A teacher with cancer, a woman without a home and others who cope with adversity focus on those things for which they remain thankful.
By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published November 27, 2003
[Times photo: Brendan Fitterer]
Jacqueline and John Kariofilis of Holiday stand Tuesday with their 2-year-old twin girls, Athena, left, and Demi, and son Trey, 9. Demi, who was born with Goldenhar syndrome, has endured eight surgeries. The twins were born six weeks early.
There are days Amy Hoepker can't lift her body from the floor of her bathroom, when being alive means throwing up meals she was already too nauseated to finish, and when mothering means trying to find an answer for her 3-year-old daughter who stands over her sprawled aching body and asks quietly whether Mommy needs a Band-Aid.
If Thanksgiving is a time for counting blessings, 28-year-old Hoepker's biggest blessing right now is that her cancer, Hodgkins lymphoma, is treatable. But this year, knowing that today's meal of turkey and dressing will be chased by tomorrow's four-hour chemotherapy cocktail and next month's struggle to pay the mortgage has put the concept of giving thanks into a new realm for Hoepker and her family.
"You cherish everything," the kindergarten teacher and Wesley Chapel mother of two said. "I'm thankful I'm alive. I'm thankful I'm here. I'm thankful on my good weeks I'm able to do things with the kids. When this is over, I'm going to be thankful I can go to the grocery store."
* * *
Vinnie Vojvodic used to make fun of people in her situation.
The 62-year-old woman doesn't have a home.
She does have a roof to cover her and a bushel of green beans to snap.
But when she heads toward sleep at night, she remembers the house she once owned and the nursing career she once loved. She beats herself up over choices she made in the past year that hurt her family, drained her assets, and, nine weeks ago, left her standing, battered and tired, on the the doorstep of a homeless shelter.
"You just thank God daily that you have a roof, clothes, food. I truly would have been under a bridge," Vojvodic said, stirring a pot of snap peas boiling on the stove at Gulf Coast Community Cares Homeless Shelter in Hudson. "You come someplace like this and you live for one week and your eyes will totally wake up."
* * *
The couple thought there might be a funeral when Demi and Athena Kariofilis were born two years ago.
The first of the twins arrived with a brown head of hair, blue eyes and a clamped umbilical cord - not breathing. The second peeped out with a misshapen head, a cleft lip, a pocket of flesh covering one of her little blue eyes and a possibility of deafness - symptoms of a disability known as Goldenhar syndrome.
The tiny siblings were emergencies: 4 pounds each, six weeks early.
They lived and they grew and, two years later, parents Jacqueline and John Kariofilis of Holiday have no doubt the girls are the most beautiful smiling, crying, grabbing, toddling girls in the world.
"Given everything, I have nothing to be ungrateful for," Jacqueline Kariofilis said. "I wouldn't want to be in anyone else's shoes. And I wouldn't give my shoes to anybody."
* * *
Thankfulness and gratitude don't always come easily.
In a Google search on the Web this week, the word "thankfulness" returned 130,000 hits. "Depression" gave back 9.3-million, and the word "hate" 12.5-million.
But Kathryn Dies, a clinical psychologist with BayCare Life Management in Trinity, said people who make the choice to focus on the things for which they are thankful increase their capacity to cope with difficulty, heartbreak and adversity.
"If someone is not tuned into the things in their lives that they are grateful for, the alternative is looking at and dwelling on the things that bring them pain," Dies said.
For that reason, good mental health is directly related to a person's willingness to identify the blessings in their lives: the warm sun on your skin on a winter day, the good relationship that spurned the grief you feel in a loved one's death, the spouse who thinks you're beautiful when you're bald from chemotherapy treatments.
"Just the fact that we are living is a gift from God," said the Rev. Jerry Nordsiek of Joyful Spirit Lutheran Church in New Port Richey.
If thankfulness is a rarity in American society, Nordsiek offered, perhaps it's due to the fact that our lifestyles become so wrapped up in the day-to-day act of acquiring that we overlook the abundance of what we already have.
But Nordsiek said sometimes the people who seem to outsiders to have the least for which to be grateful are those who understand most clearly just how much they have.
* * *
There was nothing happy for Hoepker or her family about learning this summer that she had lymphoma.
Hoepker and husband, Brian, had just finished building their dream home in Quail Hollow.
Their 3-year-old daughter, Breanne, was healthy despite early problems. Their 9-year-old Cody seemed happy and was attending Lake Myrtle Elementary, the school where both his mother and grandmother teach.
Hoepker had had no symptoms. In fact, the journey from diagnosis to treatment began out of an act of appreciation: free massages for teacher appreciation week. The masseuse detected Hoepker's spinal curvature and recommended she get it checked out. X-rays alerted doctors to the cancer.
Now, every two weeks is chemo week. The kids go to the houses of family members or neighbors. Friends, family and parents of Hoepker's students cook meals and clean the home.
But one of the cancer's most devastating effects has been on the family's finances.
Hoepker didn't qualify for the school district's sick leave bank. She didn't want to take a year of disability. She considered working through the chemotherapy treatments, but her doctor and family said no. She left her job Sept. 19, after her first chemo treatment.
So, while she stays at home with Breanne on unpaid leave, Hoepker's doctor bills and family expenses stack up in a now one-income home. The school raised $1,600 in a penny drive this fall to help with the mortgage. But another payment is due soon. And Cody is begging for a red-eyed tree frog and aquarium for Christmas.
Amy Hoepker can count the things she has learned since all this started.
She knew she had a loving husband. She understood her mother and father backed her - they were there when she was 19, single and pregnant.
But the little irritations of her former life mean nothing now. Things are stripped to their core, and what matters is love. For Cody. For mom. For Breanne. For her patient husband who only wants his wife to be whole.
* * *
"I don't know why we can't learn all those lessons earlier," Jacqueline Kariofilis said, holding Demi in her arms.
Over the past three years, the 38-year-old woman got married, became pregnant, watched her father die, gave birth to twins whose risky delivery made headlines in Stephenville, Texas, sold her family homestead, left her job as an elementary school principal and moved four states over to Holiday, Fla., to be close to her husband's family.
Demi has been through eight surgeries in her two years of life and likely has many more to come. Every time Jacqueline has to hand her daughter into the care of a surgeon, she is reminded of the reality of having a child with disabilities.
The pain of that moment makes day-to-day life brilliant. In-laws are blessings. The long pink Caesarian scar is a battle wound. A messy kitchen floor is life. A stranger carting around an imperfect-looking child is a friend.
"You change. You're different. But maybe for the better."
