True grit

Marti Malott, a grandmother of five who came to Wright State to pursue a long-sought college dream, is working on her degree while battling cancer.

A grandmother of five who came to Wright State to pursue a long-sought college dream is working on her degree while in a fight for her life.

Marti Malott, a 67-year-old communication studies major who enrolled at the university in 2011, has an aggressive form of breast cancer, and the treatment can be debilitating. Still she pushes on and — while she doesn’t see it this way — serves as an inspiration for those facing tremendously difficult obstacles but continue to move forward.

Her battle was chronicled in a story by Mike Holland, a reporter for DailyFlipz, a website that gives Wright State communication students in the College of Liberal Arts a platform to develop their reporting and writing skills.

When she was 19, Malott decided to get married instead of using a Veterans Administration scholarship to go to school. Her enrollment at Wright State in the spring of 2011 represented the start of a long-awaited opportunity.

After Malott found a lump on her breast in July 2013, she had a mammogram and was told by the doctor she had advanced breast cancer. She asked him what would happen if she elected not to have surgery.

“He said, ‘You’re going to die,’” she recalled.

Malott completed her schoolwork for the summer semester and then went in for surgery in August, during which time four tumors were discovered. But her surgery was considered successful, and she began undergoing what would become six rounds of chemotherapy.

A few weeks later she was back in class, but had to battle fatigue and had trouble recalling information. Several weeks later she suffered a serious medical event that reduced her white blood infection-fighting count to zero.

“I almost died,” she said. “My oncologist said no more classes. I was absolutely devastated.”

Her education is an important goal for Mallott.

“The entire time that I was away from school, I just thought about getting back,” she said. “I miss it. I love to engage and interact. I want to be more viable.

Malott’s driven, never-give-up attitude is just one of many ways in which her battle with cancer has changed her.

“Cancer has taught me to live each day and be grateful because we don’t know how long we’ll be here,” she said. “… I’ve always been a very blunt, direct person; but this has taught me to listen more and to be more open to people and ideas.”

Malott, who lives in Xenia, was able to take a few classes last summer and was preparing for fall semester when her surgeon discovered that her cancer had returned and that he couldn’t guarantee she would live more than six months.

However, three aggressive treatments to attack the new tumor have reduced it by 30 percent. Malott has been taking online courses and plans to return to the classroom next spring.

“I’ve been counting the days until I can come back to school,” she said. “I have to fight. I’ve been so blessed, and I have so many people, family and longtime friends in my corner.”