Acadiana woman puts trauma behind her

• By JAKE FONTENOT
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: May 5, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

EUNICE — There are no doctors or nurses in sight, because she is now cancer-free.

There are no lawyers calling, because she has long since survived a divorce.

With these traumatic events in the past, Marcia Ann Benoit, 53, has decided to scale a new mountain: college.

She is determination personified and says she is looking to be an inspiration for others facing seemingly insurmountable mid life obstacles.

Benoit, an elementary education major at LSU at Eunice who recently took the Praxis exam, said she expects to graduate in a year and start a new career.

But there was a time in her life when the Eunice native didn’t have the luxury of gazing into the future.

In January 2000, Benoit, who says she is a devout Catholic, was diagnosed with breast cancer.

She suddenly found herself engaging in something contrary to her beliefs — making deals with God to allow her stay around long enough to finish raising her youngest son, Jeremy Ortego, then a 14-year-old eighth-grader.

“Even though you’re not supposed to make deals with the Lord, I would say, ‘I’m gonna make this deal,’ ” confessed Benoit, who is substitute teaching until graduation. “‘If I can see Jeremy get out of high school, then that’s all I want.’ ”

Benoit said she saw her youngest son, now 21, as her “backbone of faith” because of a marvelous maturity for his age.

Although she credited him with pushing her through cancer first and toward an education later, Ortego recalled not his mother’s dependence but her grace.

“Mom was the type of person who just wanted us to know she was fine. She was getting through it,” said Ortego, himself a secondary education major at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. “I guess she felt that if we’d seen her weakened, she would’ve had more to worry about. She remained strong throughout it.”

Benoit, a 1972 graduate of St. Edmund High School, opted for a mastectomy, which was followed by chemotherapy. Her decision was based on the deaths of people she’d known who tried to rid themselves of cancer with only radiation.