Jeanette Ferguson: Singing keeps me sane, that’s what I do, that’s my release.
Annie Porembski: It is Jeanette Ferguson’s passion. That makes it all the more surprising
that this Columbus State biological sciences instructor was once told she’d never sing
again. It after an oral cancer diagnosis in 2002.
Jeanette: I had to learn how to speak, I had to learn how to eat, and I was tube fed for
years until I could swallow. Annie: And doctors initially thought Jeanette
would never sing again. Jeanette:They didn’t want to get my hopes
up…. no one had ever really recovered that far for them.
Annie: Of course, Jeanette proved doctors wrong in a big way as she took baby steps
during years of recovery. Support came from family - - and from her choir director
Jeanette:He let me come back and just sit there and try and sing when I still had bandages
all over my face and you know I could hardly speak, but the more I did it and the more
I used it, I think that’s what helped me to heal faster.”
Annie: Just two years after treatment she sang the national anthem at a Cleveland Indians
Game. In the stands: some of her doctors and nurses and also other cancer survivors.
Jeanette:When I go out there and sing I do it to raise awareness and to help cheer on
those who aren’t going to eat again, who can never speak again, I have so many friends
who this is something they’ll never get to do.
Annie: A decade after the diagnoses Jeanette is able to conduct four-hour lectures. And
she sings regularly with her choir. All of it – she says – is a sign.
Jeanette:I don’t know why I am here, but I take it as this is what I am supposed to
do.
