‘Appreciate the little things’

Carrie Ferch, a council member in Waldorf for the past 12 years, is a breast cancer survivor. After finding a lump in her right breast in January of 2012, she was diagnosed at stage 3c, which means the cancer was attacking her lymph nodes and would soon have begun metastasizing to other places in her body. This led to a double mastectomy followed by eight rounds of chemotherapy.

 

Sometimes the aftereffects were overwhelming. After a change in chemicals in round five, Ferch remembers, “I hurt all over. I couldn’t stand; I couldn’t sit down; I couldn’t lie down. The pain was intense.” Once the chemotherapy was completed, Ferch says, she took a month off to let her body recover, then began five weeks of radiation, receiving treatments Monday through Friday. “In some ways, it was worse than the chemotherapy,” she recalls. “With the chemicals, you could predict the highs and lows. With radiation, I was always tired.”

 

She says there were two elements of her life which helped her keep going. “My sense of humor has always helped me,” she comments. “It’s possible to find something to laugh at no matter how tough your situation is.”

 

Also, “I did not want my nieces and nephews to believe I was going to give up.”

 

Ferch admits she was impatient with her illness. She always felt she was going to beat it, but she was attending classes to become a nurse. The time needed for the treatments and recovery were an interruption and a distraction from her training. She was delighted when they were over and she could continue her life. The last vestige of the 2012 encounter were the checkups, spaced every three months apart at the beginning and spread to six months later on.

 

Thinking the matter was over and done with, Ferch moved on with her life until November of 2020 during the Covid shutdown when cancer was discovered in her bones and liver.

 

Ferch, 53, has lived in Waldorf since 1998 when she found a house there “That I absolutely fell in love with,” and was able to buy it with her family’s help. Ferch was originally a resident of Kilkenny, and still attends church there. She has been playing the organ at St. John’s Lutheran Church for 34 years.

 

Ultrasounds and biopsies led to the 2020 diagnosis: “I cried,” she remembers. “I was taking all the preventive steps I could, and here it is, back again.”

 

As she researched her diagnosis and symptoms online, Ferch discovered others in a similar circumstance had an expected lifespan of three to five years. November of 2025 will be year five for her. Said Ferch, “There were a couple of pills they gave me in the beginning that didn’t do anything, but the Kisqali, that helped.” Kisqali, according to an online source, is a therapy medication which specifically targets proteins in cancer cells. Along with that, Ferch began receiving medication intravenously about a year ago.

 

She says the routine is “physically taxing.” During the treatments, medical technicians “Hook me up to a bunch of bags. Saline to flush, anti-nausea meds, then more saline, then another cancer med.”

 

So why would a woman who has health complications want to serve on a city council? Said Ferch, “I want to represent the people here, make sure people are being truthful and that city work is done properly.” She does like the honesty of the Waldorf residents; she hasn’t taken apart any conspiracies or busted any gigantic scandals or anything. “People are pretty honest around here. Sometimes the kids can be little twerps, but that’s expected. I also like how approachable the sheriff is.”

 

Ferch not only gives her time as a Waldorf city council member; she is an EMT with the city fire department. She serves as a gambling manager and game auditor for pull tabs. She has the story of a short-lived “scandal” she helped resolve when $1,450 went “missing” from the Papa Olie’s pull tab box. Someone had deposited the money, but forgotten to write down where it went. Ferch tracked down the problem quickly by calling the accountants.

 

Besides city council meetings and fire departments, Ferch likes spending time with her family. She hopes to leave impressions on her three grand-nieces, Kayleigh, 5, Everlee, 3, and Olivia, 8 months. She hopes to turn them into productive members of society. In her spare time, she likes doing diamond beading, a craft which creates lines of diamonds on paper using special tools, and counted cross-stitch. As a musician, she sometimes sits down at the baby grand piano in her home to play and be soothed by the harmony. Those who know her often see her wearing Minnesota Wild fan gear. She says she loves anything to do with hockey, Gophers, The Wild. The way she puts it, whoever is playing, she’s watching. She also likes to watch True Crime stories on TV, Chicago SVU and shows like that.

 

For those who have a family member or close friend experiencing cancer, Ferch suggests, “Don’t sugar coat it, but encourage them. Let them talk; if they need to vent, just listen. Until you’ve been through it, you can’t understand what its physical and emotional toll is on the body and mind.

 

“Find things you can enjoy together. Appreciate the simple things.”