Fighting
to Win
Continued
by Lisa Aichlmayr
photos by Allison Waltz
After she told her husband, Melody Pees faced the problem again when it came to telling the rest of their children.
"I made up my mind I was going to tell them very matter-of-factly and not let my emotions in," Melody Pees says. "I tried to be that way but not cold about it. Their response was hugs and tears and, 'Are you going to be OK?'"
She says she wanted everyone to go about life as usual, so that fear of the worst-case scenarios did not get a chance to creep in.
Dean Pees says he and their children agreeed to try this for her.
"We have all taken the approach to be very positive and be supportive," he says. "It's just how you handle it in your everyday routine. To all of a sudden change your lifestyle wouldn't make it easier for her."
But he admits working to make life normal can become very difficult.
Aside from her family, Melody Pees was reluctant to tell others, including the football team.
"If I told people, it validated it," she says.
But her husband asked her to tell the team because, with her surgery to remove the cancer quickly approaching, he would not be with the team on Monday, Aug. 21.
"In 29 years, he never missed a practice or anything, so it was a big thing to miss a practice," she says. "He wanted the team to know it was something very important."
Dean Pees says there was a second, more personal reason.
"We always talk about the team as a family," he says, adding that he wants the team to trust him in similar situations.
What the Pees hadn't expected was the outpouring of emotion and support from the players.
"It was the best thing to do, to tell his team," Melody Pees says. "They have been such a big part of the healing process."
After her husband told the players, they "came in looking like they just lost their best friend," she says.
Dean Pees says it was extremely difficult to tell his players the day before her surgery.
"I knew some of the guys would take it pretty hard," he says. "It was also hard to talk about it since I hadn't talked openly about it. Watching the reactions on their faces was hard."
Melody Pees says the players, even their parents, sent her daisies and cards while she was in the hospital.
Within two weeks of her surgery, when an average rest time is about eight weeks, she traveled with the team to the Purdue University game.
"I knew I needed to be with them because they were instrumental to my healing."
As Meldoy Pees talks about the team's support, her eyes begin to water, as she is perhaps thinking about the scores of flowers in her hospital room, or maybe the heart-felt how-are-yous that the players are sure to ask.
Whichever scene crossed her mind, it was the one thing that began to break her composure, began to show the intense feelings behind her experience with cancer along with the strength she felt from the support of those around her.
With this support, she then took the attitude to "hit it head on and do what you have to do and believe that you are going to be fine," she says. "Along the way you have a lot of people who sincerely care about what you're going through."
Where she was once reluctant to let peopleknow, she saw after the Purdue game the opposite was true.
"I didn't know how badly I needed people to know," she says.