Caregiver Mack Phillips: 'Always be there with your love and support'
Editor's note:
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and to bring focus on this disease that affects both women and men, Meridian Community College will host the Queen City Race for Life and Street Strut Saturday, Oct. 21, beginning at 8 a.m. on the MCC Track. The event pays tribute to breast cancer survivors, increases breast cancer awareness, and raises funds for the Anderson Cancer Patient Benevolence Fund.
Four ambassadors for the race are to be honored this year: Barbara Burnett, Donna Creel, Mary Eades, and Mack Phillips. Burnett, Creel, and Eades are breast cancer survivors; Phillips was his wife's caregiver. All expressed their faith as instrumental in their journeys.
In 2005, Mack Phillips was serving his country on a deployment halfway across the world when his wife Betty was diagnosed with breast cancer.
"I had a sick feeling," he said when he learned of her situation. "I didn't know what to say or do at the time – I was many miles away," he said. Her cancer, diagnosed between Stages 2 and 3, was detected through a mammogram.
Standing by their loved one is often the caregiver's role, and caregivers often note that their loved one's journey is theirs, too.
"Whatever you have to do to help them get them through this trial, do it," said Phillips. "Always give positive comments and always be there with your support and love," he added.
The Phillips also found support within their family; they are the parents of one daughter and two sons and their spouses and the grandparents of four grandsons. But there were friends and their Northcrest Baptist Church family who also supported them.
And that support would be reinforced when, in 2009, Phillips himself was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and it was his wife whom he leaned on, too.
"Today, we are both cancer-free," Phillips said.
"God walked with us through those trials, and we are healed today," he said.
Phillips added, "Our faith in God grew stronger during those times, and it just gets stronger as the days go by."
To learn more about Queen City Race for Life and Street Strut, visit meridiancc.edu/streetstrut.