being ill before he received a kidney transplant in 1995.

“His kidney works better now than when he got it,” Leecia said, laughing.

Things rocked along for a time, with Leecia working at Rylie Transport doing receptionist duties, recruiting truck drivers, and generally joshing with the truckers and keeping up morale.

“They pay me to talk — how’s that?” she said. “I’ll talk to anybody!”

Brad works for Hunter Excavation in Ennis, where his brother, Randall, also works. Randall recently was hospitalized for nearly two months in Dallas with a raging staff infection. Brad is staying pretty busy until Randall is released to return to work.

The couple’s niece and nephew stay with them when their mom is out of town for work. Jordan and Josh enjoy hunting with Brad and Leecia, and Jordan managed to shoot two bobcats opening weekend.

“Somebody better get a deer soon,” Leecia said. “Our freezer is looking kind of bare, and you can’t eat those dang bobcats.”

In November 2004, the Arnetts spent Thanksgiving in Gatlinburg, Tenn. Leecia noticed something didn’t seem right with her body, and went to the doctor upon her return to Texas. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system. She went to Baylor Hospital, since they had a good experience there with Brad’s kidney transplant. She was then sent to Dr. Fish Greenfield, a neurologist with Texas Neurologists in Dallas.

Leecia is on a drug to slow the effects of the MS, which is a shot she administers weekly. She walks with a cane, because her right foot has a tendency to drag, but hasn’t let the illness slow her down.

“Dr. Greenfield told me, ‘being hard-headed, this MS won’t get you,’” she said, laughing. “But they did put me on a stress drug, because stress aggravates my condition. Now I’m happy all the time, and don’t ream out people at the post office.”

At her annual mammogram appointment in April 2009, the radiologist saw something that concerned him. After three mammograms and two sonograms in two months, Leecia decided to take her films and go to Dallas. She returned to Dr. Michael Grant at the Sammon Center, who had seen her in 2006 when a “shadow” was seen on a mammogram then. The biopsy she had in 2006 was fine.

“Thirty minutes after I saw the radiologist, I had received a mammogram and a biopsy, and he told Brad it was bad,” she said. “He said it was cancer, and it was fast-growing.”

Grant recommended she have a lumpectomy rather than a mastectomy, because of her MS. In two weeks time, her mass grew from 1.5 centimeters to 2.3.

“I had to call Brad’s transplant doctor and get him some ‘stress pills,’ because he was freaking out,” she said.

Leecia had a port for chemotherapy installed in her chest on May 20, a lumpectomy on May 27, and a total hysterectomy she’d already scheduled with her regular ob/gyn on June 30.

Dr. Dilip Solanki, her oncologist in Corsicana with Texas Oncology, consulted with Greenfield, to see what effects the chemo could possibly have on Leecia’s MS.

“I started my chemo the week after Randall was careflighted to Parkland,” Leecia said. “We visited him when he first got there, but then couldn’t go back because the chemo messes with my immune system, and staff infection is contagious.

“The chemo has not made me sick — I haven’t puked one time,” she stated, proudly. “The first day I got it, I felt wired. I tried to lay down, but got up and cleaned the house.”

She received anti-nausea medications anyway, and by the fifth chemo treatment, she had no energy, and actually missed a day of work.

“Everything tastes like cardboard, and I’m tired of that,” she said. “Brad cooked, cleaned, did the wash, everything.”

She received six treatments in all, spaced three weeks apart. Her last chemo treatment was on Oct. 27.

“She never lost any work, except when she came in for treatment,” Dr. Solanki said. “She always had the attitude ‘it has to be done, because it has to be done.”

“My hair was coming out slowly, and the first time I lost a big chunk, I got Brad to shave it in the garage with the clippers,” she said. “I haven’t had hair since — and not many eyebrows or eyelashes.”

Normally, she wears a wig to work, but when at home, goes bald or wears a ball cap. Solanki told her there were two things he couldn’t control — that she would lose her hair, and her nails would be ugly.

“I was determined to prove him wrong on something, and my nails still look good,” she said.

Next up for Leecia is six weeks, five days a week, of radiation, which must be done in Dallas. She plans to ride on the Texas Oncology van, which makes daily trips.

“Dr. Henderson didn’t want to ‘mark me up’ before Thanksgiving, in the event I had a skin allergy to the marker,” Leecia said. “I said, ‘it doesn’t make any difference, because I’m going to the deer lease!’”

Solanki gave her strict instructions not to put a rifle up to her port, which is on the right side of her chest. Undaunted, Leecia found a pistol of Brad’s, which she intends to use to bag her another deer, hopefully one as nice as the one mounted in her living room.

“We like to live on the wild side, adventurous,” she said. “Don’t want to get too comfortable. We like to keep a little drama going. Brad’s kidney transplant, my MS, my ‘boob job’ — it’s a piece of cake.”

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Deanna Brown may be contacted via e-mail at deanna@corsicanadailysun.com. Want to “Soundoff” on this story? E-mail soundoff@corsicanadailysun.com.