Local Teacher Living Life To The Fullest Despite Cancer
Local Teacher Living Life To The Fullest Despite Cancer
Posted
Carol Anders-
Local Teacher Living Life To The Fullest Despite Cancer“Live life to the fullest”is more than just words on a poster to Warsaw teacher Cindy Nash.
Although Nash is facing treatment for a second cancer diagnosis, she is determined to postpone moving ahead until after the final performances in October of the Center Street Community Theater production of “Lend Me a Tenor.”
Nash had 12 rounds of chemotherapy in 2013 for colon cancer. During scans taken during her treatment and recovery, doctors found small spots in her lungs that they have continued to monitor every year and there had been no significant changes. However, her latest checkup revealed that the cancer has metastasized and the tumors are now large. She still has to confer with her oncologist to determine his opinion on treatment options, but she plans to decline any treatment until she has her time on the stage as the part of Maria in the production.
She said she started feeling really bad in June and went to her local physician thinking she had something like pneumonia, only to hear the cancer diagnosis. However, by July, she said she began to feel much better and went to the tryouts for the play.
Nash said, “While I was deciding what to say when I was offered the part, my close friend gave me some good advice. She said that I should not let cancer steal anymore of my joy than it has to.”
Nash said, ”Acting gives me that joy.”
She also is looking forward to starting this school year teaching music at both Claypool and Harrison elementary schools.
She began her teaching career in the 1982-83 school year. A friend told her about an opening for a kindergarten at the Milford Christian Church and she immediately moved to the Warsaw area.
She said, “I loved it so much here, especially coming from the small town of Chesterfield.”
She applied for all types of employment to be able to stay in the area, including the former Warsaw Day Care, Klines Department Store and Cardinal Center. As time went on, she was recruited to teach in the gifted and talented programs at both Tippecanoe Valley and Warsaw schools. She went on to hold positions teaching all grades from kindergarten through sixth grade.
According to Nash, her involvement in acting locally has been a great source of enjoyment and helped her make many true friends. She started acting in the former Warsaw Civic Theater performances and has performed in a number of productions of the Center Street Theater including parts in “Steel Magnolias,” “Our Town,” “Foreigner,” “Curious Savage,” “M*A*S*H” and “You Can’t Take It With You.”
She said, “I do have a lot of reasons to live for, especially my two daughters, but there is a real difference between quality and quantity.”
She said both of her parents had cancer and she learned from them.
“My mother modeled how to live life fully. God gives me things, and it is up to me to make something out of them,” Nash said.
