Stickney certain she’ll beat cancer – Despite string of bad news, local Realtor doesn’t doubt she’ll live a long life

“There is no question,” Jane Stickney says. “I am not going to die. You are talking to the one person in America who has never been victimized.”

Stickney remains as firm as ever in her resolve, refusing to be beaten by a succession of bad news about her cancer.

In 1998, Stickney learned she had breast cancer. Six months later, the cancer was in remission, but in the spring of 2001, after a routine test, she learned that cancer lesions had been discovered in her lung and liver. Those cancers disappeared after about a month of what the well-known Orcas Realtor describes as “horrific radiation” treatments.

More bad news arrived in July. What Stickney describes as “itsy-bitsy lesions” were discovered in her brain. Those too were “zapped,” Stickney says, after more rounds of intensive radiation treatments, plus cheomtherapy.

But still more bad news would be forthcoming the day after Thanksgiving. Stickney awoke that morning with a pain in her leg so intense, she says, that “I didn’t realize a human being could undergo such pain.” It was the only time she has cried throughout her entire ordeal. It led to a quick trip to the oncology clinic, which revealed that what Stickney describes as “itsy-bitsy lesions” had spread to her spine. That required still more rounds of intense radiation and chemotherapy that are continuing at this time. The latest cancers are forcing Stickney to use a walker to get around her house. Stickney’s doctors have told her that the cancers are now inside her system, forcing her to admit, “I don’t know where they will rear their ugly head next.”

The string of bouts with cancer, together with the emotionally and physically draining therapies required to beat the disease, have taken an enormous physical toll. Stickney is tired much of the time; she has lost much of her hair, and she appears to have aged considerably.

Mentally, however, the disease hasn’t hurt her spirit one iota. She continues to be the cheerful, upbeat woman whose sharp sense of humor islanders have come to enjoy and appreciate during her 13 years living on Orcas.

Less emotionally strong people might have thrown in the towel from the series of bad reports. But don’t shed a tear for the local Realtor, Stickney insists, refusing to be embarrassed by her bald head, and insisting she is 100 percent positive that she is going to beat this disease, and have a long life ahead of her.

“Take my picture,” she teasingly tells The Sounder. “I’m an actress,” Stickney adds with a friendly smile, recalling her roles starring in several Orcas Center musicals.

“I’m also a street fighter,” Stickney says, insisting that the words “if” and “victim” have no place in her vocabulary. Stickney’s resolve is helped by her husband Hi, plus her children and her sister. “Their desire for me to live makes me believe,” she says.

Her father was Stickney’s role model

Stickney’s positive attitude predates by many years her bout with cancer.

It was instilled in her by her father, a Stamford, Conn. pharmacist who, the Realtor says, “would never give in to pain.” Nor would he ever back down when embroiled in a small town political battle. It was this latter quality that his daughter would display in the mid-’90s during an Orcas Center battle over the composition of the board of trustees. Stickney lost that battle, but it didn’t discourage her, and today she remains eager to fight for what she believes to be the right course at the local arts center, or anywhere else, for that matter.

Stickney’s dad also gave his daughter some very practical advice. Take care of yourself, he said, and get a regular checkup. It’s advice she would read in a book given to her by her sister. The book, entitled “Hope,” states that while everybody comes into the world on a certain date, there is no predetermined date when that person will die. The book’s message: the individual plays a critical role in determining when he or she will die.

Since contracting the disease, Stickney has taken a greater interest in the religion of her birth, Judaism, but she rejects the notion that God will decide whether she lives or dies. Rather, she says, the burden is on the individual, and because Stickney practices what she preaches, both she and her doctors believe she will survive. On every occasion since 1997 the doctors have caught the cancers in their infancy, before they grew into big tumors.

Her work experience was in the “search business”

Prior to moving to Orcas, Stickney worked in the high-pressure “search business” in both New York City and Los Angeles. It’s a field which helped companies find chief executive officers, and it required Stickney to become even more of a fighter, she says. The couple moved to the island in 1989, intending to retire. She stayed unemployed for about three years, but even while out of work she exhibited her Type A tendencies. “I hiked 10 miles a day and was a vegetarian,” she recalls, adding that it was the one time in her life when she felt virtually no stress at all.

But after the couple completed building their house, Stickney felt it was time to go back to work. Former Realtor Jay Haglund suggested she get into real estate. Stickney gasped. It was the last profession she ever imagined herself getting into.

But once she made the commitment, she threw herself into the new field, working seven long days practically every week. Even today, despite the physical toll that cancer has taken on her body, she works the phones, FAXes and e-mails four to five hours every day. Stickney has stopped showing property, relying on others in the RE/MAX Island Properties office to do that for her. But she continues to handle all the other duties herself.

During her visits to the cancer clinic in Bellevue, Stickney has noticed the difference between those who get regular checkups and those who do not. The former are getting better, while those who ignore the symptoms are not. And now she is telling everyone who will listen to get regular checkups, and act on what the doctors say. A firm believer in Western medicine, Stickney says, “The more people know, they better off they will be.”

And she reiterates that she will beat the disease. “I’m going to fight it with everything I have,” she says. “If it takes one year, two years or three years, I’ll be fine.”

— Ted Grossman is editor of islandssounder.com and The Islands’ Sounder. He can be reached at (360) 376-4500 or email.

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