The Moultrie Observer's print edition Friday, Oct. 23, also includes a special section with the stories of three other breast cancer survivors: Mary Ann Flowers, Dorathy Weaver and Becky Fleetwood. Coworkers, they supported one another as each in succession faced the deadly disease. Learn more in Friday's print edition!

MOULTRIE — Amy Putnam laughed at breast cancer.

And cried. She did that too, but mostly she laughed.

She credits the staff of the Colquitt Regional Medical Center’s oncology department for keeping her spirits up as she battled the deadly disease. …

A profile of breast cancer survivor Amy Putnam began with those words in an Observer article one year ago. Putnam, a Willie J. Williams Middle School teacher, was one radiation session from the end of her treatment regimen when that story appeared in The Observer Oct. 30, 2014. She felt good. She believed she was cured — in fact, not long after that article ran, a PET scan showed she was, in fact, cancer-free.

A year later, the good humor takes more effort, because she is not cancer-free and she’s waiting to learn what her doctors plan to do about it.

Most of the preceding year has gone “really, really well,” Putnam said. She returned to Williams Middle School in January as a full-time substitute teacher. She served in many classrooms, helped administer state-mandated tests and worked in the media center.

“I was very thankful for that,” she said.

Over the summer, she and her husband, Warren Putnam, went on a trip to Europe, courtesy of Warren’s son, Chris. They spent two weeks in London and Paris.

“That was absolutely amazing!” she said, gushing in spite of medicines that dulled her physical pain. “It was the trip of a lifetime, for sure.”

Also during the summer, she went on a fishing trip with her brother out of Carrabelle, Fla.

“We caught some sharks!” she said. “It was a lot of fun!”

School started back in August and she resumed full-time teaching. Not only was she able to teach the same grade and subject as before her illness, she had the same teammates and even the same classroom as before.

“I loved it,” she said. “It was like riding a bike, I guess, just jumped back in there.”

Then, three weeks ago, Putnam learned her battle was not over.

She felt pain in her stomach and lower back, which she compared to really bad gas pain. She went to her primary care doctor; he ran bloodwork, which came back mostly normal. “I think my white blood count was a little elevated,” she recalled. He gave her some antacids.

The following Tuesday the pain was much more severe. That night her husband took her to the emergency room, which led to a two-day hospital stay as doctors pieced out what was going on in her body.

A CAT scan performed that night found swollen lymph nodes in her abdomen. That hit hard because swollen lymph nodes had been the first sign of the breast cancer she’d been treated for in 2014.

“Warren and I both kind of freaked out a little bit,” Putnam said.

The next day, still in the hospital, they met with Dr. Howard Melton, the surgeon who had performed her double mastectomy the previous summer. He had stunning news that made swollen lymph nodes seem minor: The CAT scan had also revealed a mass in her liver.

“It was like we’d been punched in the stomach,” Putnam said.

A biopsy confirmed the mass was a tumor, but at the time Putnam left the hospital that Thursday, doctors couldn’t say for sure whether it was malignant.

But Putnam knew.

She described a night in the hospital, somewhere around 4 a.m. when the nursing shift was getting ready to change. All was quiet and dark and she couldn’t sleep.

“I was sitting there thinking it was a dream, it was just a nightmare and I was going to wake up,” she recalled.

In that dark, down time, she said, a peace came over her, a peace she said could only come from Jesus.

“I knew then it was cancer,” she said.

More concrete evidence came the following Tuesday. When she met with her oncologist, they were joined by Brian Elliott, director of Colquitt Regional Medical Center’s cancer center. As soon as he walked in, she said, it confirmed her fears. If it hadn’t been cancer, her oncologist could have told her that without him.

It hasn’t been a full year since the PET scan declared her “cancer-free.” How could a mass this large have appeared so quickly? Her oncologist wanted to know that, too.

Pathology tests were sent to Shands Hospital in Gainesville, Fla., to determine whether the cancer was something new or a remnant of the breast cancer she’d fought before. Bad news kept coming: It was the same old cancer, spread from her breast to her liver and lymph nodes.

Melton’s theory is that the cancer was never quite eradicated, Putnam said. It remained in microscopic spots that weren’t visible on the PET scan, and it grew undetected until it started causing her pain.

When The Observer interviewed Putnam early Monday afternoon, she was waiting for a call from the oncologist’s office with details of exactly what she was facing and how doctors were planning to fight it. Meanwhile, she’s on short-term disability from the school system until she knows what this new battle will entail.

“They told me to stay off of Google,” she said, “but I can’t do that.”

Based on what her doctors have told her and from her own online research, Putnam believes she has Stage 4 breast cancer. It’s treatable but not cureable.

“From what Brian (Elliott) is telling me, chemo is going to be a part of my life,” she said.

The goal of the chemotherapy will be to shrink the tumor so that she has less discomfort and to slow down its growth, she said. Doctors will monitor it and if the tumor doesn’t respond to one set of medications, they’ll try different ones.

“They don’t expect it to go away,” she said.

Yet, even in her situation, Putnam gives thought to how she can help others, hoping that by openly discussing about what she’s going through she can give strength to other people in their cancer fight.

That was the other take-away from the early-morning epiphany in the hospital room. Amid “the peace that passes all understanding,” she heard Jesus tell her that this is her purpose.

“I don’t know what that means,” she admitted, “[but] God still has a purpose for me, so I’m going to be as open and honest as I can.”