Rupert: Smiling kids faces got her through

Laura Rupert holds Mimsy, the classroom rabbit, as students from her fourth grade class say goodbye for the summer. Rupert continued teaching through the school year, despite having chemotherapy and radiation treatments for breast cancer. She and the children helped each other learn to look to the future and enjoy each day in their class.

Laura Rupert bid a fond goodbye to her fourth grade students at Carthage Primary School Friday.

The start of this school year last September seemed a lifetime away. When her students first arrived to her classroom, Rupert was half way through a series of four chemotherapy treatments for breast cancer.

“I'd had two treatments when school started. I was just at the stage where my hair was falling out,” Rupert said.

She was clear with her students from the very beginning.

“I told them I had been diagnosed with cancer, but that I was having treatments for it and sometimes the treatments might make me sick,” Rupert said.

“One of the kids asked, ‘Are you going to die?' I said, ‘No. I am doing this treatment so I will be here a long time.' Still, if I was ever gone, they were worried.”

Rupert discovered her breast cancer near the end of the 2006-2007 school year.

“I noticed a pea sized lump on the day my daughter went to state with the Scholastic Bowl team. I went to the doctor and they wanted to aspirate it, but it was too small.”

Instead she had a biopsy of the lump. On June 15, Dr. McKenney called her to meet him for the results.

“I knew when Dr. McKenney said he was ‘running late, come meet him at the hospital' that something was wrong,” Rupert said. She, her husband Larry, and daughter, Lindsay, were reeling with the news.

“We were devastated. Larry, Lindsay and I didn't know what to do. Everything was just gushing, like the ceiling was falling in. That was on Friday. Saturday, we just moped all day. Then Sunday morning, I said, ‘God please come up with something to side track me from myself.' That day my mom called, she had fallen and broken her hip. Well, that was certainly a distraction.”

It was decided to do a lumpectomy to remove the cancer because it was so small, and was told they had a “clear margin.” On Laura's birthday, she learned that she still would need to have both chemotherapy and radiation.

“It was my choice which treatment was done first,” Rupert said. “We had heard that chemo was the worst. Larry suggested doing that and getting it over with.” She scheduled her treatments on Tuesdays, being told if she became sick it would likely be on Friday. Then she had the weekend to recover. Sometimes she was still absent on Monday after a treatment.

She wore lots of caps and fun fur hats, which she now knits to give to others as a way of paying back the kindnesses she received.

“The teachers and staff here were awesome,” Rupert said. “Betsy (Wujek, the principal) gave me her parking space so I didn't have to walk very far. Once I started radiation, I had treatments daily for four and a half weeks. My schedule had P.E. at the end of the day. Betsy let me leave at 2:30 p.m. each day so I could get to Quincy and back home a little sooner. Then Mr. Edris brought my kids back from P.E. and dismissed them to the buses.”

At Christmas, the teachers surprised her with a pink “breast cancer” Santa.

“The people of Carthage were awesome, too. Everywhere you went, people were asking how I was, sending cards, bringing food. It was unbelievable.”

Compared to the chemo, radiation was “a piece of cake.” Her only reaction was being tired. By the second week of November, those treatments were finished. Rupert believes the experience brought her family even closer together.

“Lindsay was so great. She spent many a night curled up with mom on the couch. Larry kept me going,” she said.

“Something like this in your life changes your priorities. I want to be around for my daughter, to see her graduate, to get married.

“I have to thank the kids and remind them how special they were,” Rupert said. “Some people take a leave of absence when they have treatments, and I might have been happy to just sit at home, but it was so good to have something to do, something to look forward to, to see all those smiling faces.

“I would have had to make plans for a sub if I was gone, and that is just so hard, it was easier to get up and come to school.”

She believes the children learned something about caring and about cancer during the year.

“I didn't want them to be scared. We talked about what was happening. I didn't die. They all may know someone who has cancer, and they can see people get through it.

“Once, near the end of school, I heard one of the children ask his teacher, ‘Isn't that the lady who used to wear hats? She's better.' It had me in tears, because I had really just put it all behind me. I try not to think about it.”

Still, it is always on the back of her mind, and she will continue to go for check-ups. As her children headed out to the bus on the last day, Rupert looked forward to her summer vacation, recalling the uncertainty she felt at this time last year.

“Have a good summer,” she told them. “I'm going to have a real summer this year.”