Published: October 01, 2009 04:08 pm      

Pink Ladies (2008): Surviving breast cancer

(2009 Update: The Evening News and Tribune are looking for breast cancer survivors in the area to tell their story for an upcoming edition of the paper. To participate, e-mail reporter Tara Hettinger at Tara.Hettinger@newsandtribune.com or call 812-206-2152.



Nine women. Living their lives in Nine different ways. Going to different jobs, driving different cars, raising different families.

They are not alike.

Some are younger, some are taller and some are thinner. They are gray-haired, brown-haired and blonde. Some of them don’t like pink.

Nine women with not a lot in common.

But they are the same.

They are all fighters. They are all survivors.

As October winds down, so does Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And beyond the pink ribbons and walk-a-thons, there are the people who have been affected by breast cancer. Beyond the tears and the fear are these women.

Here are their stories.



PAULA BRODY

A pivotal moment in Paula Brody’s life happened in a bathroom. She kneeled on the floor, a towel around her shoulders, and her husband shaved her head.

Brody was diagnosed with lobular breast cancer in 2003. Her physician discovered it after an annual physical — because it was lobular, Brody never would have felt a lump.

Lobular cancer occurs underneath the breast behind the ducal system, and instead of a solid mass, it spreads like a spider’s web. For Brody, shaving her head meant truly accepting what she was facing.

“It was one of the most dear, sanctified, and difficult decisions — I had to have my husband shave my head,” she said. “It was so difficult and loving for my husband to do it.

“When I stood up I couldn’t even look in the mirror because that was really it,” Brody said. “I wear my hair like a Texas cheerleader — big and blond — and to have that.”

But she maintained a positive attitude, and she took control of the situation. Brody kept a detailed notebook throughout her treatment recording everything from the time and day of a doctor’s appointment to the exact name and dose of a shot she was given after chemotherapy treatments.

She even got the radiology nurses to give her the lead radiation plate they used to protect her heart during treatment. And they gave in.

Brody was diagnosed with stage one cancer, but before getting the precise diagnosis — when she only knew it was cancer — she and her husband decided if the cancer had metastasized she would forgo treatment.

“There are many choices and that’s when it becomes a personal thing,” she said. “My husband and I decided if it was invasive throughout my body, then no chemo, that would just be my time.”

Fortunately for Brody, it wasn’t her time. Though she did have an over expression of the HER2/neu gene, which causes the cancer to be more aggressive, it was caught early enough to give her reasonable odds for survival. About 15 to 20 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have an over expression of the gene or its protein.

The gene is involved in cell growth and differentiation. An over expression is also seen in ovarian and stomach cancers.

“It puts you on a different path because you have to think long-term,” Brody said. “But my attitude was so positive — I’m a person that accepts what happens and once you accept, you act.”

She received chemo and radiation, and spent five years on the drug Tamoxifen. Estrogen can promote the growth of cancer cells. Tamoxifen interferes with the production of estrogen, and reduces the risk of recurrence in hormone-related breast cancers.

The side effects for Brody, though, were hard to handle. She said her first dose of Tamoxifen rivaled her first day of chemo.

“We were living in Seattle at the time, and home visiting in New Albany, and I couldn’t drive us home,” she said. “So my nearly blind husband, who is missing an eye and 40 percent blind in the other, had to drive us home.

“And I wasn’t even worried — that’s how out of it I was.”

Brody took her last Tamoxifen at the end of September, and in the short time since, could already feel a difference.

“I feel great but it’s all about how you define normal,” she said. “My definition of normal has already changed in 10 days.

“I didn’t realize until the end that there was a marker for me to say, ‘it’s over.’ We marked it on the calendar.”



MELISSA DeLUCA

Melissa DeLuca’s treatment for breast cancer was more unusual than most. She received chemotherapy first, and surgery second.

DeLuca was diagnosed with invasive lobular cancer in February 2007. At the time of her initial diagnosis, she feared the worst. She surfed the Internet for hours researching different types of breast cancer that included her symptoms.

And because the nature of her breast cancer was not a lump but instead her entire breast was swollen, red, and warm to the touch, she figured when she found a Web site describing inflammatory breast cancer she had found her own diagnosis.

Her physician hadn’t determined the type of breast cancer she had before she had self-diagnosed herself with inflammatory breast cancer. IBC, as it is commonly referred to, is a rare and very aggressive type of breast cancer.

IBC accounts for less than 5 percent of all breast cancers, and it spreads quickly to other parts of the body. The mortality rates for women diagnosed with IBC are significantly higher than those for women diagnosed with noninflammatory breast cancer.

And because it tends to occur in younger women, for DeLuca — under 40 when she was diagnosed – the odds were against her. The worry, though, turned out to be needless, and DeLuca began treatment for lobular cancer greatly relieved at the prospect of hope.

Though DeLuca’s breast cancer had already progressed to stage three, of five stages, and she knew it would take everything she had, and everything her friends and family could offer in the way of support, to overcome it.

“I decided the only way was to laugh about it,” she said. “And say, ‘I’m up for the fight and (cancer) you’re going down. I was always a control freak — cancer taught me you can’t do it all and be it all.

“You need help to get through this; it carried over into my life.”

“I thought it was IBC, and I don’t remember having any other thoughts until I found out it wasn’t,” DeLuca said. “When I did, then I could stick with my game plan because what I had was conquerable.”

The type of cancer she was diagnosed with caused the treatment plan to vary from the ordinary. Because the cancer was not a localized mass, but instead more of a spider web spreading behind the ductal region of her breast, the chemo treatments before surgery shrunk the mass to an easier to access, and smaller, area.

After her first chemo treatment, DeLuca’s doctors already noticed a difference. And ultimately they were able to remove the mass of cancer that had spread through her breast.



JAN LOI and JANA EBERLE

Jan Loi already knew she had breast cancer. But when her daughter Jana Eberle called and told Loi she was pregnant, and then a week later that she had also been diagnosed with breast cancer, it was more than Loi could take.

“I couldn’t even breathe,” Loi said, tears welling up in her eyes. “She was only 31 years old.”

Loi found out she had breast cancer because her chiropractor sent her to a doctor. Her back had been hurting, but she had no idea that it was life threatening. By the time she was diagnosed, the cancer had spread to her bones — and she was ready to say good-bye to everything she had known.

But treatment — chemo, radiation, and prescription drugs — gave her a chance she never dreamed she’d have.

And Eberle credits her second pregnancy with saving her life. Her doctor had noticed the lump several weeks before she found out she was pregnant. But because of her age, just told her it was something to keep an eye on.

As her body changed with the pregnancy, though, the lump in her breast changed as well. And she decided something needed to be done.

“Everyone says, ‘isn’t it awful to have breast cancer while you’re pregnant,’” she said. “But I think it was the best time — I credit that pregnancy with saving my life. And I was so busy, sometimes I would forget until I looked in the mirror and realized I had no hair.

“I didn’t have time to focus on myself.”

Eberle already had a 2-year-old son, and there wasn’t much time to focus on cancer. Now she not only has her oldest child, but the son she had while undergoing treatment for breast cancer, and a daughter she was told she might never be able to have.

“As hard as it was, it happened at the best possible time,” she said. “But it’s never a good time.

“That would’ve been the best time — never.”



GEORGEANNA STANKIEWITZ

Georgeanna Stankiewitz’s first appointment with an oncologist fell on the same day as her newly pregnant daughter’s first ultrasound. After finding a lump in her breast a few months before her annual mammogram, Stankiewitz was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer in August 2001.

“I was white-faced and weak-kneed when I found out [my diagnosis],” she said. “When you hear those words your heart just wants to pound out of your chest.”

Stankiewitz was 56 years old when she was diagnosed and the cancer had already begun spreading beyond her breasts into her lymph nodes. Three years earlier, she lost her mother to ovarian cancer.

“Everybody on my mother’s side of the family died of cancer,” she said.

It’s often assumed a family history of cancer of any kind makes sense of cancer when you’ve been diagnosed. But only 10 percent of breast cancers are caused by inherited genes and only 5- to 10-percent of all cancers are inherited.

And when you’re diagnosed with cancer, it is nearly impossible to make any sense of it anyway.

“I wished I could have had my mom so I could pick up the phone and talk to her, but when I was diagnosed I could feel my mother patting my hand and saying, ‘you can do this,’” Stankiewitz said. “She was my inspiration.”

A month after Stankiewitz was diagnosed, she had a mastectomy and breast reconstruction in a single surgical procedure. And that was followed up by four chemotherapy treatments in three months.

After her first round of chemo, Stankiewitz’s doctor told her that her hair was going to start falling out. She called her hairdresser, who came to her house and shaved her head.

Stankiewitz wasn’t fazed by the prospect of baldness.

“I’ll tell you there’s one good thing about losing your hair — you never have a bad hair day,” she said. But she did get a wig, “just for comfort.”

She credits her positive attitude in helping overcome breast cancer. And a support system of family and friends, and a medical team in Jeffersonville that allowed her to stay close to home.

Though it was never easy.

“It is probably the scariest thing I’ve been through,” said Stankiewitz. “But you’re not being given a death sentence — years ago, you thought you were, but not anymore. I think I’m a much stronger person now — I beat the pants off [cancer].

“I think I could do anything now.”

And more than anything, she gets to see her grandson grow up, take his first steps, say his first word, and send him off on his first day of school. Family trumps any of the everyday worries she had before getting breast cancer.

Stankiewitz was upset to miss so much of her daughter’s pregnancy — her last chemo treatment was shortly before Christmas in 2001 and her grandson was born Dec. 28. But being able to hold him when he was just a few hours old quickly made up for any lost time.



BARBARA HOLLIS

Barbara Hollis was working late at the Jeffersonville Clerk-Treasurer’s office when the phone rang. It was after hours, and everyone else had gone home. When she answered, it was her physician on the line. He told her she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

She immediately went to tell her son, Todd, and his wife. Hollis said she was lucky. “I had one of the better kinds, if you can even call it that.” And though he remained strong at the time, Hollis said Todd’s wife later told her he nearly passed out when he got the news.

But she knew she could fight it, and recover.

“You just move forward,” Hollis said. “You deal with things as they come.

“I thought, I am strong enough to do this.”

Hollis had stage one breast cancer, it had not spread to the lymph nodes. She had a lumpectomy and went through radiation, but she didn’t have to go through chemotherapy. A minority of women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer receive chemo, according to a study published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study found overall 29 percent of women with early stage breast cancer receive chemo treatments, and the likelihood of receiving chemotherapy decreases with age. About 66 percent of women younger than 45 receive chemo compared to 31 percent of women between 55 and 59 who received chemo.

“Not having to have chemo made all the difference in the world,” Hollis said. “All those things people have to deal with [during chemo], I didn’t.”

That is not to say that recovering from breast cancer was easy. The worst part for Hollis, and many women, is the waiting — waiting for a diagnosis, waiting for results, waiting for surgery, waiting to get better.

“The waiting is hell,” Hollis said. “Once you know what you’re dealing with, it’s easier to move forward. It’s the waiting that really gets you down.”

But Hollis does count herself as one of the lucky ones — she had lived a full life before her diagnosis and she beat breast cancer.

“I was older (when diagnosed), it’s the young ones that break my heart,” she said. “It’s a one in nine chance — you go out with a group of people and think which one of us will it be.”



GWINN QUINN

Gwinn Quinn refuses to cry — she hasn’t once since she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. After getting an annual mammogram at a James Graham Brown Cancer Center mobile unit that comes to Yum! Brands in Louisville where Quinn works, she was called back for another exam.

But she wasn’t concerned, she said, because she had been called back before. Though this time it was different, the doctor took different views than a typical mammogram and that same day she was sent to have an ultrasound and biopsy.

“You’re kind of stunned,” Quinn said. “But to this day I’ve never cried, never had a breakdown — I feel like if I do it’s over. It scared me but I never felt like I was going to die, I just wanted to get it over with.”

Quinn’s tumor was so deep, it would have gone unnoticed in a breast self-exam. She credits her annual mammogram with saving her life.

Mammograms are credited as the best way to detect breast cancer early, which gives the best possible chances for recovery. It has resulted in a 30 to 35 percent lower mortality rate in women diagnosed with breast cancer over the last several years, according to the American College of Radiology. A recent study showed a 42 percent reduction in women diagnosed with stage two or higher breast cancer who practiced routine screening.

Quinn underwent a mastectomy of her left breast and surgical reconstruction. She then went through six chemotherapy treatments over four and a half months, and is now undergoing radiation.

“I would have done surgery 10 times to not have to do chemo,” Quinn said. “It’s much better since the chemo is over, I had one side effect after another.”

The most well-known side effect being loss of hair. Quinn’s oncologist gave her some advice on what to do with it — “she told me to spread it in the bushes and the birds would take it to make nests,” Quinn said.

Quinn only had a single mastectomy, but in hindsight she wishes she had removed both breasts. But at the time she was making the decision, there were so many options and so many decisions it is hard to know the right one.

“They don’t tell you what to do, they lay out all these options and you have to pick,” she said. “I’m 46, I couldn’t see doing a double mastectomy then, but now I wish I would have because I worry about the right breast.

“I made the best decision at the time, it’s just so overwhelming.”



JUDY BARTRAM

Judy Bartram’s daughter called to tell her she had her first mammogram this month. For Bartram, it is a relief — she is a 16-year breast cancer survivor.

She found a lump in her breast in May 1992, and when her doctor told her she had breast cancer, she lost it.

“I just let go — I was almost hysterical,” Bartram said. The doctor excused himself, and when he came back in she had two questions — “is it fatal, and what’s the story for my 21-year-old daughter?”

The doctor told Bartram she needed treatment immediately, and that her daughter just needed to be watchful for any changes. He also gave her the power to determine the next step.

And while chemotherapy is excruciating, it offered Bartram a 33 percent higher chance of preventing a recurrence.

“I don’t gamble on horses, so I’m not going to gamble on my life,” she said.

Bartram was in surgery for a lumpectomy 10 days after receiving her diagnosis. She told the surgeon before going in, “if it’s worse in surgery than you realized, do a mastectomy — don’t wake me up, don’t ask my husband, because I’m not coming back here.”

And 16 years later, she hasn’t needed to. But she has remained an advocate for breast cancer awareness and she often helps other women going through treatment.

Bartram remained positive throughout her treatment, and she tries to lend that to women suffering now.

“That’s been my therapy over the years,” she said. “I try to tell my story. You know there is hope.

“I’m a 16-year survivor — there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”



CHRISI HILL

Chrisi Hill was recovering from chemotherapy treatments on the couch during all three of her children’s birthdays, Thanksgiving and Christmas last year. She missed her 6-year-old daughter’s first day of kindergarten and her 13-year-old son’s first day of middle school.

Hill was receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer — she was diagnosed in September 2007. Four months before receiving her own cancer diagnosis, her father died from lung cancer.

“It was still fresh, the kids saw him dying, not being able to swallow, not being able to sit up,” Hill said. “He died within a month of his diagnosis, but I attributed it to his own doing, his lifestyle.

“Then when I was diagnosed, I thought, ‘well, whose fault is this?’”

It turned out Hill carried a mutated BRCA gene, commonly called the breast cancer gene. Only about 5 percent of the population carries the genetic mutation, and the abnormal gene accounts for up to 10 percent of all breast cancers.

The BRCA genes normally function to prevent cancer cell growth, but a mutation or abnormality can increase the risk of not only breast cancer but also ovarian cancer. Women with the breast cancer gene often have a family history of breast cancer.

But the majority of women diagnosed with breast cancer, like Hill, have no family history of breast cancer at all.

“That floored me more than finding out I had breast cancer,” she said. “Finding out I have the gene, and could pass it on to my children.”

Hill not only worried about passing the gene onto her two daughters and her son, but what she was missing during treatment. And what would happen if she didn’t survive.

“My mother died when I was 21,” she said. “I know when you die they eventually forget you, I can’t remember the sound of my mother’s voice.”

And Hill’s children, ages 6, 10, and 13, still had a lot more growing up to do that she didn’t want to miss. While she laid on the couch after chemo treatments, she could hear them running and playing. She wanted to be able to play with them, and she definitely didn’t want to be remembered as the mom laying sick on the couch, she said.

Hill’s doctor initially told her the lump she found in her breast was nothing to worry about. Even the radiologist she went to, when she was still not convinced it was nothing, seemed similarly unconcerned.

“When you go in at my age, [doctors] don’t take you seriously,” she said. “The radiologist gave this speech, like, it’s nothing, in 80 percent of women it’s benign.”

But unfortunately for Hill, it was cancer. And that was something that, at the age of 35, she never planned on hearing.

“I think the fear it put in my kids is never going to go away,” she said. “The tie it took away from them. I think [older survivors] have a different attitude about it — I have young kids and different concerns.”

Hill and her husband were always up front and honest with the kids about what she, and the entire family, was facing. When she began losing her hair, she let the kids give her a hair cut — something she’ll likely never do again.

“They gave me a nice crooked bob, and bangs up to here,” Hill said, gesturing to her hairline. “My husband shaved my head.”

Hill has started to get back to normal. Radiation is finished, and she is beginning to get back into the everyday business of raising a family. Though even in treatment, she still had to keep up the business of raising three young kids, growing up doesn’t stop for cancer.

“We had to keep going even when I was sick,” she said. “I was just the bald mama.”