Gloria O’Neil

By Penny Soldan, Staff Writer

Published: April 28, 2008

Gloria O’Neil, 84, has undergone a few medical procedures through the years. Bouts with three different forms of cancer, however, don’t rank among her worst experience. Not even the 1965 surgery in which a six-inch chunk of her right calf was removed to get rid of melanoma. She was in the hospital for a week and spent another four months bed-ridden and unable to walk.

“That one almost got me,” she said. “The feelers were all out going to a vein. If it had reached the vein, it would have been curtains. But I wasn’t scared at all. I don’t get scared. Maybe I’ve got a lot of faith that I’ll be alright.”

O’Neil, a California native who relocated to Oklahoma City in 2000, almost forgot to mention the basal cell carcinoma she had removed from her nose in 1978. “It was not real dangerous, but it got real red,” she said. “I looked like Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.”

The news in 2002 that she had breast cancer wasn’t even a big deal to her. “Let’s get it taken care of. I want to get out of here,” she told the doctor.

“The worst thing I ever went through was tonsillitis,” she said. “I had them taken out twice because they grew back. I sat there with my mouth wide open while they cut those out. I’m telling you, that was the worst thing I ever went through.”

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