Patty Blowers had just lost her match in The Citizen Women's Masters Sunday at Falcon Lanes. A fellow competitor approached Blowers, shook her hand and said, “You're awesome.”

Blowers' courage has been an inspiration to the community for the past couple of years. She not only has continued to bowl while facing breast cancer, but her achievements have been almost miraculous.

“She's amazing,” said her husband, Bingo, who was told of his own cancer diagnosis barely three weeks after his wife. “Bowling has made things easier for both of us. We don't just sit around and think about (the illnesses).”

Patty's stirring runner-up finish in last year's Masters provided strong purpose for the couple. And last week, Patty astounded again: she rolled a 300 game and 756 series in Monday's Ursula Cuddeback Memorial League at Cedar House Lanes.

Bingo Blowers rarely misses watching his wife bowl, and he had, literally, a front row seat for the perfect game. He sat at a table with Patty and other team members.

“I kept telling her to keep thinking about the next ball,” he said. “In the seventh frame, I could feel she was going to do it. And in the eighth, she carried one of those snowplow strikes. The ball went right through the middle.”

To help calm his wife's nerves, Bingo would tell her to “take a deep breath.”

When Patty fired the 12th strike, Bingo rushed to hug his wife, but he had to wait. Three other women had jumped ahead of him to offer their congratulations.

Indeed, Patty Blowers has courage. She has endured chemotherapy for the past year, and those treatments will stretch into the near future. But she refuses to let them interfere with her bowling.

She originally had treatments on Thursday, but they conflicted with her other league on that night, so she had them rescheduled for Tuesdays. All the while, Patty has maintained her job at Community Computer Services Inc. She has also pulled her husband through some dark moments.

“There were times when I was ready to give up,” said Bingo, whose tongue cancer had spread to his lymph nodes. “Patty kicked me in the (behind). She chewed on my ear a little bit, kept me going.”

Now he's back to work at Auburn Correctional Facility as a civilian Industrial Training Supervisor - medication-free and having completed his chemotherapy. He's focused on a five-year period, after which his cancer will be in remission.

Patty, meanwhile, hopes to atone for losing last year's Masters by a single spare, something that still gnaws at her and Bingo. She was defeated in a match Sunday, which means she'll have to win the title from the losers' bracket, a mean task for anybody.

But it would probably be a mistake to count out Patty Blowers. Very little has stood in her way as she fights her illness.