Stronger from the fight

Monica Cooper isn’t afraid to tell people she fights like a girl.

In fact, she’s proud of it.

Cooper, a Seymour resident, has spent the past few months fighting breast cancer. Just recently, she completed her fourth and final round of chemotherapy.

Donning a pink bandana with a skull pattern over her bald head, a black Harley-Davidson leather jacket and aviator shades, Cooper doesn’t look or act like she’s ever been sick a day in her life.

Her appearance and confident swagger put her more in line to be a rock star or biker chick. In reality, she is a dedicated mother of two young children, a devoted and loving doctor’s wife, a martial arts black belt and a cancer survivor.

Through her battle with breast cancer and determination to beat it, she has come to be an “indomitable spirit.”

“You do or die,” she said. “And I am doing.”

That mentality is one of the life lessons she has learned from her martial arts training. As a student of Ko’s Martial Arts Academy in Seymour, Cooper has embodied the tenets of tae kwan do and has incorporated them into her daily life.

“Perseverance, integrity, courtesy and self-control are all things I’ve learned through martial arts and all things I’ve had to call upon in my fight with cancer,” she said.

As a constant reminder of that inner strength, she had the words “indomitable spirit” tattooed in green Chinese lettering down her left ribcage.

A year ago in June, Cooper demonstrated her inner and outer strength when she received her black belt and shattered two concrete bricks with her hand.

“I didn’t feel a thing. So much of it is mind and spirit, and not the physical,” she said of the sport. “It’s about finding something deep inside you that you didn’t even know you had.”

The same goes for beating cancer, she added.

“People live with cancer, and that’s what I chose to do, to live” she said.

Not every day is easy, though, and having a support system in place is important, she added.

Cooper credits much of her positive attitude and strong will to fight to her husband, Dr. Robert Cooper, head surgeon of Schneck Medical Center’s new surgical weight loss center; her children, Nigel and Olivia; her close friends; and her “family” at Ko’s, including Master Karen Bowman and Grand Master Yun S. Ko.

“They keep me going and I am so grateful to have them in my life,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll get an extra hug from Liv. She is my rock and doesn’t even know it.”

Through Bowman and Ko, Cooper said she has learned to face every challenge life throws at her head-on, especially cancer.

“Even when you are faced with big adversity in life, you get up and go,” she said.

Unlike most women diagnosed with cancer, Cooper had a good idea of what to expect after finding a lump in her breast in May of this year. Up until that point in her life, she had been on the other side of the disease, helping treat patients as an oncology nurse.

“From that perspective, I had to look at it as a good experience for me to be able to truly know and understand what it was like,” she said.

Cooper said she was lucky that she found the tumor in Stage 1, the earliest stage cancer can be detected.

However, luck wasn’t on her side when she was diagnosed with a triple negative type of medullary breast cancer, most frequently found in African-American and Hispanic women.

“It doesn’t respond to hormones and it comes back frequently. It’s a very aggressive cancer,” she said. “We won’t really know until three to five years out.”

Even knowing there is a good chance of reoccurrence, Cooper said she isn’t afraid and she won’t take it lying down, if not for her sake then for her kids’.

“My goal is to live my life like a true black belt,” she said, “with dignity and the indomitable spirit to the end.”
Sometimes, she said, her diagnosis still doesn’t seem real to her, though.

“I still pinch myself. I didn’t even understand that I had cancer until my hair fell out,” she said. “It’s hard to believe that something so small could have that great of an impact on your life. But I’ve never seen myself as a victim.”

Now more than ever, Cooper said she appreciates the small things and seemingly unimportant moments in life.

“I love to pick up the kids from school,” Cooper said. “I cherish being able to do that and have that time with them.”

The best advice Cooper says she can give to women fighting cancer and to those who have survived is to keep living and keep fighting like a girl.

“I’ve done my fair share of whining, but life goes on,” she said. “I will do as much as I can and make the absolute most of my life.”