Cancer survivor misses food, counts her blessings

Honorary Survivor at this weekend’s “Family Fashions for the Fight” Style Show

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Oral cancer left Iona Vigness with one glitch, but many blessings.
The honorary cancer survivor for the Moody County American Cancer Society’s Family Fashions for the Fight event survived surgery and radiation after she was diagnosed in January 2017 with cancer when a tooth a dentist pulled wouldn’t heal.
“I can swallow, and I can talk but I can’t really eat,” she says. “In a way, I don’t ever get hungry.”
Vigness, 90, drinks smoothies, meal replacement beverages, juices, chocolate milk, soup broth and coffee to get nutrition. Sometimes, she orders ice cream when she goes out to eat and lets it melt until she can swallow it. She’s tried other foods, hoping they would dissolve in her mouth until she can swallow, but it hasn’t worked.
“Everything social is around food,” she says, noting that coffee often is paired with a cookie when people go out. “I can take a bite of something. It tastes good, and then there it is. I can’t swallow it; I can’t chew it.”
But Vigness also is grateful that she is blessed in so many ways, including the opportunity to stay active with family and friends. “It could be worse,” she says. “I’ve got a lot to be thankful for.”
Vigness, who moved with her husband, Sylvan, and family to Flandreau in 1953 will be honored Sept. 9 at a 2 p.m. fashion show fundraiser at the William J. Janklow Community Center. The event, with admission for a $10 donation, replaces the Relay for Life formerly held in the community.
Survivors and their families will model clothing from Geyerman’s of Pipestone and Corduroy & Pixie Dust in Dell Rapids.
Last year was the first year for the fashion show and people enjoyed the change, organizers said. Instead of luminaries, the organization takes donations for flags for people who are honored as cancer survivors or remembered after having died.

Cynthia Johnson, who is the publicity chairwoman for the event, said Vigness is like a mother to her because she grew up spending time at their home with her friend, Carol, and she always felt welcome. “Everybody loves her,” she says of the woman who still cans green beans and makes lefse and other baked goods for her family.
Johnson admires Vigness’ positive attitude.
“She’s just so brave and bold,” Johnson says. “Everything is always better when you go visit with Iona. She’s just inspirational.”
Vigness’s daughter, Carol Engquist, says her mom is a strong woman who decided to do whatever was needed to get well after her cancer diagnosis.
“She has a very strong faith, and she wanted to live for her family and to take care of my dad,” she says. “It was a very difficult surgery and radiation treatment. She handled it with determination, dignity and humor.”
The family is happy she will be honored as a cancer survivor. “We are all so proud of her and she has been a wonderful role model for her entire family.”
Vigness doesn’t know what lead to her cancer diagnosis because she never smoked, drank or chewed tobacco, habits often associated with oral cancer.
During her treatments, she had a lot of support, and for six weeks, she and her husband stayed with their daughter-in-law, Deb, in Sioux Falls to go to her radiation appointments, she says. “It’s like anybody who gets sick or has a problem, you just do what you have to do,” she says.
She knows she is not alone when it comes to cancer.
“There’s so much of it. It seems like it’s almost an epidemic of cancer. There isn’t any family that hasn’t been touched by cancer one way or another it seems,” she says. “I can’t think of anybody I know that hasn’t been touched by cancer.”
Eighteen years ago, her sister died from breast cancer, and Vigness also has lost her son, Dan who was married to Deb, to cancer. In January, her husband received a Purple Heart at age 94, more than 70 years after being injured World War II. In June, he died.
“I’m lonesome because Sylvan is gone. Otherwise, I keep busy,” she says. The couple also has a son, Dwight.
A former part-time society editor at the Moody County Enterprise, she reads books, magazines and newspapers to stay occupied and informed. She goes to church services at Our Savior’s Lutheran and to coffee with friends. Her daughter and daughter-in-law from Sioux Falls visit or take her places, and this summer, she went on a week-long vacation with 22 family members to Detroit Lakes, Minn. She headed up breakfast preparations, which included cooking pounds of bacon.
“I went out on a Jet Ski. I didn’t drive it this year. I just rode on it. I drove it last year,” she says. “They’re fun. Course I didn’t go real fast.”
She likes to park the watercraft in an area of the lake where loons gather, shut off the machine and just bob around and watch the birds, she says.
Vigness grew up in Canton, graduated from Canton High School and attended school at General Beadle in Madison to become a teacher. She taught three years before she married her husband, who became superintendent in Flandreau.
She relies on her faith when life presents struggles and stays thankful.
“I believe in God, and he just helps me through the day. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have trust in the Lord,” she says.