Community Corner
Never Give Up: Rose Rall Gave Her All to Beat Cancer
Hodgkin's lymphoma survivor and online entrepreneur never left La Mesa after finding a cheap place to rent while in college.
Rose Rall moved to La Mesa with her college roommate in the mid-1980s because the price was right. Now, 25 years later, she’s still here―and it was just two years ago that she finished college.
“After all this time, I finally got my bachelor’s degree in 2009,” said Rall, sitting at the on Baltimore Drive while developing her new online marketing business. “And I’m 50. I never gave up.”
Rall also never gave in when she found out she had Hodgkin’s lymphoma 20 years ago. She beat it after six months of chemotherapy. And in 2001, she ran a marathon with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program.
Find out what's happening in La Mesa-Mount Helixwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
But the mother of daughters Shannon, 23, and Bethany, 17, had an unusual way of dealing with the news at first.
“I didn’t go to the doctor; I went up to Santa Cruz and fasted for two weeks,” said Rall, who’d heard about natural hygiene from her then-husband. “I don’t even remember the name―it was just a house up in Santa Cruz. And after two weeks I had tons of friends telling me I’d better get my butt back down here and to a doctor.”
