One last time: Terminally ill cancer patient casts final vote for Kamala Harris

When Catherine Crews’ doctor told her in May that she had six months to live, she cried.

Then she asked her husband to call the courthouse.

A politically active Democrat, Crews had been watching the presidential election closely and was looking forward to voting for President Joe Biden in November. But diagnosed with a terminal illness, she wanted to know: How soon could she vote?

“I’ve been living on borrowed time for 11 years,” said the retired yoga instructor, who has a rare, aggressive form of cancer. “I’ve had to face death.”

Crews already had defied the medical experts and lived longer than any of them had thought possible. Now, death seemed determined to win.

Crews started to take stock of all the things she wanted to do. She wanted to spend time with her family. She wanted to make the necessary end-of-life preparations. Concerned about the future of the country, she added one other thing to her final to-do list.

She wanted to be ready when early and absentee ballot voting started, which was last week in a handful of states.

She wanted to cast her vote for president one last time.

'This will be your Mt. Everest'

Crews – artist, wife, mother of three, grandmother to six – got the diagnosis on Sept. 4, 2013. She was standing in the kitchen of her home in Oxford, Mississippi, when her oral surgeon called. Biopsy results showed a malignant tumor in her upper right jaw and sinus cavity.

“This will be your Mount Everest (to climb),” the doctor told her, apologizing for not delivering the news in person.

Doctors at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore removed the tumor, which tests showed was NUT carcinoma – a genetic cancer so rare that her medical team had never seen it. Though it can grow anywhere in the body, it is usually found in the head, neck and lungs. In Crews’ case, the cancer had literally eaten through the bone of her upper right jaw.

Treatment involved two excruciatingly painful jaw transplants, multiple mouth surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation and more than two dozen trips to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The surgeries left scar tissue so disfiguring that Crews, self-conscious about her appearance, started wearing a face mask in public to avoid curious stares. A growing hole in the roof of her mouth required a mouthpiece to plug the cavity so that she could talk clearly and so that, when she ate or drank, the food or liquid didn’t run out her nose.

Doctors gave her a 3% chance of survival.

She did. And life went on.

She painted, worked in her garden, picked up litter around town and baked bread, cakes and cookies that she gave to others. She walked more than 10,000 steps a day. She set up a Facebook support group for others battling NUT carcinoma. She and her husband, Billy Crews, a former newspaper publisher, got involved last year in the unsuccessful Mississippi gubernatorial campaign of Brandon Pressley , a friend and the second cousin of Elvis Presley .

“I’ve tried to make the most of my ‘bonus’ years,” Crews wrote in a Facebook post last September, the 10th anniversary of her cancer diagnosis.

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In late February, she faced another health crisis. More oral surgery was required, followed by more complications, including osteomyelitis, a serious bone infection. After she was hospitalized again in May, an MRI showed the infection had eaten away a good portion of her lower right jaw, just as the cancer had done to her upper right jaw 11 years earlier.

Surgery was no longer an option, the doctor said. She was dying.

In the hospital, Crews, 67, broke down when she heard the news. She wept. She took some time to sort through her feelings. She started thinking about the time she had left and all the things she still wanted to do. One of them was voting. The election was still six months away, so Crews wanted to know her options. From the hospital, she had her husband call the Lafayette County circuit clerk’s office to see how soon she could vote.

Not until Monday, Sept. 23, when absentee voting would begin in Mississippi, came the reply.

Her heart sank.

“I said to myself: ‘I don’t think I’ll make it,’” she recalled.

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A vote for 'honesty, decency and integrity'

On Monday morning, the first day of absentee voting in Mississippi, Crews met with the hospice nurse who makes a weekly visit to her home. Once that was over, she and Billy set out on foot for the Lafayette County Courthouse. The walk would take no more than 10 minutes.

Mississippi residents who are 65 or older are allowed under state law to cast an absentee ballot. Inside the courthouse, Crews stepped behind the small electronic voting booth that had been set up for people wanting to mark their absentee ballot in person. She marked her choice for president, Democrat Kamala Harris . She then gave her ballot to the clerk, who placed it in a sealed envelope. Only one more thing was left to do: Crews signed the ballot, and then she and Billy walked home.

Back at her house, Crews logged onto her computer and posted a Facebook message that she had written a week earlier in anticipation of this day.

“I cast the last vote of my lifetime to preserve Democracy in the United States of America and around the world,” she wrote.

She voted to protect the Constitution, she said. She voted for honesty, decency and integrity. She voted for loving her neighbor, regardless of their race, religion or who they love. She voted for immigrants who she said want to live and contribute to the country but who have been the targets of political rhetoric and hate. She voted for women to have the right to make decisions about their own bodies and for building up the poor and the middle class.

Crews had been prepared to vote for Biden, but she was nervous about whether he could beat Republican Donald Trump . When he dropped out of the race in July and Harris stepped in as the Democratic nominee, Crews was thrilled. Biden’s decision was selfless and made her admire him even more, she said.

As for Harris, “she is intelligent and promotes what I believe to be thoughtful change,” Crews said. “She represents what our country should be like … a country of fairness, freedom and inclusion. And I believe she will work toward the common good.”

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Nationwide polls show a close race between Harris and Trump with the election just six weeks away. But in ruby-red Mississippi, Harris’ chances are not good. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Jimmy Carter eked out a narrow 14,000-vote win over Republican Gerald Ford in 1976.

If Trump is elected, “I will be very concerned for our country,” Crews said. “I think he is just awful. He has done so much damage already. If he were to get elected again, I would be concerned about how much more damage he could do.”

Crews had feared backlash from haters over her Facebook post. But so far, the reaction has been all positive, she said. Presley, their friend, sent the message to Harris’ vice-presidential running mate, Tim Walz . “I don’t have words to express my emotions,” he wrote back.

Tuesday night, at a campaign event at a French restaurant in Minneapolis, Walz read Crews’ message to a small group of supporters. “I’ve been thinking about it all day,” he said.

Crews’ next goal: To be alive on Election Night. She’s eager to watch the returns come in and, she hopes, see Harris elected. But if fate has other plans, she’s satisfied just knowing that she did her part by voting one last time.

It’s her legacy, she said, her parting gift to her children, her grandchildren and her country.

Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on X @mcollinsNEWS.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: One last time: Terminally ill cancer patient casts final vote for Kamala Harris