LAKE ANDES, S.D. (AP) — The ablaze shines through an accessible window, absorption assimilate a alpine chiffonier in Amber Nelson's kitchen.
Photographs of her 9-year-old son Elijah adorn the walls as she rocks aback and alternating on a board armchair cutting a gray T-shirt busy with blush ribbons.
This is Nelson's admired abode to be — at home with her son and her husband, Jim. A simple luxury, but she finds abundance in actuality amidst by family.
At 39 years old, Nelson has been diagnosed with breast blight three times, already in 2013, afresh in 2016 and now in 2017, the Daily Republic appear . Yet Nelson continues to be resilient.
"I accede myself a fighter who will do annihilation because my son is my apple and I do not appetite him to go through a apple afterwards a mom," Nelson said.
Nelson, a affiliate of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, was built-in in Wagner and has lived in Lake Andes back she was in seventh grade. Now, she's a third-grade abecedary at Andes Central Elementary School.
Nelson's blight adventure begins at the alpha of the academy year in 2013, back she acquainted a aciculate affliction in her high stomach. Afterwards a array of scans and tests, Nelson accustomed a alarm from her doctor that a agglomeration begin on her breast was cancerous.
"A lot of thoughts went through my head. I thought, 'Am I activity to die?'" Nelson said.
In October, she had anaplasty to abolish the lump, but several complications occurred. What was declared to be a four-hour anaplasty to abolish the annihilative tissue angry into 10 hours.
Because she was on the operating table for several hours, she said she got an infection, which afflicted her to break in the hospital an added four days. Following the recovery, she underwent 16 weeks of chemotherapy.
"There were times I acquainted like I was adulteration from the inside," Nelson said. "The chemotherapy fabricated me actual sick. It took me a continued time to alike get out of bed."
Six months later, Nelson's doctors declared her blight in remission, and she alternate to teaching.
Almost two years later, Nelson was sitting in a account teacher's affair back she began to feel a aciculate affliction in her armpit.
She went to the doctor and accustomed a alarm the day afterwards Thanksgiving in 2016 that the blight had returned.
"I was not about as affecting this time because I knew I had exhausted it already before, so I could exhausted it again," Nelson said.
After addition anaplasty to abolish the lymph nodes on her side, 18 weeks of chemotherapy and bristles weeks of radiation, Nelson was afresh declared in remission. And it backward that way until this year.
Recently, Nelson apprehend a book to her third-graders about a mother who had cancer. She afresh asked the chic if they knew addition with cancer.
"They all aloft their hands," Nelson said. "Cancer is one of those things that affects everyone."
It abnormally afflicted Nelson, who in September accustomed account that she already afresh had been diagnosed with breast blight for the third time.
But, clashing the added two, the blight is now on her lung and has back metastasized, apprehension it inoperable. For now, Nelson is application a new balloon drug, which is aimed against allowance her allowed arrangement action off the disease.
And while she tries the new drug, she will await on her ancestors for support, as she has in the past. Nelson credits her ancestors as one of the better supporters, she said, abacus that her two adolescent brothers baldheaded their active in support.
Nelson's action is able-bodied accepted in Lake Andes, area her co-workers started a fundraiser affairs blush T-shirts. Nelson's mother additionally sells broiled appurtenances to accession funds and awareness.
The approved doctor appointments, assorted surgeries and chemotherapy treatments larboard Nelson with cher medical bills.
Despite Nelson's banking and medical concerns, those abutting to her say she continues to break optimistic.
"Amber has this atom of action in her," said Kristin Dvorak, a pharmacist who lives in Lake Andes and met Nelson in 2005. "She knows the aftereffect of this annular is not the greatest but she additionally knows miracles can appear and she won't stop the fight."
An AP Affiliate Exchange aggregate by the Daily Republic.
