Her treatments briefly involved a drug she swears had made Imodium her best friend until hives red-flagged a potentially fatal allergy and a second she and her oncologist threw to the curb when the pain and stiffness in her joints grew intolerable.
Along the way she also lost lifelong best friend Tina Stathopoulous Holt, to liver cancer.
Through it all, Zimmer has tried to do what she says patients of every variety of the disease (and of other ailments) strive to do: wring meaning from life and show the proper respect for all others focused on doing the same.
Too much pink
“Even before I got into treatment,” said Zimmer, who is 68, “the whole ‘pink thing’ was rubbing me the wrong way.”
Yes, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women. And, yes, Zimmer confesses to having once made a pink purse for herself out of yarn. There’s also the extent to which the omnipresence of pink has raised awareness for cancer patients in general.
But for Zimmer, treatment at the Springfield center, where she said she’s going through the same protocols with caregivers as good as can be found, exposed her to others in the community battling a broader band of cancers, some with slimmer odds of survival.
She said the experience, “very much” put her own battle in perspective, to the extent that pink’s predominance made her see a shade of red: “I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.”
That lead to the day Zimmer went for treatment and asked the staff how many varieties of cancer there are. She was not only told there are 32 (some sources say “more than 30”) but that each has a color and or pattern associated with it: Orange for leukemia, emerald for liver, periwinkle for esophageal cancer, and so on.
Her artist self, nurtured since age 8 at in at the former Springfield Art Center, immediately thought of two things: One, the wooden frame she bought for maybe $5 a few years back on a neighborhood stroll; and two, how artful it would be if the frame and her recent work in stained glass could help shine the light on those fighting other cancers.
Enter old Blue Eyes
Although taking on a major project while enduring the side effects of treatment might not seem what a doctor would order, Zimmer said doing so has brought a greater sense of order to her life.
“It gets my mind off of (cancer) and puts me in a positive head space … where I still have a lot of control of my life and my health.”
When a nurse oncologist told her, “You’re controlling this bus,” during treatment, Zimmer took it as permission to follow Frank Sinatra’s lead and to do it “my way.”
She hastens to say she hasn’t done it alone.
Like the Beatles said
During the year-and-a-half it took her to complete her stained glass and ring the bell, she had more than a little help from her family and friends.
Her husband, Don, offered his continuing support and postponed retirement so she could maintain the same health insurance.
Brothers Mike and Steve Adams delivered her to appointments and kept her spirits up by reverting to the roles of their and her childhood. When she lost her hair to treatment, they called her Kojak, after a bald television detective of days gone by, and supplied the lollipops that were a Kojak trademark.
Zimmer got in on shenanigans by coloring the empty, egg-shaped canvas above her ears to celebrate Easter.
The playfulness went from head to toe when she wore a different pair of colorful socks to her 33 radiation treatments, then surprised the radiologist by going barefoot for the final treatment in December of 2022 and playing a recording of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
Her cat and personal assistant, Shadowfax, added a bit of mystery to Zimmer’s unexpected journey. Named for the white horse Gandalf rides in Lord of the Rings, he always came to her side after chemotherapy, as a good Hobbit cat would.
“I’m not sure if he could sense how I felt,” said Zimmer, “or if he could (just) smell all the meds.”
For the project itself, a litter of people stepped forward.
After hearing Zimmer grouse about the prevalence of pink over coffee, friend and cancer survivor Bruce Grimes planted a seed when he mentioned that prostate cancer’s color is a boyish blue.
Marylou Hermann of the Stained Glass Barn, where Zimmer had taken lessons “gave me samples of glass” usually used so customers could place orders. From these, Zimmer gleaned not only the 32 colors required, but textures of glass that, to her artist’s eye, looked like images of cancer cells and the texture of skin.
Meanwhile, Hermann’s husband, Tom, “helped me get my vision” for arranging the stained glass in the frame; cancer patient and friend Steve Everhart sanded and put quarter rounds on the frame; Everhart’s wife, Diane, suggested adding a ribbon icon to represent the people who support patients; and Cody Derringer etched into glass not only the icon but the cancer center’s name in the proper type face.
Mike Manaloff not only added the hardware to hang the frame but brought things together by soldering all the pieces of glass in place.
The names of all the supporting cast are listed where it hangs in the cancer center.
Going forward
Although Zimmer intended to have her piece hung without fanfare, others persuaded her it should be the centerpiece of last summer’s annual ice cream social celebrating the strength of all cancer survivors.
Zimmer then began work on a companion piece tweaked to complement the lighting and color scheme of the Mercy Health Cancer Center in Urbana.
She now is the first of 10 years of additional treatment with Tamoxifen and limiting her daytime exposure to hot flashes by taking it in the evenings.
Other than that, Zimmer’s plans are to continue what she has been doing all along, along with so many others: Living as colorful and meaningful a life as she can.
Julie the photo journalist
Photojournalism already had a meeting.
But Julie Zimmer added another when she used her phone to create a photographic journal of her cancer treatment that she shared with family and friends.
The principle befits:
No need to mess with sentences while recovering from treatments in the hammock.
No need to taxing conversations once followers are aware that a photo with a soon or lovely nature shots signaled a challenging day on which she did not wish to be disturbed.
A catalog of memories of making it through a trying time.
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