A Jewel in Her Own Right

How a cancer surviror brings hope to others

When Susan Salman meets someone who shares her joy in the beauty of beads, they smile and nod knowingly. She feels a similar kind of kinship and appreciation for life whenever she meets another cancer survivor.

Despite a long and difficult road, Salman feels she’s finally found her destiny, and it’s a blend of the adversity she’s faced and the solace she’s received. Salman was 44 when she was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer three years ago, on her six-month wedding anniversary. Her first symptoms were weight loss and fatigue.

“Everyone said it was the stress of being an older bride,” Salman says. “When I went for the first fitting of my wedding dress, it just hung on me.”

It was shortly after the wedding that she experienced the devastation of September 11 while working for a Wall Street financial firm. She went to her doctor thinking she had irritable bowel syndrome. She had never known anyone with cancer. The thought never crossed her mind.

“There aren’t many places to go from a stage 3 diagnosis,” she says. “I believed I was dying for a long time. Then one day became another, and another, and I realized I was going to live.”

A native of Allentown, Salman returned home to her parents while undergoing a rigorous chemotherapy and radiation therapy regimen at Lehigh Valley Hospital. Robert Post, M.D., directed her chemotherapy, and Charles Andrews, M.D., her radiation treatment. With the help of her family, the hospital support team and old friends who came to visit, she gradually began to feel the glimmer of hope.

As Salman went through treatment and recovery, she needed an outlet for her creativity. When an aunt in Florida suggested beading, she dug out the bead collection she had started in the early ‘80s.

Her bead hobby soon became her passion, especially after a trip to California her cousin gave her when she finished chemotherapy. “There were bead stores everywhere. I thought, ‘This is it!’ ” Salman says.

“It” was the solution to her work dilemma. She knew she needed a job; while undergoing treatment her company had restructured and let her go. She was afraid to go on interviews, knowing the question of her time away would come up. She decided to share her passion and open a bead store.

“One thing cancer didn’t change— my determination,” says Salman, who is now single again. She found just the right spot in Media, Pennsylvania, and opened “A Queen Bead,” specializing in beads of all kinds and prices, offering a haven for the experienced beader and classes for those just getting started.

Susan then found a sterling silver bead with the word “hope” on it and was inspired to make “hope bracelets”. She donated the $1,350 she made selling the hope bracelets to The Wellness Community, to benefit the cancer patients and their families who receive free support programs there.

Hope is a powerful force in Salman’s life. While many come into her shop looking for specialty beads, others come for that special kinship cancer patients and survivors share. She is always quick to lend an ear and tell her story to offer hope to others.

“I am filled with so much hope, on so many levels. I am grateful for each day, and hope to have many more. Now when I think of things that would have scared me before, I say ‘I can do it!’ ”

“When I was going through chemotherapy my boss called and told me I had many more sunrises to see. Now I’ll stop and truly enjoy a beautiful spring day. One day while walking my dog I saw a rainbow. I cried at the beauty of it.”

Salman has started selling kaleidoscopes, which play colorful dancing images when shone in the light. Made from beads, to her they symbolize the light at the end of the tunnel.

“There was a time I asked ‘why me?’ and ‘why do some survive against the odds when others don’t?’ I was never very religious, but now I talk with God and ask ‘is this what you had planned for me—helping others?’”

Her message is simple: “Reach down deep and gather as much hope as you can to get you through it. No one really knows what will happen, so live each day to the fullest and don’t give up fighting.”

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