Close to home

PALMER — Still weeks away from seeing its first patients, the Mat-Su Valley Cancer Center held a community event Friday evening in front of the future center, and a community touched by cancer turned out in droves.

Local celebrities turned out, too, including U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, Iditarod musher DeeDee Jonrowe, and country music sensation Ken Peltier, who performed with his band.

“I’m a stage 4 throat cancer survivor, so when they asked me to not only play this event, it was a great honor,” said Peltier, who was diagnosed six years ago and is now in remission. “For me, to have a great cancer treatment center in the Valley is huge. I’m a big proponent of Alaskans getting treated in Alaska.”

Jonrowe expressed to the crowd on hand just how important it was to her, personally, to be able to be treated in her home state after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002.

“Friends in Barrow, Wainwright and by the time they’re diagnosed, they’d be sent home to die, they were so late in stages,” Jonrowe said. “So I wanted a cancer center here in Alaska, and not only one, but more than one closer to home than Anchorage was.”

Peltier credits his stellar recovery to being able to see doctors in Alaska.

“It was very scary, stage 4 into my lymph nodes — radiation, chemo, the whole thing. It was intense, but I was looked after,” Peltier said. “I’m a big supporter of Alaska doctors and getting treated up here. What I know from Alaska doctors, is they’re the first ones to tell you if they’re over their heads. I got my second opinion in Nashville, at Vanderbilt, and my doctor there used to work for my doctor in Alaska at Stanford. So we have excellent doctors in Alaska.”

Beyond medical care, Jonrowe pointed out other benefits to staying close to home, rather than flying to the lower 48 for treatment, pointing to two friends of hers who were also diagnosed with cancer in 2002.

“Two of them had to die out of state. It was terrible to lose them, but what was even more terrible was they weren’t able to have friends and family close to them,” she said. “That’s what this center means, top of the line quality health care means you have family, friends, prayer partners here.”

Outside the tent, hot dogs and hamburgers were served up, and across the way, the father-daughter team of Keith Simmons and Tara Wood lent their artistic gifts to building a lasting mosaic on the interior wall of the new facility.

“He does fine custom woodwork, and my dad reached out to me because I do glasswork,” Wood said of the plan for an 18-square foot piece. “Initially, I was humbled to be part of a project like this. Just to be able to impact so many people — I’m blown away to be part of it.”

The foundation of the piece is a large piece of charred wood in the Japanese style of Shou-sugi. On it, will be attached blocks off wood with encouraging messages written on them by cancer survivors. As the blocks lend color against the darkness, Wood’s glasswork talents take over in a piece of iridescent glass to form the skyline.

“You’ve been diagnosed with cancer, there’s a bleak backdrop; things are scary, unknown, but in the midst of this we have a path forming,” Wood said. “It’s just giving the message of, wherever you find yourself on this path, you’re never alone.”

The Mat-Su Valley Cancer Center, located in the Providence Health Care building just south of the Mat-Su Valley Regional Medical Center on Woodworth Loop, hopes to be open by month’s end.