Ginger Bell’s granddaughters came home from school and dropped their bags in the foyer. Emily and Jorie quietly made their way to the living room where they sat down on the hospital bed covered by a brown fur blanket with their grandmother. Ginger smiled, ear-to-ear, and warmly welcomed them.

Behind her, Ginger’s husband Ricky paced the floor. For the past hour Ginger had been talking about her future, more specifically the uncertainty surrounding it. Richard commented intermittently to help her reclaim the past. The chemotherapy and radiation has taken Ginger’s short-term memory.

The cancer itself is expected to take her life.

Ginger has been diagnosed as terminal. Her pancreatic cancer was caught late — stage 4 — after it metastasized to her liver. Her care is now in the hands of Hospice.

“Pancreatic cancer is the hardest one to get rid of,” she said. “Pretty much after you get it and migrates to another organ, it can’t be cured.”

For the past four months, Ginger’s life has been wrought with the difficulties of balancing hope and disappointment. No longer receiving treatment for the disease, she feels better. Happier. But without treatment or tests, she doesn’t know if the cancer has spread or receded. Neither if nor how far.

Her hope in telling her story is that someone, somewhere will take the time to learn their risks, or that if they already have the disease they’ll focus on what’s really important.

Family.

Ginger, 53, received her diagnosis in December 2014. Prior to that she was the matriarch of her family and a consistent Pell City advocate. She had been a participant in a church or community project just about every night of the week.

“I’ve helped with the Christian Love Pantry and the Pell City Chamber of Commerce. I sang in the civic chorus, and I was in the local theater,” she said, adding that she and her husband even helped launched the local Habitat for Humanity.

But after she received the news — just days before Christmas — she slipped into months of hopelessness. The chemo kept her inactive. She couldn’t climb the stairs in her home by herself.

It was awful, she said. But it got worse.

As the drugs and the disease crippled her body and took her memories, she started having seizures. Then, she suffered a massive stroke that sent her into a coma. It was just before Independence Day this year, and doctors told her family they had no expectations for her to wake up.

“She was out for two days, and they said she wouldn’t leave the hospital,” Ginger’s daughter Melanie Bell said. “But on Friday, she woke up.”

When Ginger came to in the hospital, she showed almost no signs of the stroke. She said she started crying, begging doctors to let her go home. They did eventually on one condition — that she accept Hospice care, only provided to those who have less than six months to live.

“It wasn’t a difficult decision. I shouldn’t even be able to talk,” Ginger said. “I wanted to be with my family.”

Things weren’t easy at home after the stroke. Ginger said the chemo fog took weeks to clear. During that time, she struggled with her role. No longer the family leader, she had to accept help from others in almost every aspect of her life.

“It’s heavy,” she said. “Fighting all of it, the cancer, the stroke, the drugs — all of it. It feels like I’m carrying a backpack full of rocks. It’s like there’s a 12-year-old on my back, and I don’t feel like I can do anything to contribute to the family anymore.”

But little by little over the past month, she started feeling better. Perhaps it was the memory loss, she said, but some days she’d take on a cooking project she wouldn’t have dared attempt just months prior. She’s even taken short vacations with the family.

“If you dwell on it, it will drive you crazy,” she said. “There are times you’ve got to cry, but there are times you have got to stop it or you’ll go nuts.

“Who you are without disease still exists, and you have to hold on to it.”

For Ginger, that means holding on to her loved ones. Family is the most important thing to her, and her remaining time will be spent as close to them as possible. She advises the same for everyone.

“Be with your family and love each other,” she said. “Materialistic things don’t matter. Take a lot of pictures, and make plenty of videos so you’ll hear them whenever you want.

And pray, she said. Pray every day.

“I have people across the country praying for me, and I can feel it,” she said. “Jesus has a plan for you. If you hold on, you’ll find out what it is one day.”

Lakeside Hospice, Inc., a nonprofit that serves St. Clair and the surrounding counties, recently launched Pet Peace of Mind, a program that allows patients to complete their end of life journey without worrying about their pet’s current or future needs. The initiative provides volunteer pet care services for patients who are unable to care for their pets while on hospice. Services include assistance with pet food, financial assistance with routine veterinary care, transporting the pet to veterinary appointments, pet boarding, grooming, walking, and more

You can help support this effort with a designated monetary donation, volunteering or providing a discounted animal service to the Lakeside Hospice Pet Peace of Mind Program. For more about Pet Peace of Mind, call Lakeside Hospice at (205) 884-1111 or visit lakesidehospice.org or Lakeside Hospice, Inc.’s Facebook Page.