Books, flowers beckon as Hillsboro librarian recovers from cancer treatment (The Hillsboro Argus)

The hard be in action to install this summer family and English-style garden happened a decade ago; the plants are advance toward perfection. “It was the best investment for mind and soul,” Diva says. “Being outside - it saved me it along with my cats.”

Diva’s friends and co-workers at the Hillsboro Library knew of this garden and too of the challenges Diva faced. When they decided to participate in the 2008 Relay for Life, the tribute to cancer survivors held in June at Hillsboro Stadium, they chose the name “Diva Gardens” for their team.

At the time, Diva was undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for a tumefaction in her brain.

Only months before, at the Nov. 6, 2007, City Council session, many of those same library staff had watched as Mike Smith, library director, and Mayor Tom Hughes honored Diva with an award for her 30 years service as a technical reference librarian. Library visitors from over those decades might recall the petite woman with a commanding presence and a European flavor - flowing garments and, especially, hats - who would take their special requests for book orders.

Her cancer diagnosis came one month after the award presentation. For the previous year she had sought treatment for painful headaches and vision problems, originally thought to be caused by a sinus condition. Then an MRI revealed a tumor opposed to her optic nerve.

Its location made surgery impracticable, so she began put drugs into and radiation treatments. Today Diva is in remission; the swelling’sitting gone.

Now, step-by-step, the challenge is to broaden quotidian contacts that were narrowed by the effects of the treatment.

Unable to swallow, she’session limited to a formula diet for now. Diva says her oncologist told her it may take six months before she recovers her sense of taste and her dry, galled inlet heals. This burden is complicated, she says, by the fact her husband, Bruce Ulrich, is a wonderful tamper with: His dishes smell for a like reason good, she has to move externality.

One such delight remained, she says. “In a Faustian transaction, God said, you’re going to get this awful thing. But guess what? You can still drink coffee.”

Because of the tumor’sitting location, she also has to adapt to continuing damage to her sight: double phantom, no peripheral vision or depth perception.

Despite every one of, Diva says she’sitting continued to work for the library on a part-time basis by telecommuting (”not a whole lot, but some”) while she’s been home, reading by increasing fount sizes or using a magnifying glass. She retired from her full-time post April 30, but she plans to ease posterior portion into the library community in early September, starting out by working on site at Shute Park Library four hours weekly.

That’s a perfect completion to the circle - shifting back from garden to library desk. Diva says for six months a bit of garden moved the opposite direction: from the library to her home. With Kathy Wilson, the library volunteer coordinator, handling arrangements, renewed flowers appeared quietly by dint of. Diva’s doorstep every Tuesday.

“They’ve stopped now. I said, I’m getting better. Save it for someone else,” she says.