Cancer patient Marian Petrie kicks her leg with her friends at the Boulder City Elks Lodge 1682. Petrie’s friends shaved their heads when she lost her hair. They are, from left, Jeff Hayden, Bruce Adams, Mary Adams, husband John Petrie, Collin Stolpe and Tom Hensley.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 | 1:59 a.m.
Beyond the Sun
Marian Petrie knows she has good friends every time she sees a bald head at the Elks Lodge in Boulder City.
Petrie, who is fighting ovarian and uterine cancer, was losing her hair from the chemotherapy treatments that began after her surgery in June. The hair started falling out in clumps on July 4, getting into her mouth and leaving piles on her pillow, her husband, John, said.
So July 5, the Petries — John, Marian and their 21-year-old son, Patrick — held a head-shaving party. All three went bald together.
Their friends at the Elks Lodge No. 1682 heard about it and decided to join in. On Monday, member Mary Adams shaved six heads at the lodge, including hers.
All told, 10 friends and family members shaved their heads with Marian Petrie — and took the photos to prove it.
"It's nice to have lots of local support," Marian Petrie said.
These are also the friends who provide her rides to the many doctor appointments and chemotherapy sessions in Henderson and Las Vegas, she said. She can't drive, because in addition to the cancer, she has diabetes and epilepsy.
In a way, she said, finding the uterine cancer was fortunate. She had been experiencing occasional pain for about nine months that doctors tried to tell her was a bladder infection. Then in June, after she jumped into a pool, the pain got so bad, she could not stand.
A trip to the emergency room showed a tumor the size of a softball, and days later she was undergoing surgery. While removing the uterine tumor, she said, doctors also found the ovarian cancer, which is more deadly and often not found until it's too late.
"If it weren't for the big tumor, they wouldn't have found it," she said.
When she started the chemotherapy, all of her health-care providers told her she would lose her red hair, a prospect that she said scared her.
"I was afraid of losing my hair. I thought that was the worst," she said. "I didn't realize the pain there would be."
Adams said she had no qualms going bald with her friend.
"They don't prepare you that it's OK to be without your hair," Adams said.
"If more people did this," she said, rubbing her scalp, "more would want to live this way. There's nothing to handle. I love it."
Petrie is grateful to her friends, but most grateful to her husband of 28 years, John, who she said arranges all of her rides and has stood by her side every step.
The admiration is mutual, John Petrie said.
"She's the strongest woman I ever met," he said.
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