Netti Nau's smile spreads at Newark's St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store after cancer battle
NEWARK – Karen Schroeder is not quite sure what she might receive via text when she is not at the store.
On April 8, it was photos from Netti Nau of an eclipse viewing. Another recent day came photos from an impromptu costume party.
When Nau began volunteering for Schroeder, manager at St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store in Newark, Schroeder was receiving the infectious personality Nau has used to touch others for more than 50 years of her life.
“Netti is a joy to work with, and when things get a little bit stressful, she always pulls something out and makes it fun here,” Schroeder said. “All she has to do is smile. She dug into the hardest department to work in and said, ‘I’ll do it.’ There were mounds of stuff, and it didn’t phase her.”
Nau’s return to form has helped her recover from the scariest year of her life.
Nau was diagnosed with metastatic cancer in her head and neck in May. The 53-year-old Heath resident was forced to take leave from her job as a nurse at Daniel L. Kinnard VA Clinic in Newark and from her hobby as a runner to fight the disease.
“I was picture perfect health or so I thought,” Nau said. “I am on top of the world and ready to kick some booty. I was on no prescription meds; I was eating organic food. … I was doing all of the right things and had no clue. ‘I am not going to get cancer.’ It was a shock.”
An extensive invasive surgery, which included a tonsillectomy, was unable to be completed last summer. Nau instead underwent 35 treatments of radiation and chemotherapy at Ohio State, leading to multiweek stays in the hospital and at a rehabilitation facility, where she needed two assistants for everything she did.
After a long winter of relearning to walk up steps and still being unable to eat without a PEG Tube due to an inability to sufficiently swallow, Nau arrived at St. Vincent’s, looking for an opportunity to help herself as much as those customers in need.
“I had only intermittently done the food pantry,” said Nau, who will have permanent hearing loss in one ear. “I had come here as a single mom to shop. I never ever dreamed how many people it takes to make things work behind the scenes. … It gave me a sense of purpose when I was really struggling."
Nau was assigned work in the linen department, which had been without a staff member for a few months. Nau, however, quickly became a magnet throughout the store for anyone that needed a pick-me-up.
“She’s a wonderful person,” clothing lead Bethany Hill said. “Sometimes I do think we are actually a little family here. Netti will help anyone out with anything.”
Nearly a year ago, Nau was on a high when she finished her first half-marathon, the OneAmerica 500 Festival Mini-Marathon in Indianapolis. Nau was a Hall of Fame runner at Caldwell High School in southeast Ohio, but she had mostly given up the hobby until her daughter Elisa ran cross country at Newark Catholic and Heath in high school.
Nau’s time of 2:04.21 had her elated. It, however, also was the day she discovered a lump in her neck.
A few weeks later, she ran a personal-best time of 56:04 in the AEP Ohio Columbus 10K. Soon after, a biopsy revealed her cancer.
“I went down a negative pathway to be honest,” Nau said. “If this was going to be my last running, I was going to make it count.”
Nau continued to achieve personal bests, running 26:41 in a 5K in Marietta and 44:32 in the Granville Firecracker Five. She, however, anticipated the biggest fight of her life.
“It’s maybe OK to look down the rabbit hole. Just don’t go down it,” Nau said. “It’s OK to acknowledge this hurts. This is hard.”
As a single mom, Nau valued her independence, but she knew she needed assistance.
It came in the form of neighbor Carnith Boring, VA co-worker Janice MacNealy and fellow Granville Running Club members J Newman and Maddie Carpenter, who helped her literally get back on her feet with trekking poles. It came in the form of Mike Ramseyer, former Columbus Academy cross country coach, whom Nau met by chance at the race in Indianapolis and became her “Tuesday driver” to Columbus for radiation.
“I didn’t realize how significantly it would tear me down,” Nau said. “I went from being a single mom working in the health care field to smacked down. I crashed."
Nau returned from what she called a “dark place” to brighten the world for her new coworkers and customers.
“Here I am thinking, ‘I am useless. I have no purpose. I have nothing.’ Yet, you are seeing people in the community from all different avenues,” Nau said. “There’s all classes that come and shop here, and they shop here for different reasons. But you do see the veterans, the elderly, homeless."
Nau hopes to soon return to her “real job,” but her family has grown. She has made her mark at St. Vincent with suggestions to make the operation run more efficiently and as an unofficial public relations consultant of sorts, spreading the word of its mission.
“We are lucky to have her,” Schroeder said. “We wish that we could keep her forever, but we know she is going on to other things.”
Nau is healing "on the pathway to remission." She walked in the OhioHealth First On The First 5K at Otterbein in January. Her Granville Running Club teammates wore "Team Netti" T-shirts.
“Here I am just trying to finish that and a bunch of them after they had already finished, they came back and got me,” Nau said. “They walked with me the final jaunt. It was super powerful. They are great people. It’s been absolutely amazing.”
As Nau continues to recover and eventually returns to work, she is hoping to start a cancer support group with friends. Nau learned at the VA her patients did not look for someone to sugarcoat what often could be unimaginable circumstances.
It became real for Nau the past 12 months. She, however, is a fighter.
“It helps knowing that this is all temporary and there is some kind of purpose,” Nau said. “Even if I might not have hope, if I can give the hope to somebody else, maybe being their flashlight will be hope for me.”
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This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Netti Nau's smile spreads at Newark's St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store
