It’s amazing how the worst moments in a person’s life can often bring out the best in others.
For the Schacht family, the fall of 2016 began a stretch of time that would repeatedly test the three of them – Chris, Christy and their daughter Abby. And for this trio who outside the halls of Hillsboro High School preferred not to have their lives on display, they would be forced out of their comfort zone.
“We’re private people,” Christy said. “I mean, we were, I should say, private people.”
Until Christy’s battle with breast cancer put the Schachts in the spotlight. Soon they would be initially reluctant, eventually thankful recipients of random acts of kindness from their extended Hawks family.
“We really didn’t want the attention,” Christy said. “I mean, we just didn’t want any of it.”
“But that’s something you have to learn how to accept it, because people want to help,” said Chris, who is currently in his 21st season as a physical education teacher and head soccer coach for the boys and girls programs at Hillsboro.
Community rallies
When the ordeal began, the Schachts had no idea how much they would come to appreciate that help. In fact, Christy said she was adamant about not letting her situation become an excuse for altering the normal routine. It’s why Christy insisted on getting to the high school every day, no matter how she felt, to fulfill her duties as office manager for the principal, Dr. Cathleen Freeman.
“My whole philosophy through this entire thing, and the reason I only missed half a day of work – and that was because Dr. Freeman made (Chris) take me home, because I did not want to go home – but if I missed anything, then that meant that the cancer was winning, and I did not want that to happen,” she said.
Over time, the Schachts had to acknowledge that it would take a total team effort to win that battle. Fortunately, there was a team in the Hillsboro community ready to take on that challenge.
“We had a great support system,” Christy said. “We really, really did.”
And all of this within her first few months on the job.
Christy had previously applied for a position in the Hillsboro School District four times, but none of them panned out. So when there was an opening for office manager at the high school, those prior disappointments didn’t exactly have Christy jumping at the opportunity.
“I was told that I should apply for this one,” she said. “I did not want to, but I did, and I ended up getting it.”
Christy also became eligible to have a checkup with the mammogram van that Hillsboro would make available for district employees at the end of October. Soon after the mammogram, Christy was called in to have a biopsy on Nov. 22, right before Thanksgiving, which would make things interesting.
“I had to tell (Chris’s) sister, my sister-in-law, what was going on, because I’m like, ‘Hey, we’re having Thanksgiving, but I can’t lift the turkey out of the oven,’” Christy said. “I couldn’t do anything, so I had to tell someone, but we didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, because we were still hoping it was nothing.”
But shortly after Thanksgiving, the Schachts received the news.
“They called me at school and told me, and I just got up and started taking laps,” Christy said. “I went down to the maintenance hall, because I knew where (Chris) was, but I did not want to make a scene. My boss, she knew, and when she found me, I was in the closet, just kind of away from everybody, by myself, so I wouldn’t break down. And then we had to think of when and how we were going to tell Abby, and that was probably the hardest thing I ever did.”
And certainly the hardest thing Abby has ever had to hear.
“I knew what was going on, but I didn’t really think that it could happen,” said Abby, who was in her sophomore year. “I mean, you see all the bad stuff going on, but you still think, ‘That’s not going to happen to me. That’s not going to affect my family.’ And then it does, like a wrecking ball.”
Ironically, not long after she was hit with the news – as well as an avalanche of scientific and medical jargon about what her mother would have to go through – Abby’s biology class began a new unit on cancer, which she said helped her get a grasp of the situation.
“The more I learned about it, the easier it was to kind of process it, because I know more about what’s going on,” she said. “They were using all those medical terms and stuff, but I kind of learned through my classes what all of it was and how it works, and that made it easier to know exactly what’s going on.”
Christy has surgery
Christy had a lumpectomy Dec. 8, then a port placement just before Christmas. Her first chemotherapy treatment was on Jan. 13, when Christy received a dose of what she not-so-affectionately referred to as “the Red Devil.” The initial treatments came every other week for eight weeks; the second batch was administered weekly over a 12-week period.
“The first eight weeks, those were the bad ones,” Chris said.
Christy still tried to maintain normal outward appearances. That would change when Christy hit her “rock bottom:” the loss of her hair.
“That’s when I think that it became real, because I saw it,” she said. “I’d be playing with my hair and have a clump of it come out, and I’d be like, ‘Now it’s real.’ That was the worst thing.”
But throughout those moments, the support system was there to help. Chris was particularly thankful for the way the high school secretaries, Christy John and Julie Reiter, embraced his wife.
“Christy and Julie were both really good with her,” he said.
“My work family was just awesome,” Christy said. “I mean, they were phenomenal.”
Christy recalled the day she came to work and the office had been decorated with pink ribbons and balloons. Her co-workers also created a “box of love,” which over the many weeks and months became filled with notes of encouragement from people throughout the school.
“I got some great letters from students that really touched me, and I still have them,” Christy said.
Reiter also started a sign-up sheet looking for volunteers to help provide meals for the Schachts, just so they would have one less thing to worry about.
“Just having those meals, and sometimes we’d have a bunch of leftovers in the freezer, and we were eating it four or five times a week, and it was one thing we didn’t have to worry about,” Chris said. “It seems very small, but people just want to help, but they don’t know how to help. And that was one thing that really stuck out was, well, we didn’t have to worry about meals.”
And Chris said that support made a difference.
“It really helped with the mental part of it,” he said. “The physical part was hard enough, but the mental part was kind of the part that took more of a toll, really.”
For Abby, her parents did all they could to let her keep being a teenager.
“I still lived my life, I guess you could say,” Abby said. “I tried not to let it stop me from doing what I would normally do.”
Her friends were huge in that regard.
“They were trying to keep me away from it, but at the same time, they understood, like if they asked me to hang out or something and I said, ‘No,’ they would be like, ‘Yeah, OK, that makes sense,’” Abby said. “They just helped me through everything. If I needed somebody to talk to, they were always there for me.”
Soccer provides family respite
Soccer also became a brief source of normalcy during the spring of 2017 for Abby and Chris. Just a quick mental break, allowing the two of them to sort of recharge the batteries.
“Soccer was definitely the No. 1 outlet,” Abby said.
“When you’re playing a sport and you’re competing and you have that good support system around you, none of them are reminding you about it,” Chris said. “Abby’s doing what she loves, I was doing what I love, and when the game was over, we’d come back home and try to make (Christy) comfortable.”
Those were difficult days for Christy, who had never missed Abby’s games, in any sport, prior to that season.
“It made me mad that I couldn’t go, but I knew what was best for me,” she said. “I mean, I could hardly walk some days.”
Abby scored a team-high 14 goals with 10 assists that season, as Hillsboro won a Class 3 District 2 title before falling to Cape Girardeau Central 1-0 in the sectional round.
“(Chris) was talking to the team at the end of the game, and I almost started crying, because he was thanking all of us for being an outlet and all that, and how he was happy that they were all there for me and him, and I just started busting out in tears,” Abby said.
That final game was on May 23. Three days later, Christy was ringing the bell to symbolize her final treatment of chemotherapy.
“That was a good moment,” she said.
It wouldn’t be the end of the ordeal. Besides needing a lot of time to physically recover from the effects of the chemotherapy, Christy had also tested positive for BRCA1, an abnormal gene meaning she was at a higher-than-average risk for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. So after a bilateral mastectomy and port removal on June 19, Christy had her ovaries removed on Sept. 6.
“It’s changed my life a lot, unfortunately, and I don’t think it’ll ever go away,” Christy said. “Nothing’s the same, that’s for sure.”
But out of the darkness, there have been some beams of light.
“You don’t take things for granted as much anymore,” Chris said. “You always think, ‘Ah, it’s not going to happen to me,’ but it can happen to anybody, at any time, and after, geez, 18-1/2, 19 years of marriage, it’s something that, I don’t know, you can kind of take each other for granted after a while. But when something like that happens, you learn a new appreciation for your loved one.”
Also, the Schachts know that Abby can get tested at age 18 to see if she has the same BRCA1 gene, and if so, she can decide to have the preventive surgery. And for Abby, who is now in her senior year, this whole experience may have helped her find her calling as a pediatric oncology nurse.
“I always wanted to help (her mom) in some kind of way, but I just couldn’t, because I didn’t know enough. But eventually I’ll get to that point. Plus after what we went through, I can help the parents with coping mechanisms.”
You don’t want them to be around their kids and be sad all the time. You want them to live their best life that they can, no matter how short or how long it ends up being. You just want to do everything for them.”
Hearing that makes Christy proud, knowing that Abby wants to help other people be survivors.
“Working at the school, and seeing our life unfold in front of everybody, my goal was just to be a fighter, and to tell people not to give up,” she said. “I wanted to set a good example for Abby, for her friends, just for the whole school population really.”