JaQuittaWilliams StaringDown Cancer

Why she calls it a blessing

By Gale Horton Gay

Photography by Alex Jones

    She has covered stories across the country involving life, death, love, loss, struggle, turmoil, pain, hope, tragedy and triumph. And JaQuitta Williams had been perfectly happy gathering the details of life’s most emotionally riveting circumstances and presenting them to Atlanta audiences via television news.

    However in July, Williams found herself at the center of the most important story of her life. At 36, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Instead of dealing with it in private, she’s chosen to share the full range of her experiences with viewers of WSB-TV news and on a blog she writes about the ups and downs of battling the disease.

    In mid-September when Williams had completed her first round of chemotherapy, she invited Atlanta goodlife into her southwest Atlanta home with its splashes of vibrant orange and soft shades of green to chat about dealing with an extremely personal challenge in a most public manner.

Living her dream

    JaQuitta says her mother, Linda Williams, a single parent, instilled in her only child a gung-ho spirit and dogged determination during her formative years in Augusta. When she decided to become a broadcaster, she dreamed of working alongside Monica Kaufman (now Monica Pearson) in Atlanta. Williams hop-scotched from Knoxville, Tenn., to Raleigh, N.C., to Kansas City, Mo., working as a journalist, but by the time she hit Kansas City she realized she was not happy. She told her agent she wanted to return to Georgia and would only consider positions in Atlanta. A longtime friend of the Brown family—the late James Brown, that is—Williams, also a singer, entertained the notion of doing back-up for the legendary performer. She recalls being floored when offered a freelance reporting position with WSB. “Atlanta was the cake. WSB was the cherry for me,” says Williams of the ease of landing in Hotlanta. It didn’t take her long to parlay the opportunity into a full-time job and weekend anchor duties.

Facing the unexpected

    It was during a shower in July when Williams came across something that felt out of place in her right breast. She wasn’t immediately alarmed, however, because during her early 20s a cyst developed in the same breast. It was determined to be non-cancerous and was removed. So Williams went for the biopsy not overly concerned. One test led to another and within days she was in a daze having a telephone conversation with a doctor, trying to grasp a long medical term for the cancer in her breast. She had that conversation while she was preparing to go on the air. She turned down her doctor’s offer to speak to a nurse, she says, because she couldn’t wrap her mind around what he was telling her. She hung up the phone, did the live TV shot, then called the doctor back and asked him to restate the diagnosis. Since that day she’s experienced what she describes as “a roller coaster of emotions”—anger, sadness, happiness, being mad at herself and wondering “Why me?”

    She acknowledges that for the first few weeks she couldn’t deal with all the advice, suggestions and inquiries being offered by those she encountered. “I didn’t want to hear it,” she recalls. She tells anyone who’s dealing with cancer, “Don’t let anyone tell you how you should or shouldn’t feel. Allow yourself to go through it.”

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