She had the surgery. She had the chemotherapy and the radiation. She lost all her hair and yet the one thing Patty McCord has refused to ever say is “I have cancer.”
“I would say don’t let yourself become the disease and don’t take ownership for it,” the Covington mother and grandmother of two said. “I never said ‘I have’ and I won’t to this day. I say, ‘I was diagnosed.’ If I say ‘I have,’ it’s like a label. I’m very active about labels, and I didn’t want to label myself with that. I cringe when I hear people say ‘I have.’ Walk in the freedom of knowing it’s just a journey. You don’t ‘have’ it.”
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