Jamboree to Help Cancer Patient Pay Bills : Church: The gospel country music event will be held today at the Christian Mission Church in Laguna Niguel.

On a bright spring day seven years ago, Patti Cowart gave birth to her second child-- and discovered she was suffering from advanced colon cancer. Doctors gave her a slim chance of living through the year.

“When I heard that word (cancer), I started to cry,” Cowart said Friday. On a day when Cowart and her husband, Tom, should have been overjoyed at the birth of her daughter, they were devastated by the news of her illness.

But with a deep faith in the healing power of Jesus, the 36-year-old Cowart said she has survived, enduring seven years of debilitating chemotherapy, four surgeries and the ever-present thought that death may be just around the corner.

Now she and her husband have a new crushing burden to wrestle with: the mounting pile of unpaid medical bills that are stuffed into a brown paper bag, a wicker basket and a cardboard box tucked under a small table in their family room.

“We have bills that have been going on for years,” Tom Cowart said as he shuffled through hundreds of payment requests for hospital stays, therapies, blood tests and other medical services.

So dire is the family’s financial need that a group of friends joined to organize a gospel country music jamboree at the Christian Mission Church in Laguna Niguel.

Proceeds from the benefit event, scheduled for 2 to 8 p.m. today, will go to defray the almost $100,000 in medical bills the Cowart family has accumulated.

Sharon Joyner said she and her husband decided about three months ago to hold the fund-raiser. “In country music, they put on benefits all the time,” Joyner said. “If they can do it, certainly God’s people can do it for a good cause.”

The Joyners enlisted other mutual friends to donate goods, music and fliers to pass around area congregations.

“For those of you who do not know her, Patti has been a blessing and an inspiration to all who have known her as she has battled with cancer for the past seven years,” Joyner wrote in the flier. “It is our desire to help the family to survive the effect of the financial burdens through this time of crisis.”

Patti Cowart visibly blanches when she hears suggestions that she possesses unusual strength. She is now undergoing an experimental and dangerous round of chemotherapy at the City of Hope Hospital in Duarte.

Patti Cowart insists that she owes her life to God and not to sheer will.

“After I got over the initial shock,” she said, “that’s when my faith kicked in. I began to look to God and asked Him what this was all about. He gave me peace, and I realized how temporary this life is.”

Twice, in fact, Patti Cowart was diagnosed as having less than two months to live. Once, in 1985, she underwent surgery after doctors found “hundreds of nodes” in her stomach and intestines. She has since lost part of her intestines and a portion of her liver.

The latest round of chemotherapy was made necessary after doctors found the cancer had spread to a lung. Since her additional treatment at the City of Hope, the tumor in her lung appears to be shrinking.

Patti Cowart said she does not have the energy to join in the square dancing today, but she looks forward to seeing her friends.

“The tribute should be to the people who are doing it (hosting the benefit) and those who are going to participate,” said Tom Cowart as the couple sat on their family room sofa.

“And the Lord,” she added without hesitation. “I wouldn’t be here it it wasn’t for Him.”