Love for

Children

Sustains

Valerie Dunn

In Illness

When people are diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer and given a 50/50 chance to live five years, they usually need something more than medical treatment to sustain them through the crisis.

   For Valerie Dunn, who was diagnosed in 2003, it has been her three children.

  “I’m not a particularly Religious person,” Dunn said. “It’s the love of my three children that keeps me going.” Dunn’s children range in age from 10 to almost 16.

   She has a son, 22, from her first marriage, who is in college and lives with his father.

   Dunn said that her three youngest children haven’t been in contact with their father (her second husband) in eight years.

    “So as a single parent I need to be there for my them as long as I can,” she said.

   “My youngest, Kieffer, is in the fifth grade.

   He plays the clarinet and joined the

school band this year. He’s

a jokester, but he’s also my

most sensitive child.

   “McKenzie is 12 and in the

seventh grade. He is into baseball and is a real compassionate kid.

   “My daughter Shea is 15

and, like most girls her age,

she’s just starting to like boys. She is somewhat naïve and kindhearted.”

   Dunn began working at Raley’s in North Highlands in 1998 as a Drug Center Assistant. She joined the Union in 2002, when she became a Customer Service Manager.

“I don’t know what we would have done without

my Union-negotiated health benefits,” she said.

  “I have had all sorts of

treatments since my disease began, and if not

for those benefits I could

not have afforded to pay

for any of them.”

   Dunn said she has always been straight with

the children about her

condition.

   “I wasn’t going to lie to

them,” she said. “Telling

them what is going on

helps them to understand

what I am going through,

and it makes it easier for

them to deal with the

situation.”

     She said an art therapy program funded through Sutter Hospital has also helped her children cope. 

   “All things considered, they are dealing with it quite well,” Dunn said.

   Dunn is also a realist. She has made arrangements for her children’s care after she’s gone.

   “My sister, Tammy, is already their legal guardian and they will live with her when the time

comes,” Dunn said.

   “Tammy has agreed that they will stay together and she will raise them.”

   In spite of her body being ravaged by cancer, Dunn hopes to defy the odds. “My children need me, and I’m going to be here for them as long as I can,” she said.