JesseCollier.com | Family and Friends | 1982 | City Supports Bernie’s Battle With Cancer | City Supports Bernie’s Battle With Cancer
By Mike Stone
Staff Writer
Bernie Collier wasn't a “bored housewife trying to find something wrong,” as one doctor implied following an examination last March. She was tired. Unusually tired at midday. But, except for a few bladder problems, two visits to a urologist failed to produce a cause for her fatigue. A blood test would have pinpointed the cause.
“I started to get bruises all over me,” the 27-year-old Collier said as she sat on a couch in her home north of Yachats. Slightly pale and wearing a print scarf on her head, Collier described her diagnosis.
“It looked as if I was beat up,” she said, a smile on her face as she turned to Greg, her husband. A visit to Dr. James Thompson in Waldport resulted in a brief hospital stay in Newport and then to Portland for nearly seven weeks in a hospital bed. A bone marrow test showed the cause of her problems — leukemia.
“The test showed I was packed with leukemia cells. If I'd waited much longer to go in the hospital I wouldn't be alive,” Collier said.
Waiting was what Collier and her husband were trying to do. Medical coverage would have gone into effect July 1 and, with two small children to raise, the coverage was vital. But the physical symptoms in June were too serious to ignore. Last week Greg Collier opened a fat envelope from the Portland hospital and found a portion of the total bill for his wife's treatment, all $100,000 of it.
Several people in Waldport have rallied to the Collier cause and a “Bernie Collier Benefit Day” has been set for this Saturday, Aug. 21, from noon to midnight at Kendall Field in Waldport with all proceeds to the Collier family
Admission is 50 cents and $3 for the rock festival from 4 p.m. to midnight featuring the Walton Brothers, Lone Woof, Steve Willis, The Clozettes, Rick Bartow, The Other and CryCry.
“I’m just overwhelmed,” said Collier in describing her reaction to the remarkable community effort.
Being at home with her family is the bright spot of Collier’s life right now. After seven weeks of chemotherapy and physical reaction to the drugs, the serenity of
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‘I’m not really worried about dying. It doesn't scare me. What's harder is that I have a family to raise. They're so young and we've had such a good life together.’
BERNIE AND GREG Collier with their two children, Cody and Jesse, are facing difficult times ahead but a community effort in Waldport may assist in at least the financial burden of Bernie's illness. A “Bernie Collier Benefit Day” is set for this Saturday, Aug. 21 at Kendall Field in Waldport.
