A 70-year-old Medora man’s nearly lifelong battle with six different types of cancer makes him a shining symbol of a local cancer awareness group.

“He is an emblem of hope,” Debi Wayman said of John Hughes.

Wayman is the founder of HOPE Medora Goes Pink, an eight-year-old nonprofit organization that provides a letter of encouragement and $50 gift cards for gas and food for those fighting cancer.

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She said Hughes, a Medora native, has touched many lives during his battles with cancer over the years.

“This is his journey of hope,” she said. “He has walked the walk and talked the talk.”

Hughes’ journey began in 1946 when he was born to Joe and Vera Hughes. An only child, he grew up and attended school in Medora. During his senior in 1964, he became sick with what was then known as Hodgkin’s disease, now known as Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“I was misdiagnosed while I was at Medora High School,” he said.

He went off to Millikin College in Johnson City, Tennessee, that summer, and that’s where he was diagnosed correctly, Hughes said.

It would be the first of seven times during the next 52 years that Hughes would be told he had cancer.

“My oncologist said it was Stage 3B and I had six months to live,” he said.

The B means the cancer is in both the top and bottom halves of your body, while A means it is either in the top or bottom but not both, Hughes said.

That was in October 1964, and his doctor back at home in Medora didn’t want him to go back to college.

Hughes said the doctor left the room mad.

“He came back about 30 minutes later and told me he had found me a good doctor down there (Johnson City, Tennessee),” Hughes said. “My parents had faith I would be fine, and that was really the best thing for me because I kept living, and six months came and went. My philosophy at the time was to look for doors to open so I could help people, specifically those with cancer. That’s something I’ve done all my life. I look for those doors to open.”

At that time, it was not known how people got Hodgkin’s disease, and there was no treatment for it, he said.

“The only treatment they had was cobalt treatments,” Hughes said. “That meant lying under a machine 20 minutes at a time for five days a week, so they microwaved my internal body.”

At the time, Hughes said he didn’t know anything about Hodgkin’s disease.

“All I knew was that I was sick,” he said.

So he went to the library to read about the disease and learned that only 2 percent of the people diagnosed with the disease lived more than six years.

But Hughes said that didn’t stop him from living his life.

“I was in college,” he said. “I had a reason to live. I became manager of the wrestling team. I didn’t know any wrestlers. Those guys were crazy. I just became a part of the team and traveled with them everywhere.”

Hughes graduated from Millikin and taught for four years before moving into counseling.

“I had a recurrence (of Hodgkin’s disease) in 1975,” he said. “It was Stage 4B then.”

His oncologist at the time told him the only reason he was alive was because he had a strong body, Hughes said.

“I kept telling him, ‘No, doc. There’s a higher power. God’s taking care of me,’” he said.

The doctor told Hughes he was his longest living patient.

“All his other patients had died,” Hughes said. “He said, ‘There definitely is a higher power taking care of you.’”

But Hughes’ journey was really just beginning.

“In 1994, I found out I had bladder cancer, and about 2000, I had thyroid cancer,” he said.

Then in 2011, Hughes was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Since that time, he also has had cancerous polyps removed from his colon two times.

“But I only count that as once, and then I had basal cell carcinoma (skin cancer),” he said.

That was probably the least severe cancer he has had, Hughes said.

The pancreatic cancer was one of the most serious, he said.

“In 2010, I was in the hospital three times with pancreatitis, so they started scoping me,” he said. “I probably had six or eight scopes at Jewish Hospital. They found the tumor on about the fourth time. They found it early, and they did the surgery.”

During the surgery, which probably saved his life, the surgeon nicked his pancreas, which caused him to start bleeding internally.

“I developed MRSA and was in the hospital for six and a half weeks,” he said. “It was a tough time. I nearly died.”

After spending six and a half weeks in the hospital with MRSA, Hughes was weak and couldn’t walk, so he spent four weeks in rehab at Hoosier Christian Village in Brownstown.

Hughes said one of his more recent doctors found it surprising that he had survived pancreatic cancer.

“I don’t know anybody who has had it and survived,” Hughes said. “It usually gets you before you realize you have it.”

Hughes is on dialysis now and will be for the rest of his life because he is not a good candidate for a kidney transplant. That’s because he has had lymphoma and too many surgeries. The anti-rejection drugs can cause lymphoma.

“You just have to stay healthy,” he said.

Over all of the years, Hughes continued to work mostly as a rehabilitation counselor and therapist.

“It was a pretty good job for me because I was always dealing with people who were sicker than me,” he said. “It kept me honest.”

Work was good therapy for him over the years, Hughes said.

He said his wife, Sue, recently was in the hospital at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital with kidney stones.

“I was talking with a man whose wife had just been diagnosed with cancer,” Hughes said. “We were on an elevator, and I was wearing a sticker that said, ‘There’s hope in Jesus.’”

Hughes and the man talked as the elevator continued down.

“I told him my story,” Hughes said.

When it was over, Hughes had given the man his sticker.

“He said I gave him hope,” Hughes said.

Hughes said he continues to travel because there are dialysis centers everywhere.

Besides having great support from family, especially his wife, Hughes’ prescription for survival is pretty simple.

“I go to the doctor,” he said. “When something isn’t right, I believe the best insurance I have is finding out what’s wrong. The time I had bladder cancer, I saw blood in my urine once. That was it. I’ve decided I had to get that checked.”

He said most men don’t want to go to the doctor.

“But I believe men have to go to the doctor as well as women,” he said. “I don’t deny something’s wrong. I go and find out what’s wrong.”

Wayman said cancer screenings are an important part of HOPE Medora Goes Pink’s program.

Hughes recently received a letter of encouragement with $50 gift cards for food and gas to help with his travels to Seymour for dialysis.

That brought the total amount distributed by HOPE Medora Goes Pink to $50,000, although another $1,000 or so has since been distributed, Wayman said.

“And we already have more names submitted,” she said.

Anyone who knows of a person suffering from cancer can submit information about that person to HOPE Medora Goes Pink. For information, check out the organization’s Facebook page.