Lynn man has benefit Thursday to aid mom battling cancer

LYNN – Cherrie Raye Helmka has been a fitness fanatic for all of her adult life.The 1981 Lynn Tech graduate was a physical trainer and kickboxing instructor for more than a decade in Lynn and always appeared to be the picture of health.Today her eldest son, Russell Kimber, 27, has carried on that fitness and fighting legacy as an amateur boxer who plans to turn pro this summer.But for the past 10 months, mother and son have been waging a very different type of battle. Kimber has been fighting for his mother, putting much of his own life on hold to care for and support her, while Helmka battles Stage 3 breast cancer compounded by life-threatening complications from the treatment as well as a brain aneurysm discovered midway through her chemotherapy regimen.Helmka, who lives in Lynn with Kimber and her 12-year-old son, Colby Helmka, sat down with The Item at a coffee shop in Danvers last week, a block away from the Mass General/North Shore Center For Outpatient Care where she is being treated.Seated with her husband, Charles Helmka, and step-mother Carol Raye, Cherrie discussed how her life has changed the past year, the uncertainty she still faces and the importance of staying positive.After finding a lump on a breast last fall, her doctor ordered a test, assuming it was a fibrous cyst. She recounted the day she got a call at the home in Dracut where she lived at the time with her husband and youngest son, informing her that she had cancer.?I had a mammogram and went back that Wednesday for a biopsy. I got the call that Friday at 8 a.m. I was home alone at the time, and was told it was cancer, that they found one [cancerous] lymph node,” she said.?I went right home and found her on the floor crying,” Charles Helmka said.After surgery, the news got worse.?I was Stage 2 before the surgery and Stage 3 after,” she said. “They took seven lymph nodes and they were all cancer.”And the tumor, thought to be 1 centimeter initially, was actually 4 centimeters.Helmka began chemotherapy in October. She and her youngest son moved to Lynn with Kimber, to be closer to the cancer center and her extended family and friends. Her husband continues to take her to some medical appointments.Mid-way through her chemotherapy she developed an infection around a medical port in her chest that led to a heart infection and blood clots around the heart. Doctors also learned from a CAT scan that intense headaches she?d been experiencing were caused by an aneurysm in the middle of her brain. She was immediately admitted to Mass General in Boston, where she was treated for nine days.?There was a while there I forgot I had cancer, dealing with all of these things at once,” she said. “There was a time while I was at Mass General that I just wanted to give up. But my son Russell never left my side for those nine days and he wouldn?t let me.”The aneurysm will eventually require surgery but the immediate crisis was to clear the infection and blood clots. Her chemo treatments were put on hold and she was sent home from Mass General to being six weeks of antibiotics, and she continues to take blood-thinning medication by shots six times a day. Her chemotherapy and radiation treatments are now completed, but it will be another couple of weeks, following an MRI, before she learns whether the cancer has spread.Through it all, she said, she?s made a point to stay positive.?I have this strength to live. I really do. You can?t just go, ?Oh, woe is me. I?m sick.? No. I get up every day, put a smile on my face and I push through it.”She also credits her son Russell for being her rock.?I haven?t worked since October,” said Helmka, who for nine years worked as a bartender at the Shawmut in Lynn and most recently at The Sport Page Pub in Beverly. “Russell works three jobs and he pays all of the bills and takes very good care of me.”Kimber has organized a benefit for his mother, to help cover the mounting cost of co-payments for treatments and medical appointments, and her hospi