Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
Tears streamed freely down Bill Landrigan's cheeks as he described what his wife, Carol, went through in her losing battle with breast cancer.
Carol Landrigan was a strong-willed woman who taught fourth grade at Milford School and was very conscious of nutrition. The woman Bill Landrigan describes as "beautiful" and in whose memory still wears his wedding band, Carol was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring of 1992 after a routine examination - routine, but scheduled because she and her husband felt something didn't look right in one of her breasts.
Bill Landrigan said two mammograms were needed before a 3-centimeter lump was found hidden behind fibrous tissue in his wife's breast. A mastectomy and treatment soon followed.
She fought the disease for nearly three years before she succumbed to it Jan. 4, 1995, after the cancer spread to her spine and liver. She was 56 years old.
"People think they're invincible, but this can attack anybody despite nutrition, which she thought was a very important aspect of prevention," Bill said, adding that his wife ate well and had no habits such as smoking to predispose her to developing cancer.
Devote Catholics, Bill said he and Carol never gave up hope: she sought and received standard and experimental procedures in an attempt to rid her body of cancer. After the first bout, Bill said, Carol reacted very well and continued in her teaching position. During six months of chemotherapy, Carol would leave school in the afternoon, drive to Fort Wayne for treatment and return home. The next morning, she would be back at school.
"She had a high resolve and an excellent mental attitude," Bill said. "She felt the mind had a lot of affect on the body ... (and) employed the power of the mind to combat physical ills."
About a year after being given a "clean bill of health," Carol's cancer returned. This time, she went to Indianapolis for treatment which, Bill said, "she took very favorably ... still continued to teach ... (and) felt in good shape."
In the fall of 1994, Carol began to experience back pain. A trip to her family doctor led to a referral to return to Indianapolis. That visit revealed that the cancer had spread, and the prognosis wasn't good. The cancer had spread to Carol's spine and liver.
"We absolutely knew what the situation was," Bill said. "It was no return from that point."
Bill said Carol showed direct emotion only twice during the three-year ordeal: once when she was first diagnosed and said, "I'm too young to die." Bill said, "We talked for half an hour and then I said, 'OK, we have cancer, now let's go after it.' "
The second time was after the third bout, when the doctor flinched as he palpated her abdomen and felt the enlarging liver. She had driven to Fort Wayne alone after school and Bill had driven up after work to be with her after her exam. She later told him that she cried while driving back to Warsaw on that "rainy, nasty night" and "expressed some feelings to God."
The Landrigans then began to look for other possibilities for treatment and ended up at Midwest Regional Hospital, a unit of the Cancer Treatment Centers of America, in Zion, Ill.
There, the focus was on the mind, body and spirit, a philosophy Bill said he and Carol were "very much in agreement with.
"We didn't feel we could lose," he said. "We were at peace with the world. If the treatment worked, fine. If it was God's will that it would not, it would be accepted ... We used to say to each other "What's the Our Father say? 'Thy will be done.' "
She was examined at the hospital on Dec. 27, 1994; admitted as an in-patient on Dec. 28; and began chemotherapy, along with larges doses of nutrients, on Dec. 29. A couple days later, she lapsed into a coma and, on Jan. 4, 1995, she died.
