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Sisters, Oregon
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The contents of the on-line edition of The Nugget represent a selection among the stories that appear in the weekly print edition.

Carol Woosley is heading home soon
By Tom Chace, Correspondent

Long-time Sisters resident and Black Butte Ranch waitress Carol Woosley learned this week that she will be coming home from her 100-day cancer treatment program in Portland -- possibly by the end of this month.

Woosley underwent a bone marrow transplant in Portland after months of agonizing waiting for a donor. Within days of each other, two matches were found and the transplant was scheduled. She has been undergoing follow up treatment and heavy chemotherapy medication since.

"We've been living in our fifth-wheel at a trailer park here in Tualatin," she said. "For the first few weeks I was staying with friends as Michael couldn't get the trailer over here due to the bad weather conditions in January."

Michael is Carol's husband and also a long-time waiter at the Black Butte Ranch Lodge dining room.

Woosley's sister Shelly Riley, from the Bay Area, has been with Carol almost every other week since she went in for treatment. That's about six weeks total. Her son Scott Seros and his fiancee Kathy Lawrence have also stayed with her, as has her sister-in-law Janet Woosley.

"Scott and Kathy will be married soon after I get home in April," she said.

Others who have taken care of Carol are her daughter-in-law, Kathy Woosley, and Laura Culwell, who is the bartender in the upstairs lounge at the Lodge.

"What would we have done without friends and family?" said Michael Woosley. "And the money that this is costing... We could not have done it alone and we are eternally grateful."

Black Butte Ranch and Sisters area residents rallied last summer to raise funds for Woosley's treatment.

Michael has two days off each week -- Mondays and Tuesdays -- and spends that time with his wife.

She said that she couldn't have made it without that kind of support as the days are long and lonely.

"I can get out once in a while for a short walk when the weather is nice, but I only go into the clinic twice a week for checkups and the rest of the time I am confined here in our trailer," she said.

A minor setback last week returned her to the hospital and may hold up her return to Sisters, but as of last weekend (March 21) the suspicious lymph nodule in her abdomen seemed to be corrected and she is back on schedule.

"This procedure is horrendously expensive," said Michael Woosley, "We are so appreciative to those who have given to Carol's fund to help with these overwhelming expenses. Not just for the transplant and hospital care but for the continuing cost of drugs."

Carol's email address is: mcwoosley@hotmail.com. She welcomes telephone calls at (503) 691-6959.

"If she sounds a bit weak or woozy, it probably is the medication," said her sister Shelly.

"Each day is another day," Carol said. "If I don't make it home this coming weekend, I'll be back the weekend after or the one after that. I am coming home," she said.

Cash or check donations can be sent to Maxine Braune, dining room manager, at Box 8000, Black Butte Ranch, 97759, made out to the Carol Woosley Fund.

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