Wendy's fight isn't over. Neither is ours.

Some lives change with a phone call. Wendy Pritchard's changed in late 2020, in an exam room, with three words: non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

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She took the news the way she has taken everything since — quietly, squarely, without flinching. She learned what she was facing and got ready to fight it.

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Then, before the fight could begin, January 2021 brought COVID-19.

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What everyone hoped would be a rough couple of weeks turned into something far more serious. Wendy spent more than two weeks in the hospital and three more in rehabilitation, relearning how to stand, how to walk the length of a hallway, how to trust her own body again. Her cancer treatment was pushed back indefinitely. She stopped looking at the calendar and focused on the only thing still in her control: getting through the day in front of her.

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Later that year, the infusions finally started. They left her drained for days at a time. She kept showing up anyway. Every appointment was another step forward.

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Then, in the spring of 2022, hospitalized with pneumonia at Roswell Park, her doctors found something else. The lymphoma had triggered amyloidosis — a rare condition in which abnormal proteins build up and attack the body's organs. Hers had gone after her kidneys. The damage was severe enough that she began dialysis three times a week.

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Most people would have asked, why me.

Wendy asked "what's next."

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For seven months she was treated for both diseases at once. Infusion chairs, dialysis clinics, hospital rooms, waiting rooms. Needles, medications, exhaustion, and the particular weight of not knowing. The days ran together.

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Her family watched her do something remarkable through all of it: she kept encouraging the people around her. She celebrated lab results the rest of us would have skimmed past. A good number was a reason to be grateful. So was a sunrise.

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In 2023, still in the middle of everything else, she was diagnosed with stage 0 breast cancer. She went into surgery the way she had walked into every other room, steady. The mass was removed. Nothing further was found.

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And slowly, the treatments worked. By 2025 the lymphoma had gone dormant and the amyloid proteins were under control. Wendy still returns to Roswell every three to four months for monitoring. So far, every visit has brought good news.

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She carries the cost of it. The treatments left her with neuropathy, a constant tingling in her hands and feet that never fully quiets. Walking is harder than it used to be, and she uses a cane now.

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If you met her, you might notice the cane. You would remember the smile.

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Wendy's story isn't a story about cancer. It isn't about dialysis, or surgeries, or years measured out in hospital rooms. It's about what she chose to do inside all of that, and what she refused to let it take from her.

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Strength doesn't always look like the things we usually call strong. Sometimes it looks like a woman getting up one more time than she was knocked down, and choosing hope on the days when hope had to be a decision rather than a feeling.

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Cancer challenged her. Disease tested her. Neither one got to define her.

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Wendy Pritchard is more than a survivor. She is proof of what courage, faith, and stubborn perseverance can carry a person through.  

 

​Strength isn't what you can lift. It's whether you get back up. Wendy Pritchard has gotten back up more times than she can count.

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Help her do it again.