Louise Zeigler had it all planned out.
After retiring from a long career with Walmart in the spring, the 62-year-old Seymour woman was going to spend the summer doing whatever she wanted with her granddaughter and then find a job in the fall.
At the end of July, though, those plans took a different turn.
On July 24, her sister, Jackie Meadows, 64, was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer. Then July 28, her husband, Michael Zeigler, 68, was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer that metastasized to his brain.
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She already was helping take care of a couple of disabled family members, but she had to step up and be there for her sister and husband, both of whom live with her.
From her perspective, it’s what she had to do.
“It’s family, and I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Louise said. “God had other plans. There are some hard days, but I’ve been a strong person. I’ve had to throughout my life.”
In her wedding vows with Michael 27 years ago, she said they would be there for each other in sickness and health.
Michael said it was the second marriage for each of them at the time, and they didn’t have partners the first time around. Being partners is key, he said.
“That has been the foundation, and it has been that way ever since Day 1,” he said.
Meadows said she and her sister have always had a close connection, so it didn’t surprise her to see Louise step up. She initially thought about going to her live with her daughter, who is a biochemist in Virginia, but since she travels a lot for work, Louise thought it would be best if she stayed here.
“I said, ‘You’re not going anywhere. I’m home. I can take care of you,'” Louise said.
“That there is the strength I have to fight,” Meadows said, pointing at her sister. “It’s hard to put into words the closeness that her and I have had all of our lives. For her to be here with me to go through this … she is my rock. She is everything to me, and God knew that I needed her to get through this. She’s my strength, my rock, my caretaker, my chauffeur, my secretary. She’s all of it.”
First diagnosis
Meadows said she has dealt with asthma all of her life.
A couple of months after moving from Oklahoma to Seymour, she caught a cold that wouldn’t quit. When she went to see a doctor for the third time about the cold, he decided to run some tests to make sure she didn’t have pneumonia.
That revealed she had lung cancer.
“All my life, I always said if I ever found out I have cancer of any kind, I wasn’t going to fight it,” Meadows said. “But fighting this cold and whatever else was going on, something in the back of my mind told me there was something more major wrong. When they told me that I had cancer, it was like a slap in the face, but at the same time, God reached out and went, ‘It’s OK, Jackie. We’re going to fight this.'”
She had her fourth and final chemotherapy treatment this month. She had received that once every three weeks.
“I haven’t had any real complicated side effects,” she said. “My body has handled it a lot better than (Michael’s) has.”
Next, she’s going to get a CAT scan to see if she can receive radiation. She initially had a large tumor on her left lung, a small one on her right lung and one underneath her collarbone.
“If it has shrunk enough for them to do the radiation, they’ll do that, and then we’ll go from there and see,” Meadows said.
Second diagnosis
Louise said she and Michael usually go on vacation the last week of July, but his cancer diagnosis changed those plans.
On July 28, he felt fine all day until that evening when he laid down in bed and had to get up. He had a ministroke and a seizure and had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital.
“I had had a very small episode (in the past), but this one, basically, if you took and drew a line through the center of my body, this whole side, my heart was beating so hard that (Louise) could feel it,” Michael said. “While that was going on, all of this just numb. Something was way wrong.”
A scan and a biopsy revealed he had cancer on his brain and in his lung.
“The first reaction is ‘Huh?’ and ‘OK, so where do we go from here?'” Michael said.
Starting in late August, he went through 14 rounds of radiation — Monday through Friday for the first two weeks and Monday through Thursday the third week.
Then he moved on to immunotherapy once every three weeks and taking the cancer medicine Keytruda.
“During my bloodwork, they determined that I had enough — actually, I had way more than I probably should have — of this particular gene, and so the Keytruda was best to treat with that gene present,” Michael said.
The normal number for that gene is seven, but Michael said he was at 80.
“Chemo is in the whole body. Immunotherapy is more of a targeted therapy, so it’s not like you’re treating just the whole body in a sense. It’s after this particular gene,” he said.
The Keytruda caused him to have a rash on his torso, but he’s taking medicine for that.
“It’s irritating, but I can live with it,” Michael said.
‘God’s got it’
Through their cancer diagnoses, Meadows and her brother-in-law have tried to remain positive.
“Through this whole process, none of us have ever once said, ‘Why?’ We’ve all said, ‘This is what we’ve been given, so this is what we’re going to do,'” Meadows said. “The old saying, ‘You never know from one day to the next,’ you don’t. Live life to the fullest. Live today like it’s your last.”
Louise remained strong even while dealing with her own medical issue. Just recently, a biopsy found more precancer cells than anticipated, and she had them removed.
“We have never asked, ‘Why?’ We’ve never asked, ‘How come us?’ because God’s got it,” Louise said. “If he takes them today, we’re all at peace with it because God, he has his plans.”
Cancer also hasn’t prevented them from doing things together.
On Oct. 20, Meadows and the Zeiglers and their son, Chaz Quillen, attended the Indianapolis Colts game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.
As part of the Crucial Catch program, they were treated to breakfast, met Colts mascot Blue, helped unfurl a flag on the field and watched the game against the Houston Texans. It was their first time at a professional football game.
“It was amazing,” Louise said.
Then Dec. 3, Michael checked an item off his bucket list when he attended an Indiana University men’s basketball game at Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall in Bloomington. Andrew Tarr accompanied him and his wife and sister-in-law at the game.
“He was thrilled,” Louise said of her husband. “We had a really good time.”
Five days later, Louise and her sister were called to the podium at their church, The Point, and Pastor Steve Greene encouraged the congregation to donate to an offering for the family.
Louise said it was very much appreciated because since she and her husband aren’t able to work, she is always trying to think of how to pay the monthly bills.
“It couldn’t have come at a better time,” she said.
“That’s another thing where I think God knew what we were needing at the time, and so he performed a miracle,” Meadows said.