Panama resident Cassie Smith has been battling Stage 4 renal cancer since October. To help lift her spirits, friends decorated the outside of her home and surprised her with gifts and donations from local businesses upon her return from her first treatment in Buffalo.

PANAMA — Pain.

This year has seen a lot of it in a variety of forms — but it’s appeared in Cassie Smith’s life almost daily since October.

“Originally, the doctors told me I had a fractured sacrum,” she said of a mysterious ailment that appeared in the fall. “I went on bed-rest for six-to-eight weeks.”

The pain didn’t let up. Weeks later, a computed tomography scan confirmed Smith’s worst fear: Stage 4, metastasized renal cancer that had spread to her bones.

“We don’t have a prognosis and the lymph nodes throughout my body that are enlarged are still small,” the Panama resident said.

“The cancer that has spread to my bone looks different than normal cancer that has spread to the bone. … It’s more of a webbing effect. Normally it’s holes, so that gives us a lot of hope. We’re being positive.”

That hope has been aided by a community that has quickly rallied around Smith and her family, highlighted by her four children. Upon completing her first treatment in Buffalo last month, dozens of friends decorated the family’s home with holiday cheer.

“My idea started small: to surprise them with a lawn full of Christmas decorations,” Sophie Horner, a friend, said. “My community showed up and they showed up hard.”

Horner started a GoFundMe to help raise funds for a “community Christmas present.” Not even a week later, local business owners began contacting her to make donations. Thirteen in total — from all across Chautauqua County — donated to the cause.

“There were numerous times I couldn’t even finish my sentence before they started filling out a gift certificate,” Horner said. “Cassie and Audi Smith have been champions of local businesses for years and it brings me to tears how close a lot of these places feel to this family.”

The felt love of the Panama and surrounding communities is nothing new to the Smith family. And neither, for that matter, is cancer. Cassie’s diagnosis comes two years after her 11-year-old son, Kody Howard, battled an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor in his stomach — and won. During that stretch, Community Through Hockey, held a benefit hockey game two years ago.

“It was just a diagnosis that was overwhelming but he was able to be treated with an oral chemotherapy,” she noted. “It was just a pill and he wasn’t compromised. They shrunk the tumor right now. He’s got such good margins that he used to have scans every three months and now they’re every six months.”

Since her diagnosis, Kody has been the one leading the charge in keeping his mother’s morale high.

“He’s the one that is really bringing positivity,” she said. “Kids are ignorant, they don’t really know, they hear what it is but they just think ‘Parents are tough, they can beat anything.’ He gets it though and has just been very positive.”

Family, too, has been just what the doctor ordered.

“I just live for my kids,” the stay-at-home mom, a Westfield native, said. “They are my entire life. They are the best things ever to exist and they have been so positive. Thankfully I’m doing immunotherapy which is different from chemo. I don’t lose my hair and there are a lot of things that we don’t have at this point to go through. We don’t have to see that. It’s easier to stay positive right now.”

So far, despite the radiation, medication and immunotherapy, it’s just been the pain that has inhibited her daily life.

“That’s all it’s ever been was pain,” she said.

But upon returning home from that first treatment, it was relieved in a different way — replaced instead with something much different.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said of the sight, her home decked with Christmas lights and giant holiday blow-up lawn ornaments.

“I was just over the moon and so filled with joy,” Smith said. “You don’t realize how many people you have in your corner. Just what the community and Sophie did and how they pulled it together, they even had some of my family involved in it. It was just incredible.”

“Cassie is truly one of the kindest, sweetest souls, and Audi is always the first in line to lend a hand to anyone who may need it,” Horner said. “They are two of the kindest, most generous, community involved people I have ever met. If the tables were turned they would have absolutely done this for anyone else in their community. It is an honor that I had the opportunity to do something for them.”

And even in a year where giving to others might not be primary on an individual’s mind, their community proved otherwise.

“Even when there’s so much going on in the world and everybody has different opinions, we still come together when there’s someone in need and they want to do something kind like that,” Smith said. “I’m just so thankful for the community and being in such a small town. The communities really come together and look out for each other. It really was spectacular.”

Those looking to assist the Smith family during this time are encouraged to visit a GoFundMe page created by several friends: https://www.gofundme.com/f/yptm9r-caring-for-cassie?qid=d3e4fd4dd07095dc95b43d169c846ba9