CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Wonder Woman is about to hit theaters and a Charlotte doctor will get a special screening of the movie in Los Angeles because she herself is – well, a Wonder Woman.
Steen Griddine and Ophelia Garmon-Brown go way back.
“Oh, you're gonna make me cry," Gridding said. "I met Dr. Garmon in 1989."
Garmon-Brown, a family practice doctor. Her best friend, an ER nurse.
“She has been everything to me,” Gridding said.
Truth be told, Garmon-Brown has meant a lot to a lot of people.
She’s seen tens of thousands of patients over the years, many of them for free at the Charlotte clinic she co-founded.
“I was able to touch people in ways that fed my soul..blessed because they were so grateful,” she says.
As an African American, she has been a trailblazer in the medical field in Charlotte.
“That was the first time I private practice black doctors and white doctors together.”
Over the years she’s been honored with countless awards. And now she’d officially being called a hero.
Wonder woman to be exact.
“My superhero is Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown,” Steen says, reading from an essay.
As the movie wonder woman gets set to debut in theaters, Steen saw a contest looking for a real life Wonder Woman and wrote an essay about her friend.
“My real life superhero is inspiring because she is fighting for the causes she believes in while she is literally fighting for her life,” she wrote.
After years of caring for everyone else, the doctor is now being cared for.
The cancer, first diagnosed in 2012, came raging back. It’s now in her kidney and brain.
“If I had to choose for myself would I choose cancer, no," Garmon-Brown said. "But it gives me a greater sense of what people are going through.”
As usual, Steen is right there by her friend's side, now at a time when she needs her most.
She helped her shave her head after chemo took its toll.
“I’ve lived an amazing life so I'm not afraid of death," Dr. Garmon-Brown said. "But I want to live. I have three amazing grandchildren, I want to see them grow up.”
So she says focuses on each day that she has, and tried not to worry about what the future will bring.
“Don’t borrow the worries of tomorrow because they may not ever come and you’ve wasted today focusing on that," Dr. Garmon-Brown said. "That’s how I try to live my life, living with cancer.”
Dr. Ophelia Garmon-Brown, a Wonder Woman indeed.