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Deborah Dean on her first day of chemotherapy with her husband Jimmy Dean.
You might know Deborah Dean as just Deborah, or you might know her as “Leather and Lace.”
“I’ m just an odd gal,” Dean said. “I like everything to do with motorcycles, but I like everything to do with the Victorian period and lacy stuff, and stuff like that.”
Dean met her husband because her email address struck him as intriguing.
“The way I met my husband was because my email was ‘harleysandhamlet,’and so he was like, ‘Really? Who is this person who rides a motorcycle, or likes motorcycles, and does Shakespeare?’ ” Dean said.
“So that was kind of cute.”
Dean was diagnosed with Myelodysplastic Syndrome, otherwise known as MDS, on March 20, 2020. MDS is an often unrecognized and under-diagnosed group of bone marrow failure disorders in which the human body is unable to make enough healthy blood cells in the bone marrow. It is extremely rare, and fewer than 200,000 cases are reported in the U.S. each year.
Dean is currently waiting on the test results of a lung biopsy and a bone marrow biopsy.
“I have infections in my lungs and on my heart,” Dean said. “But when they did a new test on the heart,
even though it’s still there, the cardiologist approved me for a transplant, but the infections in my lungs are stopping me.”
The infections on her lungs are bacterial infections she’s been fighting since October 2020. Doctors took her off chemotherapy treatment on Jan. 3 because it could interfere with treatment for her lung infections.
“This month will be one
year for the cancer,” Dean said. “At that point, they had told me that without treatment, I only had eight months to live.”
Dean has been without cancer treatment for more than six weeks. She still manages to keep her spirits up. In fact, she said cancer treatment has not been as rough on her body as it has others.
“I’ve had no problems at all with the cancer treatment,” Dean said. “Zero. I mean, (I am) not even nauseous, nothing. I’ve not been nauseous for cancer treatments. The very first day that I went in for my treatment, they gave me a prescription and said, ‘You need to get this filled today, because you’re likely to get nauseated.’ That prescription is still sitting in there today. I’ m very grateful for that.”
Dean has to avoid certain things because of her treatments, which includes outdoor foliage.
“In the summertime, I would just sit outside, I just had to wear a mask when I was outside because I can’t be around trees, and I can’t be around live plants,” Dean said. “My husband got ready to order me flowers for Valentine’s Day, and went, ‘Oh, I can’t do that. She can’t have the flowers.’”
The only thing Dean wants more than being able to be around flowers again is to eat a certain fast-food item.
“I’ m looking forward to having my flowers again and a Subway sandwich,” Dean said. “I know that’s kind of crazy, but I’m easy to please.”
Dean has had to deal with COVID-19 precautions while undergoing cancer treatment. It has cost her
time with her family.
“For a really, really,
really long time, I wasn’t allowed to have any company, any of my relatives – nothing,” Dean said. “That was really heartbreaking. Christmastime was the first time I’d seen my son and my two oldest grandsons and my brother since August, because I was on really strict restrictions because of my immune system being so low. Even then, I had to just see them one person at a time. We couldn’t get together as a big family. I had to see each person individually.”
Dean has begun making up for lost time by writing journals for her grandchildren. She wants them to be able to read about the biggest stories of her life, and everything that has happened to her in between. Cancer gave her one gift – the perspective of being thankful for what she has and what is has yet to come.
“I made each grandson a separate journal so that they will know about my childhood, to teenage years, to adulthood,” Dean said. “I put pictures in there of what our old tables look like, and I put pictures in there of my very first furniture as an adult, and I put some pictures in there of my travels by motorcycle, because I did motorcycle across several states by myself. So, the journals have been really helpful and really nice.”
Dean is thankful for her friends and her family, and she is thankful to be nominated for Citizen of the Week.
“This is a big honor, and it’s very exciting to hear that,” Dean said. “I’m very surprised, very honored and very excited. I just want to say thank you to whoever nominated me.”