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SEPTEMBER 18 - SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 12
Faith for Fayth
Solar farm is planned for county By Bill Thompson Deputy Editor
By Lisa McGinnes Staff Writer
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ayth Garmley is one in a million. Not in the way many parents would describe their beautiful, ambitious, college student daughter, meaning they think she’s the best daughter in the world. The 19-year-old who lived in Ocala her whole life until she moved to South Florida for college last year found out a month ago that she is literally one in a million -- she has a cancer so rare that, according to the National Cancer Institute, only one adult per every million Americans is diagnosed with it each year. This time last year, Fayth was settling into her freshman dorm room at Keiser University in West Palm Beach, making new friends and working at her new job as a hostess at The Breakers’ Echo restaurant. After graduating from Forest High School in the spring, she had vacationed in Europe with her parents, then kissed them and her two beloved goldendoodles goodbye and headed off toward her future: a degree in business entrepreneurship and a plan to start her own line of cosmetics. In October she had her routine annual gynecological checkup and everything seemed fine. But just two weeks later she returned to the doctor, saying she felt a small lump in her breast. “She said she didn’t feel anything, there was nothing there,” Fayth remembers the doctor saying. But her mom had taught her about the importance of early detection, and she knew something was different. By February she was back in the doctor’s office. The lump had gotten bigger. “She thought it was a cyst, so she had referred me to another doctor to get imaging done,” Fayth said. “They did the ultrasound and said they didn’t really see anything, there was nothing there.” The usually healthy teen remembers feeling “dismissed” and talking to her roommates “asking them what they could possibly think it was.” Like any woman who feels a lump in her breast, she was scared. “I was starting to feel frustrated because I wasn’t getting any answers and I knew there was something wrong,” Fayth said. Her mom figured the doctor was right, it was probably a cyst, which seemed like a “normal”
Agencies looking at day centers for the homeless By Brad Rogers Executive Editor
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or years, there has been an ongoing debate about whether the Salvation Army’s presence is the reason so many homeless people congregate in downtown Ocala. While there
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Fayth and Shannon at Moffitt. Photos courtesy of Garmley family.
diagnosis for an active young woman. Fayth was now living in an apartment near campus, enjoying her classes at Keiser, which she says “was a perfect fit” and working at the hostess job she loved. But in August she texted her mom and said the lump “had gotten a lot bigger.” Her stepfather, Ocala physician Dr. Michael Holloway, who she calls “my dad Michael,” called a colleague and immediately got her an appointment in Orlando. This time they did an MRI, which revealed the tumor, slightly larger than 10 cm, or almost 4 inches. A biopsy returned a shocking diagnosis: angiosarcoma, an aggressive, soft tissue cancer that forms in the inner lining of blood and lymph vessels, so rare that it makes up only 1 to 2 percent of all sarcomas, which themselves make up only 1 percent of all adult cancer diagnoses. Angiosarcoma is rarely found in breast tissue, and almost all cases are in elderly women who have previously had radiation treatments for another type of cancer. A one-ina-million diagnosis. That was Monday, Aug. 17. The next day, Fayth was at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa. The day after that, Dr. Holloway got a call back from his colleague, Dr. Neeta Somaiah, a medical sarcoma oncologist at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the world’s No. 1 treatment center for angiosarcoma. The experts at both hospitals agreed on a treatment plan: at least three and as many as six rounds of chemotherapy followed by surgery,
is no disagreement that its feeding and sheltering programs draw homeless people to the area, those who work with the homeless and have studied the question say the Salvation Army alone is not what is a bringing homeless people to the center city. What homeless advocates say is needed is a place where the homeless can be engaged and their needs assessed so they can get the help and services they need. And here in Ocala, the community’s two largest homeless service agencies say they each are working toward just that. “A lot of people downtown aren’t Salvation Army clients, because they don’t want to be or they aren’t compliant with the Salvation Army’s rules,” said Karla Grimsley, executive director of Interfaith Emergency Services.
then radiation. Dr. Somaiah, who agreed to take on Fayth’s case, encourages her patients by explaining that even a rare sarcoma diagnosis “is not ‘rare’ for the team” at a center with sarcoma expertise. “They know the right way to manage this,” she said, adding that MD Anderson’s sarcoma access line can “expedite appointments for patients who have been recently diagnosed and not started therapy.” “This way we can guide the right treatment plan,” she explained. “If the best plan is standard of care therapy, patients can then choose to pursue the care locally and we partner with their local oncologist and provide a treatment plan.” On Aug. 25, Fayth started her first cycle of chemotherapy at Moffitt. In just nine short days the carefree college student had become a cancer patient, alone in a hospital room with a port implanted just below her collarbone. Five days of chemo left her unable to eat, but Fayth said the physical discomfort wasn’t actually as bad as she expected. “It didn’t take me down much,” she said. “For the most part, I was really able to get up and move around myself within my little hospital room. I was very independent with it all.” The worst part? Not being able to have any visitors because of COVID-19 restrictions.
sprawling pasture on an 1,100-acre site fronting the Withlacoochee River near Dunnellon could soon be home to Marion County’s first solar energy farm. But some legal and landuse issues must be sorted out first. Kingston Properties LLC, the landowner, wants to plant 212,000 solar panels on 294 acres of the property, according to its permit application. The project, known as Dunnellon Farms Solar, is expected to generate 74.9 megawatts of power. Marion County commissioners were set to act on the plan Tuesday, following a unanimous recommendation for approval earlier this month by the county Planning and Zoning Commission. But the proposal stalled after county staff pitched the developer a plan for a 20-foot easement on the site late last week. John Taylor, the agent for Renewable Management Services, the Riviera Beachbased developer of the site, asked commissioners to table the application until the landowner and its engineering consultants could review the county’s request. The board postponed action until Oct. 20. Prior to the truncated hearing, however, lawyers for adjacent landowners submitted a letter outlining their opposition to the application. The legal team for Ronnie and Sarah Cannon, longtime owners of a neighboring ranch, noted that the project was set for final approval just an month after its application was filed. See Solar Farm, page 2
See Fayth, page 5
“And those people are always downtown. They’re in every downtown in America.” Local Salvation Army Corps Officer Maj. Dwayne Durham agreed. “You’ll find people on the street who prefer that to the communal living of a shelter with all its rules,” he said. The Salvation Army does not take in people who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. What Durham and Grimsley say is needed is what Grimsley described as “an engagement center, a place where people can have some benefit, get support services.” These centers would provide the homeless somewhere to go during the day and provide them something to drink, something to eat and a place to rest. They also say their
An unidentified homeless man tries to stay dry under an umbrella as he sleeps in the rain at Interfaith Emergency Services in Ocala, Fla. on Monday, August 31, 2020. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2020.