Morehead couple embrace life in midst of marathon illness
by ALLEN BLAIR - Independent, July 2006
MOREHEAD — They didn’t tell her she had six months to live.
“I grew up when people in authority told you what to do and you did it,” Carolyn Flatt said, chuckling, eight years later, a few after finding out.
“If they’d told me I would die ... I guess that’s what I would’ve done.”
So, she embraced living in the days that followed — 3,000, and one, of them now on a recent July weekend — first with cancer treatments, then with trips, to Hawaii, the Waldorf and elsewhere.
With children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. With cards, meals catered by friends, church in the living room. With resolve to hear a 100-year birthday greeting from Willard Scott.
With laughter even.
Her husband Don, who’s journaled the days, told of one in a Lexington hospital when, at her worst in intensive care, they found themselves listening to classical or some kind of instrumental music the nurses had playing while a man mopped the hallway.
“Evidently the worker didn’t like that, so as he passed our door he was singing something like, ‘My gal don’t wear no perfume at all, but you can smell her just the same,’” he said.
“And I looked down at her and as bad off as she was, she had this little smile on her face ... We’ve found a lot of laughter in different places since then.”
They still chuckle over it.
"What sees you through has to be little things," she said. "Of course the main thing, the main thing is God, and your faith in God."
Don and Carolyn Flatt married just after Bible college at what’s now Freed-Hardeman University — she a young woman from Vienna, W.Va.; he a budding preacher from Tennessee.
One day, Morehead State University’s then-president Adron Doran called on friends at Freed-Hardeman, looking for a couple, one to preach at his church and work with students.
“We came for two years in 1957, and those two years are still going on,” joked Don Flatt, retired history department chair.
Mrs. Flatt ended up teaching the college’s professional development institute, what they call PDI.
She retired after 27 years, in 1998, just after the onset of multiple myeloma, a dangerous bone marrow cancer.
“Everybody’s a little tired all the time, so I never thought about it,” she said. Her doctor had wanted to test her for anemia.
“So it shocked me when he said, go to the hospital.”
She wondered if she had been given a death sentence, but he told her several things could be done.
“At no point did I panic ... My feeling was here I am, what you can do for me, do it. It never once occurred to me to die, or even that I was going to die.”
She remembers little else, a result of medicines most likely, about those first months.
Except for the dream.
"I had this dream that ... this pair of hands was lifting me up, and holding me up," she said. "And when I was the sickest ... even when I was not asleep and dreaming, I would feel those hands."
Then, after the first transplant, she faced an early struggle.
“I started feeling pretty well ... and I had to get up for the second one,” she said. “I made myself do it. The doctor said the first transplant knocked it down and with the second, he wanted to stomp it out, and that’s what they’ve done.”
Still, she knew: “You’re not cured ... But I felt like there’s a cure around the corner ...”
Something to live for.
Early on, the couple began to travel. Another thing “to keep her mind on living,” as Don Flatt says.
They took a family trip to Hawaii, something they had dreamed about.
They went to Washington, to Florida, the Smokies, to Parris Island, Ga., to watch their grandson’s U.S. Marine Corps ceremony, and again to Georgia this January to take part in Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School class.
She wanted to spend time with grandchildren, too. And did, taking them on elaborate New York trips. They ate atop the World Trade Center, at the Windows on the World restaurant, shortly before the terrorist attacks toppled it. They stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria.
“I started thinking there was no point in saving, saving, saving,” he said, laughing at his subtle hint about their age. But also, because if she didn’t feel like getting out in the city, well, she had the best place to spend her day.
She smiles about that. He’s thought about her like that always, and especially the last eight years.
“Every 100 days, that I live, Don surprises me with some present,” she said, “Not just some little something, but a nice piece of jewelry or lots of flowers ...”
But she’s the real inspiration, as he tells it.
“She would always say, ‘Any day’s a good day if you’re alive.’”
They’ve laughed at many of those days.
Like one night, when she taught her entire personal development class to her caregiver.
“I was taking a lot of medication then ... and I talked all night.”
Another time, she imagined counting stacks of paper clips. They laughed about that, too.
Yet another, she wanted to plan her funeral; and she and Don penciled out pages of what should happen.
“Then we got so tickled about something ... It got to be such a farce we quit,” she said.
On other days, they’ve simply enjoyed each other’s company.
"One thing of many things that have really helped us ... soon after she started getting a little better there at the beginning," he said. "I'd go out and rent a movie."
They watch one most every night now.
On the days that mattered, it came down to family, and God.
Fifty years to the day of their marriage, July 8, they met in the same sanctuary with the same preacher, and with 16 new members of their own Flatt clan.
A song played from a record of their 1956 wedding, and they told each other how they still felt. Then, the entire family met the next day, for Sunday worship.
That particular day of the week has always been a major ingredient in her survival, she says.
One Sunday, church elders came from hours away to pray, anoint and lay hands on her. On others, the Southside Church of Christ in Lexington held services at their home.
“Celebration in general means so much to me ... Each Sunday represents a milestone in my celebration.”
It’s what’s seen her through, along with all the other things, these 3,000 days. Medicine in the form of her laughter, her children, her friends.
One’s called her almost every day for eight years, while another’s sent a cheery card every week.
“And the friend who called me this week and said if the kidney failure continued and she was a match she wanted me to have one of her’s,” she said, pausing at the thought.
“You know it’s really humbling,” she said. “I’ve ... during this, the most painful times and the most shocking times, I’ve never said why me. But when I would look at how good I had it and how far I’ve come and even things like kidney problems reversed that could only be explained by prayer. I say why me in that direction
“Why have I been permitted to live all this time, and others haven’t?” she said. “I know it’s not because I’m any better than they are ... and I think, there’s something I’m supposed to do.
“And I hope I’m doing it.”
“I grew up when people in authority told you what to do and you did it,” Carolyn Flatt said, chuckling, eight years later, a few after finding out.
“If they’d told me I would die ... I guess that’s what I would’ve done.”
So, she embraced living in the days that followed — 3,000, and one, of them now on a recent July weekend — first with cancer treatments, then with trips, to Hawaii, the Waldorf and elsewhere.
With children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. With cards, meals catered by friends, church in the living room. With resolve to hear a 100-year birthday greeting from Willard Scott.
With laughter even.
Her husband Don, who’s journaled the days, told of one in a Lexington hospital when, at her worst in intensive care, they found themselves listening to classical or some kind of instrumental music the nurses had playing while a man mopped the hallway.
“Evidently the worker didn’t like that, so as he passed our door he was singing something like, ‘My gal don’t wear no perfume at all, but you can smell her just the same,’” he said.
“And I looked down at her and as bad off as she was, she had this little smile on her face ... We’ve found a lot of laughter in different places since then.”
They still chuckle over it.
"What sees you through has to be little things," she said. "Of course the main thing, the main thing is God, and your faith in God."
Don and Carolyn Flatt married just after Bible college at what’s now Freed-Hardeman University — she a young woman from Vienna, W.Va.; he a budding preacher from Tennessee.
One day, Morehead State University’s then-president Adron Doran called on friends at Freed-Hardeman, looking for a couple, one to preach at his church and work with students.
“We came for two years in 1957, and those two years are still going on,” joked Don Flatt, retired history department chair.
Mrs. Flatt ended up teaching the college’s professional development institute, what they call PDI.
She retired after 27 years, in 1998, just after the onset of multiple myeloma, a dangerous bone marrow cancer.
“Everybody’s a little tired all the time, so I never thought about it,” she said. Her doctor had wanted to test her for anemia.
“So it shocked me when he said, go to the hospital.”
She wondered if she had been given a death sentence, but he told her several things could be done.
“At no point did I panic ... My feeling was here I am, what you can do for me, do it. It never once occurred to me to die, or even that I was going to die.”
She remembers little else, a result of medicines most likely, about those first months.
Except for the dream.
"I had this dream that ... this pair of hands was lifting me up, and holding me up," she said. "And when I was the sickest ... even when I was not asleep and dreaming, I would feel those hands."
Then, after the first transplant, she faced an early struggle.
“I started feeling pretty well ... and I had to get up for the second one,” she said. “I made myself do it. The doctor said the first transplant knocked it down and with the second, he wanted to stomp it out, and that’s what they’ve done.”
Still, she knew: “You’re not cured ... But I felt like there’s a cure around the corner ...”
Something to live for.
Early on, the couple began to travel. Another thing “to keep her mind on living,” as Don Flatt says.
They took a family trip to Hawaii, something they had dreamed about.
They went to Washington, to Florida, the Smokies, to Parris Island, Ga., to watch their grandson’s U.S. Marine Corps ceremony, and again to Georgia this January to take part in Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School class.
She wanted to spend time with grandchildren, too. And did, taking them on elaborate New York trips. They ate atop the World Trade Center, at the Windows on the World restaurant, shortly before the terrorist attacks toppled it. They stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria.
“I started thinking there was no point in saving, saving, saving,” he said, laughing at his subtle hint about their age. But also, because if she didn’t feel like getting out in the city, well, she had the best place to spend her day.
She smiles about that. He’s thought about her like that always, and especially the last eight years.
“Every 100 days, that I live, Don surprises me with some present,” she said, “Not just some little something, but a nice piece of jewelry or lots of flowers ...”
But she’s the real inspiration, as he tells it.
“She would always say, ‘Any day’s a good day if you’re alive.’”
They’ve laughed at many of those days.
Like one night, when she taught her entire personal development class to her caregiver.
“I was taking a lot of medication then ... and I talked all night.”
Another time, she imagined counting stacks of paper clips. They laughed about that, too.
Yet another, she wanted to plan her funeral; and she and Don penciled out pages of what should happen.
“Then we got so tickled about something ... It got to be such a farce we quit,” she said.
On other days, they’ve simply enjoyed each other’s company.
"One thing of many things that have really helped us ... soon after she started getting a little better there at the beginning," he said. "I'd go out and rent a movie."
They watch one most every night now.
On the days that mattered, it came down to family, and God.
Fifty years to the day of their marriage, July 8, they met in the same sanctuary with the same preacher, and with 16 new members of their own Flatt clan.
A song played from a record of their 1956 wedding, and they told each other how they still felt. Then, the entire family met the next day, for Sunday worship.
That particular day of the week has always been a major ingredient in her survival, she says.
One Sunday, church elders came from hours away to pray, anoint and lay hands on her. On others, the Southside Church of Christ in Lexington held services at their home.
“Celebration in general means so much to me ... Each Sunday represents a milestone in my celebration.”
It’s what’s seen her through, along with all the other things, these 3,000 days. Medicine in the form of her laughter, her children, her friends.
One’s called her almost every day for eight years, while another’s sent a cheery card every week.
“And the friend who called me this week and said if the kidney failure continued and she was a match she wanted me to have one of her’s,” she said, pausing at the thought.
“You know it’s really humbling,” she said. “I’ve ... during this, the most painful times and the most shocking times, I’ve never said why me. But when I would look at how good I had it and how far I’ve come and even things like kidney problems reversed that could only be explained by prayer. I say why me in that direction
“Why have I been permitted to live all this time, and others haven’t?” she said. “I know it’s not because I’m any better than they are ... and I think, there’s something I’m supposed to do.
“And I hope I’m doing it.”
