{"id":34563,"date":"2014-12-05T10:53:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-05T14:53:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=34563"},"modified":"2022-09-28T12:28:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T16:28:07","slug":"true-grit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2014\/12\/05\/true-grit\/","title":{"rendered":"True grit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Marti<\/a>

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.<\/p><\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Marti Malott, a 67-year-old communication studies<\/a> 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 \u2014 while she doesn\u2019t see it this way \u2014 serves as an inspiration for those facing tremendously difficult obstacles but continue to move forward.<\/p>\n

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

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe said, \u2018You\u2019re going to die,\u2019\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI almost died,\u201d she said. \u201cMy oncologist said no more classes. I was absolutely devastated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her education is an important goal for Mallott.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe entire time that I was away from school, I just thought about getting back,\u201d she said. \u201cI miss it. I love to engage and interact. I want to be more viable.<\/p>\n

Malott\u2019s driven, never-give-up attitude is just one of many ways in which her battle with cancer has changed her.<\/p>\n

\u201cCancer has taught me to live each day and be grateful because we don\u2019t know how long we\u2019ll be here,\u201d she said. \u201c… I\u2019ve always been a very blunt, direct person; but this has taught me to listen more and to be more open to people and ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019t guarantee she would live more than six months.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been counting the days until I can come back to school,\u201d she said. \u201cI have to fight. I\u2019ve been so blessed, and I have so many people, family and longtime friends in my corner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grandmother of five who came to Wright State to pursue a long-sought college dream is working on her degree while battling cancer. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":34567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,725,747,715,4855],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-home-news-sidebar","category-liberal-arts","category-news","category-social-sciences-and-international-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130063,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34563\/revisions\/130063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}