30 Sep 2025 Gina Flake is fighting back

By Tammy Keith

Gina Flake invited her family and friends to a downtown Conway salon on a Sunday, and with plenty of good food along with a playlist of her favorite songs, she made the first swipe across her dark hair with the clippers.

Her husband, Phil, and three of their children took turns shaving her head, then her hairstylist and friend Emily Cope finished it.

“It was a celebration,” Flake said. “We visited and hugged and talked.”

A third cancer diagnosis might not sound like the time for a party, but it’s on-brand for her. “I’m a naturally positive person,” she said. “I’m always trying to find the good in everything, and I think that helps.”

The 54-year-old Vilonia woman was diagnosed with a brain tumor on Memorial Day of May 2018. It was definitely a shock.

“Oh, my gosh, I was so healthy,” she said. “You expect it to happen to everybody but you.”

It was a rare, aggressive brain cancer, anaplastic pleomorphic xanthoastrocytoma or APXA, that primarily affects children and young adults. One doctor told her she had 14-16 months to live. She underwent surgery to remove the tumor and received chemotherapy and radiation. She lost the hair just on the top of her head. “I looked like an old man,” she said, laughing. She always wore a wig or a cap until it grew back.

Another tumor was found in the same spot six months later in November. She underwent a second surgery and chemotherapy.

Although she said doctors never used the word remission, the cancer hadn’t reoccurred. “Every year, I just get an MRI, and it’s all been good,” Flake said.

“But, wait, there’s more,” she added with a laugh.

She has been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells.

In November 2024, when she thought her brain cancer was under control, she was hospitalized because of a terrible headache that wouldn’t go away. After she was released, she had a grand mal seizure. “I couldn’t see anything on my left side,” she said. Doctors put her on seizure medication and “life went on.”

However, she started feeling unusually tired and her bones ached. “I started napping. I never nap,” she said. Thinking it could be her hormones, she had blood tests run and was diagnosed June 10 at the UAMS Myeloma Center in Little Rock with multiple myeloma, 55% of which is in her bones, she said.

She had 96 straight hours of chemotherapy, which was administered intravenously. “I carried a cute little backpack with me,” she said, which had the chemotherapy in it. After that, she took two shots a day in her abdomen, one at UAMS and one she gave herself.

Her stem cells were collected and frozen, and she will soon undergo a stem-cell transplant, then a second one three months later.

Each Tuesday, she goes for chemotherapy at UAMS, accompanied by a friend or family member. Those infusions will continue for three years, and she will have shots and four chemotherapy pills a day during that time.

“Because I’m so young, there’s a high probability of it coming back, so they’re hitting it really hard,” she said.

“The UAMS Myeloma Center is world-renowned, and this is what they’ve found to work,” she said. Flake praised her CARTI oncologist, Dr. Jamie Burton, and her neurosurgeon, Dr. Blake Phillips at Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock.

This time, she decided to be in control of when she lost her hair. “I thought, ‘I’m going to wear my bald head proudly. I’m going to embrace it and wear big earrings and cute clothes,’” she said.

Flake and her retired Air Force husband have been married 33 years. They have four children and 13 grandchildren. She owns B&B Safety Training. “I have got a village of family and friends who are taking care of me. I could not do it without all those people,” she said. She mentioned friends Tina Cope and Angi Lewis, her aunt Sheilah Poole, as well as many friends in the Flakes’ small group at Second Baptist Church in Conway.

She said the way she has been able to handle three cancer diagnoses has been “faith, friends and, I think, just a positive attitude. Not that it’s not hard, and not that I don’t cry sometimes, but mostly it’s good. I’m not a worrier. I can’t do anything about it. It’s not like I can worry cancer away. You can either focus on the good, or you can have a pity party and focus on all the bad. Find something good in every day. That’s really what I believe.” 

She has a couple of “girls’ trips” planned. “I love to travel,” she said.” I don’t want to sit back and coast through life; I want to live life.” 

Flake’s daughter Emmaleigh Hourigan of Benton and then-7-month-old granddaughter, Lynneleigh, planned to go furniture shopping with her on the day of the interview. Hourigan said she isn’t naturally upbeat like her mother, but she’s learning. “I don’t know how I would have handled it if it were myself, but seeing how brave and encouraging she is has been an inspiration,” she said.

Flake’s mantra is the song “Brave” by Moriah Peters, which was on her playlist the day she got her head shaved.

The lyrics, in part, are, “Brave. Fight like a soldier. Brave. Rise like a Warrior. Brave. Won’t stop till the final day. Brave. I want to be stronger. Brave. Gonna be bolder.”

And she’ll do it proudly with a bald head, big earrings and cute clothes.