PORT ANGELES — Camille Frazier is a fighter.
Frazier, who was diagnosed with cancer for the second time in five years, thinks she is winning.
The Port Angeles wife, mother, grandmother and para-educator underwent a double mastectomy to battle an aggressive form of breast cancer Feb. 3.
Long, hard battle
Just getting to the point where she could have the surgery was a long, hard battle that required her to search out new forms of radiation therapy and try unorthodox chemotherapy.
“I sit here in amazement of where I started and where I am at this moment, it is absolutely miraculous that I am tumor free,” Frazier, 49, said on her website, http://camillefrazier.weebly.com.
She and her family will get some help this weekend in the form of the third annual Port Angeles High School Talent Show.
Twenty-one acts will take the stage at 7 p.m. today at the Port Angeles High School auditorium to raise funds to help Frazier pay her soaring medical expenses.
“I’m lucky I have insurance, but even with it, the bills are crazy high,” Frazier said.
Tickets for the talent show cost $8 for adults, $5 for children ages 5 to 12, or $20 for a family of four.
Doors open at 6 p.m. for a silent auction of 56 items donated by local businesses.
Frazier was in California, where she had the surgery, on Thursday, and it was unknown if she would be able to return home in time for the fundraiser, Port Angeles School District spokeswoman Tina Smith-O’Hara said Thursday.
Frazier has worked as a classroom aide in “medically fragile” special-education classes at Jefferson Elementary and Stevens Middle schools since 2007.
She has been married to John Frazier for 23 years. They have four children and a 4-year-old granddaughter.
Mariah, 17, is a junior at Port Angeles High School, Sierra works as a para-educator at Port Angeles High School, Rylan lives and works in Port Angeles, and Ross, 30, lives in Seattle.
Frazier has been through virtually every kind of cancer therapy there is and finally has hope that she is gaining the upper hand in her battle for life.
In January 2011, she thought she had won her battle against breast cancer without having to resort to a mastectomy.
Frazier had nothing but praise for local cancer care centers, where she had received the treatment that put her cancer into remission in 2006.
However, cancer wasn’t done with her.
“It came back with a vengeance,” Frazier said.
She began having renewed symptoms in the first month of 2011, but the cancer wasn’t diagnosed until June, she said.
Growing rapidly
Frazier was told her cancer had returned, was growing rapidly and would require a double mastectomy.
Before starting a new round of chemotherapy to prepare for the mastectomy, she took a trip to her mother’s home in California.
There, at a beauty salon while talking to another customer, she learned of a new treatment at a local clinic that was showing promise.
“They do things in California they don’t do here,” Frazier said.
At the time, Frazier thought the treatment she had scheduled would be sufficient, but she kept the contact information — just in case.
When she returned home to prepare for the surgery, she was told the tumor had spread, attached itself to her chest wall and was inoperable.
Frazier, a self-described fighter with no intention of giving in to the cancer, said she switched her chemotherapy regimen three times, but nothing was working.
“I thought, ‘I’m on my own with this,’” she said.
So she checked into California-based Cancer Care Clinics, associated with the University of California, Los Angeles Oncology Research Network, where she initially was given a 40 percent to 50 percent chance of beating the cancer.
Frazier’s treatment includes a combination of three traditional cancer therapies — radiation, hyperthermia and chemotherapy — which, when used together, her doctors in California believe can be more effective.
The combined treatment is so new it is available at only three clinics in the U.S., she said.
There was no guarantee the therapy would work, Frazier said.
Better chances
After two weeks, her doctor told her the cancer was responding and that her chances had increased to 80 percent or 90 percent.
She returned to chemotherapy and added intravenous vitamin C therapy.
The tumor continued shrinking, and last week, she returned to California for surgery.
The surgery is thought to be successful at this point, Smith-O’Hara said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
