Rasmussen, now in remission, feels justified in

walking with survivors during this year's event

By Brenda Sexton

The Courier-Herald

For the longest time, the first thought Addie Rasmussen had when she woke up each day was, "I'm going to die."

When the thought started to go away, Rasmussen started to live. She started fighting back against the lung cancer doctors told her would take her life in six months. Friday night she will walk with the survivors in the American Cancer Society's Enumclaw Relay For Life.

For Rasmussen, an Enumclaw business owner and community leader, it's been a long, tough journey.

"You just never, never think it's going to be you," she said. "I was so healthy. I never get sick, and suddenly they tell you you have six months to live.

"I'm afraid of heights. I'm afraid of snakes. My husband says I'm scared of everything. But I never feared cancer in my life. I never thought I'd get it."

That was until an X-ray after a routine physical in April 2002 turned up a spot on her right lung. Surgeons removed one lobe of her lung. By January 2003, she was told doctors hadn't removed all the cancer.

"That's when they told me I was doomed," Rasmussen said.

She finished chemotherapy and radiation last year. Her cancer is in remission.

"It's not like I'm cured. There is no cure. I'm in remission," she said. "I imagine if I get it back one day I'll deal with that.

"I could get it back tomorrow. I could go 20 years."

If the cancer returns, this time, Rasmussen said, she'll be ready to deal with it.

"You go through a period when you hate everybody," Rasmussen said - or at least she did. "You resent everybody because they're going to live and you're going to die." Rasmussen said she held a special resentment, at the time, for smokers, because she had quit 30 years ago and others were puffing away and cancer-free.

Although statistics point to cigarette smoking as the cause of 87 percent of all lung cancer, Rasmussen's not even sure her cancer was caused from smoking. She started smoking out of high school in the 1960s and '70s, when it seemed everyone smoked.

"I agree. I smoked and I got lung cancer," she said. "But who's to say that was the cause of it?"

It bothers her when people say lung cancer is self-inflicted and shouldn't get research funding.

"I think there's a lot of people out there who didn't even smoke and have lung cancer," she said.

According to statistics from the American Cancer Society, each year, about 43,000 non-smoking adults die of lung cancer as a result of breathing the smoke of others' cigarettes.

What got Rasmussen past the dying and into the living was her family, her friends and a book.

"I found the book, 'Love, Medicine and Miracles' (by Bernie Siegel)," she said. "I discovered you don't have to die. It made me feel a lot better. The book helped me through, that and my family.

"The book made me feel it was OK to die."

She said she realized we're all going to die.

"You go through the emotions and get over it," she said.

In addition to her family, many with their roots in Enumclaw, Rasmussen - who owns Addie's Headquarters, chairs the Enumclaw Fourth of July committee and serves as Rotary Club treasurer - had a community pulling for her.

"At Rotary, they prayed for me every week, and I believe in the power of prayer. I really think that it worked," she said.

Sometimes it's still hard. Rasmussen understands when people don't admit they have cancer.

"A lot of people don't want to talk about it," she said. "It's not a subject people want to talk about."

She was hesitant to walk with the survivors at last year's Relay For Life. It wasn't just because she was bald and sick from the chemotherapy and radiation, it was emotional.

"At first I really didn't feel like a survivor," she said. "I didn't feel like I should be there. I felt like a fraud. I was a dying person.

"I don't feel that way this year."

Brenda Sexton can be reached at bsexton@courierherald.com