Reporter’s Note: Anyone who has had to hear the term “cancer” used in the diagnosis for a close loved one knows the fearful, emotional impact that accompanies that dreaded news. Recently I’ve experienced this personally with a very close loved one. Let’s just say it’s been a long summer for both of us. So when I was offered an opportunity to meet a Hahira resident who is battling leukemia, I was excited to have the chance. Cancer patients and their family members and close friends will tell you that once the word “cancer” enters your life, it affects everyone around the patient. Communicating with fellow cancer patients and their loved ones brings sweet relief to the battered emotions of both patient and caregiver alike. Lowndes County, I have learned, has a strong community of cancer survivors. James Miley Jr., the Hahiran who is waging a strong but weary battle against leukemia, was a sheer delight to meet. His spirits are high. He loves to laugh. He appreciates life and is grateful for his blessings. And his faith in God has been strengthened by his battle. His wife Patricia Ann smiles as broadly as he does when they discuss their experiences fighting the dreaded disease. They may not realize how much they lifted my spirit. And thank God, my faith was strengthened as well. I hope yours will be too when you meet these remarkable people.

HAHIRA – James Miley Jr. hardly had a sick day in his life, rarely if ever needing to take a mere aspirin. The 65-year-old farmer just a few years ago could walk the rows of tobacco on his farm and harvest at a pace that rivaled his much younger farm hands.

Today, however, Miley is almost too tired to walk from one end of his house to the other. He’s been battling a war against leukemia since being diagnosed with the cancer in January 2007.

Gaunt and frail as Miley appears, his spirits are high, his humor is rampant and his faith in a God he believes is still in control is unshakable.

Leukemia is a cancer of the blood of bone marrow and is characterized by an abnormal proliferation of usually white blood cells.

Miley and his wife Patricia Ann had worked for two years to renovate an old family home at 108 E. Lawson Dr., finishing the project in December 2006. It was during the work to restore the home, which was built by his cousin Cleve Miley in the first decade of the 1900s, that Miley noticed he was tiring easily.

“We’d work a little bit and he’d say ‘Let’s sit down on the porch swing for awhile, and that just was not like him at all,” Patricia Ann said. “I knew something wasn’t right.”

The couple visited the Pearlman Cancer Center at South Georgia Medical Center in Valdosta where blood tests revealed the leukemia.

As devastating as it is for any family to hear the dreaded “C” word as the diagnosis, Miley said he took it in stride.

“I just thought, well, God is in control of this and all I can do now is look up to Him,” Miley said. “It’s all in His hands anyway.”

The initial lab work at Pearlman Cancer center found his blood count to be very low. They gave him four pints of blood. Then they went to the Mayo Clinic for a second opinion on the leukemia diagnosis. There, it was confirmed, and the clinic specialists ordered a chemotherapy treatment that was carried out at Pearlman Cancer Center.

At that point, the Mileys realized how important the blood transfusions were.

“We’d never had any experience with needing blood, so it really opened our eyes that it took willing donors to make sure there was even any blood available,” Patricia Ann said.