Couple fighting cancer through pandemic’s spread

WADESBORO — Orange prescription pill bottles take over half the circular dining room table at one Wadesboro house.

The other half makes room for Terry Helms to look over his coin collection, a hobby he always loved and a hobby he is still able to do despite being diagnosed with bladder cancer in the summer of 2019.

In July of last year, a doctor examined Helms and found an unusual growth. A CT scan revealed a tumor on his bladder.

The doctor tried removing the tumor and Helms received chemotherapy treatment, but the tumor returned within two months.

“It started about late December and early January,” Helms recalled as his wife of 48 years, Betty, sits with her arm on his leg, showing her support. “I started developing another tumor which ended up being three tumors this time instead of two the first time.”

The cancer moved from his bladder to his kidney, a world-crushing development as he knew his chances of surviving with one kidney were low.

Bouncing from doctors and surgeons and operation to operation, Helms and Betty traveled back and forth to Charlotte.

“It puts a toll on your body,” Betty said. “It also puts a toll on stress level.”

Helms estimates that, since his diagnosis, the two of them have traveled at least 40 times just for his cancer treatments.

“It has interrupted our whole life,” Betty said. “People don’t really know, unless they’ve been through it, what it’s like. To me, it’s like putting your life on hold and hoping for the best and expecting the worst.”

She’s spent her fair amount of time crying over the question of whether or not he would survive. And with the COVID-19 pandemic, she has not always been allowed to be with him at the hospital.

“I had to face this by all myself,” Helms said about the coronavirus restrictions changing protocol. “All my treatments I had to go alone.”

His wife had to say her goodbyes in the hallway and for eight hours she sat in lonely waiting rooms as he went through surgery.

Helms has faced three operations and six rounds of chemotherapy treatment so far. He lost about 30 pounds in a short period of time, causing his clothes to now hang off his shoulders.

Because of COVID-19, Helms still has to go to the hospital by himself for follow-up appointments and treatments. But other than going for his appointments, the couple has put themselves in isolation to avoid exposure to the virus.

“You’re in your own little bubble,” Helms said. “You can’t go out and mingle because if I bring something home to her, she is going to catch something and have trouble or difficulty. If she goes out, goes to the grocery story and she catches COVID or something and brings it back to me, low and behold, I’m not going to make it.”

Since March, the couple calls in their grocery list to Food Lion. An employee will gather up their items. One of them will go to the handicapped parking spot outside the store and wait for an employee to bring out their groceries.

“Your normal life is being taken away,” Betty said.

With no children, the Helms have relied on their church in Marshville for support. The Calvary Baptist Church checks in on the couple to see how the two of them are holding up, especially as the outside world proves to be a threat with the coronavirus cases rapidly increasing throughout the area.

“I just want people to know what I’ve been through,” Helms said. “This cancer is no fun to try and beat. It is not a joy ride.”

Helms believes the two of them are living miracles as the couple has overcome multiple tragedies.

In 2004, Betty should have died in an automobile accident off of 601. A tractor trailer driver fell asleep at the wheel, going 65 MPH and collided with Betty’s truck.

“They had to cut me out of the vehicle to get me,” Betty said. “Thank God I was unconscious, I don’t know what hit me. He hit me from the rear and pushed me head on into a logging truck. I had to learn to do everything over again.”

But these tragedies have only made the gospel singing couple’s relationship with each other and God stronger.

“Why not me?” Betty asks herself. “Statistically-wise I should not have made it, but I know that the Lord has something else for me to accomplish.”

The couple now hopes their story encourages others to keep going and give them strength to see a brighter future.

“By uplifting someone else, you are uplifting yourself at the same time,” Helms said. “I just know this, I feel like there is a way that we are going to be able to continue our lives…and get through this cancer.”