Kim Antrican with her husband, Todd, and children Stephanie and Seth outside of their Lebanon home. / The Enquirer/Amanda Davidson
Paul McKibben reports:
Kim Antrican worked 23 hours on Election Day while battling breast cancer. The next day, she had another chemotherapy treatment.
Antrican, director of the Warren County Board of Elections, credits a lot of adrenaline for enabling her to work such a taxing day.
“Every day on the way to work, I would pray ‘God give me strength for today. Give me the strength to get through the day’ because I knew that I had to pull from my strength somewhere,” she said.
Antrican, 44, of Lebanon, underwent a double mastectomy in August after feeling a lump in her chest the previous month. She began chemotherapy on Sept. 25, one week before early voting started.
She worked 74 hours during election week and the week prior to that. She put in a 61-hour week two weeks before Election Day.
With the election behind her, she’s working less (40-hour weeks) and not spending her weekends at the office. She’s married with two teenagers.
Since The Enquirer first wrote about Antrican in early October, she’s lost her hair. She’s worn a scarf, hat, wig or sometimes nothing on her head.
“It doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would,” she said. “I have a wig and I wore it maybe three times.”
Antrican will have chemotherapy until September 2013. Next year, Antrican, a Republican, and deputy director Brian Sleeth, a Democrat, will switch jobs.
(Every year The Enquirer publishes thousands and thousands of stories in print and online. Each year we look up the fate of some of the stories that moved our readers. Read about more newsmakers at cincinnati.com)
