Karin Fuller

Published in the Sunday Gazette-Mail on January 14, 2007

It’s amazing how much can change in less than a week.

When talking to my good friend, Becky Conrad, a few days before New Year’s, she mentioned how good she was feeling since she was finally getting some sleep. Much like me, Becky’s had sleep trouble for years, so a week of good sleep was nothing short of a miracle.

“Maybe this is finally going to be my year,” she said.

Luck hasn’t been something Becky’s often experienced. Her early childhood years were marked by frequent hospital stays for a blood and kidney disorder. Then at age 9, she was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a deterioration of the retina.

Her doctor said it would eventually cause her to go blind, but predicted that wouldn’t happen until she reached middle age. Instead, it happened while she was still in her teens. By the time she graduated from high school, she was totally blind.

But blindness didn’t stop Becky from pursuing a normal life. When she was 26, she married her longtime boyfriend, Bobby. A year and a day later, they had their son, Josh. Who was born with glycogen storage disease.

Instead of complaining about their bad luck, Becky talked of how lucky they’d been that he’d been diagnosed before it was too late.

Over the years that I’ve known her, Becky’s had more bad luck than good, yet she continues to keep on plugging away. A few years ago, she started her own greenhouse behind her Burnsville home. If you visit that greenhouse, she can tell from the location of your voice what type of plants you are facing, then with her encyclopedic knowledge of plants, she can tell you what each plant requires to flourish.

Becky didn’t let blindness stop her from pursuing another one of her passions — writing. After receiving a computer with reader capabilities, allowing her not only to write but to edit her work, there’s been no stopping her. She has numerous publishing credits, including the prestigious Artist Fellowship she won for nonfiction from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts in 2003.

She’s a hard-working, admirable woman. She just isn’t lucky.

On Saturday morning, Dec. 30, Becky collapsed in her kitchen. She was taken to the hospital in Braxton County, then transferred the next day to Ruby in Morgantown for further testing of the mass they’d found in her brain.

Geoff, Celeste and I were in Morgantown that weekend, so we ran over to see her. Aside from the bruises from all the drawn blood and IVs, Becky was the picture of health. She hadn’t had any of the typical signs of cancer. Surely that couldn’t be it.

But on New Year’s Day, her biopsy confirmed the worst. Lymphoma of the brain. She was released on Wednesday, her 45th birthday, sent home to rest for a few days before she’d begin round after round of chemotherapy. Twenty-four hours a day, five days at a time.

“The doctors told me the cancer has probably only been there a month,” Becky told me on the phone. “So I guess I’m lucky they caught it so early.”

I love her determination, how she’s approaching this as simply something she has to do. I love how she’s excited about the laptop computer that I and some other friends are trying to get her so she can work on her book while she’s stuck in the hospital. I love how she’s resolved to prove the doctors wrong about her not being able to work in her greenhouse this spring.

And I love how people who’ve never even met Becky in person, who know her only from her Internet posts on the West Virginia Writers Roundtable, are scrambling to help. How they’re calling to see what they can do, how they can donate. One even built a Web site (www.beckyconrad.8m.com) so family and friends can go there for updates. Becky says she’s lucky to have so many friends, but I don’t think that’s luck. It’s something she earned.

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