Print Issue: November 28, 2002

Breast Cancer Survivor Is Grateful For Living Every Day 'To The Fullest'

By Marian Dozier, Special To The Bulletin

ATLANTA - In the last year, Sherry Meltz lost her business partner to AIDS, and her breasts to cancer. Every day, she befriends and counsels other people living with AIDS who, at one time or another, are sick enough to die. Sometimes, she loses these friends too.

Yet Meltz, a psychologist and director of the Absolute Wellness Center in Atlanta, is a grateful woman. There has been loss, but what she sees is all silver lining.

Holding a crucifix presented to her by one of her clients when she joined the Catholic Church, Sherry Meltz, Ph.D., and RCIA sponsor Paul Scalise stand before one of the 12x12-foot panels from the AIDS quilt on display at Absolute Wellness, The BRAC Center. Scalise and Meltz first met through his volunteer work with the St. Ann's HIV/AIDS ministry, in which he catered meals once a month for the HIV/AIDS clients at her former facility in Roswell, Absolutely Positive +, Inc.

"There's a reason God placed me here to work in this 'community of heroes' as I like to call them," said Meltz, of Roswell. "It was so that years later I'd be able to deal with my own chronic illness. God had to have me tested."

Meltz's eyes tear when she talks about Brandon Abernathy, the deceased business partner for whom Absolute Wellness' building is named. It is known as the BRAC - for Brandon Ross Abernathy Community Center. "His energy permeates this place," she said.

For nearly six years they worked together, creating the wellness concept for AIDS sufferers. At the BRAC center, clients can visit acupuncturists, nutritionists and massage therapists, talk to Meltz in her incense-scented, candle-lit office, and work out on exercise equipment - all free of charge. The not-for-profit center functions on federal and state grants and donations.

It is a concept that fits with Abernathy's belief in living well, no matter what. He'd carried the HIV virus for 22 years - before doctors even had a name for it - and his extraordinary survival taught Meltz a valuable lesson: how absolutely crucial it is to live without fear.

Abernathy was there on Jan. 18, 2001, when Meltz took a call from her doctor. Five days before, she'd found a small lump under her arm.

It's malignant, the doctor had said.

"It was like a shot to the soul," Meltz said. "I turned to Brandon and I said, 'you know all the talk about being fearless? Well, you've got to tell me how to do it.' I was scared to death."

By April, both her breasts were removed.

That same month, Meltz began the RCIA process at St. Ann's in Marietta. Born and raised Methodist, Meltz nevertheless always felt a kinship with what she calls "the original church" but had not made it official. The cancer did it. In a sense, it was another silver lining.

"All of a sudden, I had a deadline. Not that I thought I was going to die, but it really became about all the things I wanted to accomplish and hadn't," Meltz said. "That [joining the Catholic Church] was one of the first things on my list. I got my wakeup call."

Since she was a teen Meltz had given thought to becoming Catholic, but a combination of events in her adult life helped her make the decision. After her father's death in 1998, she was returning from a trip in the north Georgia mountains and she saw a billboard that said, "Don't Postpone the Joy, Love God!" Meltz said, "Since I saw those words that's been my philosophy in terms of working with the HIV/AIDS community, and in particular when my cancer came." Meltz has so much gratitude for the work of the St. Ann's HIV/AIDS ministry and their influence on her faith formation, but when she contracted breast cancer and God gave her a second chance on life, that was the real impetus to join the Catholic Church. In August of 2001 Meltz shared her plans with Paul Scalise to join the church and she asked him to be her sponsor. Scalise said, "I was so honored to be her sponsor. I know no one who lives and works the Gospel like she does. Christ walks with her."

Maintaining her faith and spirituality is important, she said.

"As a therapist, I know if you only address one part of the body, you're not reaching the triad of wellness we aspire to," she said. "Those three components coalesce for healing. Without it, it's not a healthy individual we're making. There's a tremendous amount of spiritual and physical damage that accompanies this disease; medicine can't do it alone."

Meltz has been married to Lenny, who is a "cradle Catholic," for 10 years. She has two stepdaughters. Lenny and Sherry plan to be remarried in St. Ann's this April.