Unyielding is a University of Missouri School of Journalism project for Investigate Midwest.
Over the hum of blow dryers and the flurry of hairdressing shears, Bobbi Bibbs welcomed clients into Studio 119, a salon in the heart of downtown Kennett, for 19 years.
As someone who worked “behind the chair,” all of her trims, dyes and big chops came with stories of life in the small Bootheel town where she was born and raised. In a tight-knit community like hers, Bibbs explained, you know nearly everyone who you pass on the street.
“I feel like it’s another kind of branch of being a small town, because you get so connected with your people,” Bibbs said. “I’ve met every walk of life, I’ve met people that I’m still connected to, to this day, just from walking in my doors.”
When she enrolled in beauty school, her vision was to run her own salon — her own safe space. In 2021, she decided to make it happen in Kennett.
“I wanted to be able to make a positive space for people where they felt good,” Bibbs said. “It was a very, very positive area, (a) very uplifting area … I have young girls, so I wanted to make sure that young girls felt good about themselves.”
Owning a fledgling small business can be tiring. Even still, the wave of fatigue Bibbs began to feel at the start of 2023 felt so unusual, so sudden.
Bibbs persevered, pushing past her symptoms until they couldn’t be ignored.
“I guess you could classify me as a workaholic,” she said. “I didn’t have time to be sick, I didn’t have time to feel bad, so I really didn’t think that I was sick.”
She spoke with her doctor — in true small-town nature, one of her close friends — who set her up with a colonoscopy. Bibbs anticipated an in-and-out exam. Her partner, Ryan Brooks, would take her back home afterwards. She had a business to run, after all.
As Bibbs’ sedation from her colonoscopy faded, she opened her eyes to find her doctor standing at the edge of the bed. From the expression he wore, she knew something was wrong.
“He looked at me with such pity,” she said. “When he walked out of the room, I looked at Ryan, and I said, ‘I’m sick. I’ve got cancer.’ ”
She was right. The test found colon cancer. Soon after, Bibbs learned that the cancer had metastasized to her liver, automatically bumping it up to stage four.
“That one was tough, just because I felt like, ‘I’m never going to be free,’ ” she said.
When cancer metastasizes, entering the bloodstream or lymphatic system and spreading to other parts of the body, the chances of entering remission generally grow slimmer. Based on conversations with her medical providers, Bibbs said she’ll never enter “full-blown remission.” Instead, she hopes to achieve NED — no evidence of disease.
“It’s called ‘no evidence of disease,’ because some way, shape or form, it’s always in there,” Bibbs said. “I’ll just carry it with me.”
There’s no way around it: Cancer is an ugly truth. It forced Bibbs to close her salon, scramble to find health insurance and fight for the care she needed.
But this isn’t Bibbs’ only truth. Positivity is imperative; without it, “your mind can tear you down quicker than your body will.”
“I just try to be as positive about it as I can,” she said. “Because you can either have this and you can continue to live your life and try to be as normal as you can, or you can let it absolutely consume you.”
After her diagnosis, Bibbs took to TikTok as @ablondescancerchronicles to tell her story, hoping to spread even “a sliver of positivity” to others. By chronicling her cancer journey online, Bibbs wants to encourage others to be proactive about their health.
Her TikTok account is a mosaic of “get ready with me” videos, storytimes and candid reflections through which she shares her lived experiences. Her goal is to remind viewers they’re not alone and to inspire them — whether that means encouraging them to take their symptoms seriously or to keep fighting the good fight.
Even offline, Bibbs is a fierce advocate for regular health screenings. In February 2024, she pushed for her brother to go in for his first colonoscopy.
“He kicked, he screamed, he acted like a total baby, and I was like ‘You gotta do this for me,’” she said. “And they removed three spots off his colon, and when he got the biopsy back, they told him (if he hadn’t come in), within a year, he’d be sitting right here by me.”
There has to be something
Kennett is nestled in the center of Dunklin County, a rural sprawl of agricultural land dotted with small communities. It’s also part of an L-shaped cluster of Southeast Missouri counties with some of the highest colorectal cancer rates in the state.
Dunklin County’s colorectal cancer rate is nearly 1.5 times higher than the Missouri average. Bibbs said she’s mind-blown by the number of people she knows in the area who are sick.
With information traveling farther and faster in the digital age, Bibbs wonders if that’s part of why she’s hearing more cancer stories now than she ever did when she was younger. But regardless of why, she believes “there has to be something” driving it.
“The correlation of the amount of people that are sick in this area with pancreatic and colon cancer … You almost can’t fathom it,” she said.
By supporting nearby friends with cancer and coming to terms with her own diagnosis, Bibbs has become deeply involved in the area’s “cancer community.” When you’re going through something like this, you become paired with the most unlikely people, she said.
Bibbs and 27-year-old Kennett resident Andrew Brown are one such pairing. “Brown was diagnosed with cancer in 2023, after learning that a nearly 2-year-old spot on his pancreas, which doctors originally identified as a cyst, was actually a tumor.”
After genetic testing, Brown found out he has a genetic mutation called Lynch syndrome, which can increase the risk of developing cancer before the age of 50.
Bibbs has grown close to Brown and his partner, Megan Williams, over the past few years. Bibbs is a big believer in the notion that “people need people,” and in a close-knit area like theirs, so many are willing to drop everything and help.
In Kennett, where the only hospital in town has been closed since 2018, Bibbs said “you rely on your medical friends” for support.
“I wouldn’t know the things I know, if it wouldn’t be for me having such a close-knit community, and having so many close friends that have medical backgrounds and knowledge,” she said. “Being from a small town right now is saving my life.”
The connections Bibbs has forged in the Bootheel are incredibly sustaining. But at the same time, the lack of immediate health care access in her area doesn’t always feel sustainable for many in the community.
‘Everything’s a drive’
About an hour away from Kennett, David Wyman, the city administrator of Dexter, is cautiously eyeing the rates of diseases like cancer.
“That’s always something that we’re concerned about,” Wyman said. “I don’t know that it is restricted to just our part of the state; even that just seems like something that is becoming more prevalent, even nationwide.”
Dexter is the largest community in Stoddard County, housing a bustling suburban/rural mix of approximately 12,000 people — about 8,000 within city limits and 4,000 just outside, according to Wyman. It’s also where Bibbs goes for care.
“We are pretty blessed, considering our rural nature and the size of our community,” Wyman said, acknowledging Dexter’s urgent care services and the presence of Mercy Hospital Stoddard in Dexter. As a rural hospital, it can’t perform all functions, but it does have a 24-hour emergency room and a rotation of specialty doctors.
Bibbs, who moved from Kennett to Poplar Bluff in October 2023, goes to Mercy in Dexter for some of her oncology treatments.
“I’m thankful because there’s a hospital in Poplar Bluff … but everything’s a drive,” she said. “Everything’s a drive, and of course, it’s expensive.”
Ryan typically drives Bibbsi to and from appointments. But not everyone has a Ryan — and not everyone has the luxury of accessible health care.
Twenty-one hospitals have closed in Missouri since 2014, according to Missouri Hospital Association data from October 2024, including Kennett’s former hospital, Twin Rivers Regional Medical Center.
“The lack of health care, period, in this area is poor, horribly poor,” said Cheryl Bruce, executive director of the Dunklin/Stoddard County Caring Council. “Doesn’t matter if you need to go to the foot doctor or the ear doctor, and then back to cancer treatments. You’ve got to drive.”
The Dunklin/Stoddard Caring Council, based in Kennett, provides transportation assistance to county residents in need of cancer care. When Kennett’s hospital closed, it left not just the city, but the entire county without a hospital, stripping the region of critical health care infrastructure.
As a result, Kennett residents often travel to Cape Girardeau or Jonesboro, Arkansas, for medical care — drives that can take anywhere from one hour to an hour and a half.
Brown has traveled from Kennett to Dexter for medical care once a week for nearly two years now. Some aspects of his treatment require an even longer drive to Cape Girardeau: procedures, scans and sometimes, emergencies where time is of the essence.
“There was one instance where he had an infection set up after a procedure, and his temperature was through the roof,” Williams said. “It was climbing steadily with medicine not helping at all, and so getting him to Cape quickly was pretty scary. Definitely would have loved to have something much closer.”
Bibbs’ own medical treatments pull her in different directions, too. For some general treatments, it’s a drive to Cape Girardeau. For surgeries, it’s a trip north to St. Louis.
“You’re just everywhere,” she said. “You kind of have to drive everywhere because we don’t have a large enough facility in one area to do all of it.”
‘Dancing Queen’
For Bibbs, the 45-minute drive to the hospital in Dexter for treatment can be a daunting one. Her mind is “always going 100 miles an hour,” and if she’s not careful, it’ll wander to the worst places.
“You gotta pump yourself up, you gotta get yourself ready,” she said.
To escape her own thoughts, Bibbs often turns to music. One of her favorites? ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” She came across the song in a TikTok video remembering a woman who had died from cancer. Ever since, she hears the song randomly. In the store, on shuffled playlists — everywhere.
“My fight song, I guess,” Bibbs said. “Put on some music and dance it out. Sing it out, dance it out, scream it out, whatever.”
Even after new rounds of treatment, Bibbs said she tries to navigate her life as though cancer isn’t part of it. She finds power in how she presents herself to the world, which is often in full glam and dressed to the nines. Sickness doesn’t dare supersede her style.
“If you know me, you know I’m not going to go out looking as bad as I feel if I can help it,” she said in a TikTok.
Bibbs learned this from watching her nanny (grandmother), who shares her name. She held herself to a high standard, even while living with multiple sclerosis.
“She always put herself together,” Bibbs said. “That’s probably where I got a lot of my grit from, because I saw her, my whole life, struggle, like have to really make herself get up … She was so strong, always.”
Alongside Bibbs’ chic outfits and gleaming jewelry, she also wears a collection of more permanent accessories — her tattoos.
“Why not decorate yourself, make yourself pretty, if that’s what you want to do, you know?” she said. Even her bad tattoos, she explains with a laugh, hold meaning for her.
The art etched onto her skin, whether it’s a tiny rocket or a set of guitar strings, is a testament to who she is, and the people she loves most. The mantra “be still” rests on her arm, while designs for each of her children speckle her arms and torso.
A mother of three, Bibbs said her kids are why she fights so hard every day. They’re her support — her life.
“A lot of people, when you’re handed this, your immediate thought is ‘I’m going to die,’” she said. “When I look at my children, I think, ‘No, that’s why I want to live. I’m going to live — for them.’”
Her oldest is 26; he’s her tough one, taking her treatment updates in stride and sending strength to his mother in spades. Bibbs’ daughters, 11 and 16, respectively, are her spitting images. She’s thankful that her 11-year-old is “just young enough to kind of not get it enough,” while her wish for her 16-year-old is for her to simply be a teenager.
“I don’t want her worried about me and sick for me and sad for me — I want her to be a teenager,” Bibbs said. “I want her to live and kick and scream and scratch and claw and do all the things.”
Through genetic testing, she confirmed that her children didn’t inherit an increased risk for her specific type of cancer. Despite that semblance of relief, she acknowledges that early health screenings will still be important for them.
“I want them to know if (cancer) ever is laid on their doorstep, that they can kick its ass, just like I can,” Bibbs said.
Just like her family, Bibbs’ Bootheel community immediately came to her defense after her diagnosis. If she’s ever in a funk, she said her friends will always come calling.
“If I’m having a bad day, I can have a bad day — but I’m not going to have a bad week,” she said. “Because they’re going to make dang sure that I don’t … And that is one of the biggest blessings.”
Reporters Alex Cox and Xander Lundblad contributed to this story.
Unyielding was produced by students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. The team included researchers, reporters, data analysts, photographers and graphic designers. The students, most of whom were seniors who graduated in May 2025, included:
Reporters: Mary McCue Bell, Alex Cox, Jonah Foster, Prajukta Ghosh, Adeleine Halsey, Ben Koelkebeck, Xander Lundblad, Lillian Metzmeier, Kyla Pehr, Seth Schwartzberg, Savvy Sleever and Mayci Wilderman.
Data and graphics: Alex Cox, Yasha Mikolajczak and Mariia Novoselia
Photography: Michael Baniewicz
For questions about the project, please contact Mark Horvit, horvitm@missouri.edu.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
