about | contact | home

After Breast Cancer Life goes on, but is never the same by Wenda Reed

There are 2.5 million of us in the United States today — women who have survived breast cancer.

We’ve heard the dreaded “C-word.”

It’s cancer. It’s breast cancer.

Many of us, with early detection, did not expect to die, but some of us were in mortal danger. We went through treatment, wrestling with fear and faith, with panic and peace. We’ve gone back to our lives — for years or decades — a symbol of hope to the 180,000 American women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. None of us would choose the experience; many of us consider it a blessing; some of us feel it was just something we had to go through. But all of us, in varying degrees, have been changed by it.

EDREE ALLEN-AGBRO

Edree Allen-Agbro, 60, doesn’t like to call herself a breast cancer “survivor.”

“I’ve had 60 years of doing other things,” she says, referring to nine years living in Nigeria and raising four children. “I didn’t want to define myself by those 10 months of breast cancer treatment.”

The treatment for inflammatory Stage III breast cancer 11 years ago didn’t so much change her life as sharpen her focus, Allen-Agbro says. “I decided to be more conscious — not to walk through life on autopilot.” She made the decision to give up full-time teaching and part-time consulting to be her own boss, working with business people in conflict resolution and professional leadership development. She also does workshops for an African American breast cancer support group.

“When I was teaching, I was always telling my students to be real,” she adds. “So, when I was in treatment, one student asked, ‘Why are you covering your head?’ I took off my turban, and walked into a restaurant for a group gathering.” Tears well in her eyes as she adds, “I got a standing ovation.”

A lump discovered in her other breast this past April made her more serious about doing things she’d been putting off. She feels that her weight may have contributed to the estrogen-positive tumor, and so she has put a priority on taking care of her body. “I have absolute control of my life and I have no control,” she says. “I can take responsibility for the parts I can control.” She does call the experience a “blessing,” saying “I don’t know if it was what I made of it, or if it was inherently a blessing.”

BETTY WEST

Betty West, 87, had been married two years and had a baby when she felt a lump in her breast in 1945. She was 24 years old.

She describes the treatment, including a radical mastectomy and radiation with a regular X-ray machine, as “barbaric.” “The tough thing was not to be able to talk to anyone, and no one asked me about it,” she says.

“I didn’t think I would lose my life, but I was scared,” she remembers. “No one talked about breast cancer then.” She described her husband as a “boob man,” and she was self-conscious about being flat and having to use a plastic prosthesis that she blew up with a little tube. She was told she must wait five years before having another child, but no one told her exactly why.

“I felt it was just something I had to go through,” she says of those days, but she admits that she had a “low point … maybe a nervous breakdown” after the cancer.

She goes to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Puget Sound Affiliate Luncheon each October, and is always recognized as the longest surviving member. “I go to hear about all the new things and to talk with people,” she says. At last year’s luncheon, she met the most recently diagnosed survivor, took her to lunch and keeps up a telephone and e-mail correspondence.

“I want to let them know I’m still around, and I can encourage the other girls.”

LESLIE FORSBERG

Writer Leslie Forsberg, 51, describes her bout with breast cancer last year as, “not a big tragedy, but kind of uplifting.”

This is despite the fact that she almost died from an adverse reaction to chemotherapy. “It was iffy,” she says. “They told me I might not make it through the night. I had to tell my daughter goodbye, but I didn’t want to tell her I might not make it. I told her I loved her. I started crying…” After struggling through the night, she says, “I came to a sense of great peace that if it was my time, I could go.”

The change has been in her priorities. “As adults, we get so one-track-minded, so busy with work and family and we don’t spend as much time with friends,” she says. But her friends were there for her, bringing casseroles and encouragement. “I felt loved and protected and lifted up,” Forsberg says. Now she makes time for friends, is more open with them, and is less reticent about approaching people she admires or likes and asking to get together.

“I think more in terms of my own needs,” she adds. “I was always a distant third behind child and family. I do think more of eating right and exercising.”

“I was so close to not making it, so I’m so thankful for everything in life. I’ve felt a great sense of blessedness.”

GOV. CHRIS GREGOIRE

Chris Gregoire, 61, the state’s former attorney general, announced her candidacy for governor in the summer of 2003, and went in for a routine physical, including a mammogram, so that she could tell voters she was healthy.

“You never expect to hear anything is wrong. It’s a jolt,” she says of her diagnosis of early stage breast cancer. “Your whole life changes. You are completely in the hands of someone else — you are not in control. All the decisions you have to make at once are overwhelming.” She had surgery in late August and went on the campaign trail in September.

“My family was nothing short of amazing,” she says. “I had family, support, great medical care, great insurance. Making sure that people have the same kinds of benefits I had is important to me,” she adds. “Imagine all of the lives that could be saved with early detection. I feel very passionate about health care. I really don’t see in this wealthiest country that we can’t insure people.”

When she participated in her first Komen Walk for the Cure as a survivor, a woman fell into her arms, crying. “She said, ‘I’m crying because I heard you had breast cancer, and if you could get it, anyone could. It prompted me to get a mammogram, and I had Stage III breast cancer.’” Gregoire said she was reluctant to talk about her breast cancer at first, but “now I feel I have a responsibility to tell people it can happen to anyone.”

In her personal life, Gregoire says, “I kind of never focused on the fact that I might one day die. It put life in perspective. I’ve got it in my head and my heart now that life is limited. Family comes first. Family always came first, but now it’s in a more emotional way.” Her faith in God also grew as a result of the experience. “I’m in the hands of God, and I thank God every day for looking out for me.”

NICOLE TAYLOR

Four years ago, when she had a two-year-old and a four-year-old, Nicole Taylor, 38, was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer and was told she had a 50/50 chance of surviving for 10 years. She endured six months of chemotherapy and seven weeks of radiation, resulting in side effects that still bother her.

Breast cancer in women under 40 is often more aggressive and is usually detected later than cancer in older women. On the day before I talked with Taylor, she’d lost a friend to breast cancer, one of 18 friends under 40 who have died of the disease in the last few years.

“I take the anger and anxiety and put it to positive use,” Taylor says.

She began by looking for support among breast cancer patients her own age. “I was attending a support group at Cancer Lifeline, and all the women were post-menopausal. I couldn’t ask anyone how to strap a toddler into a car seat when I couldn’t move my arms, and how to deal with a four-year-old’s anxieties.” She found the Young Survival Coalition, a national online support group (www.youngsurvival.org), and soon began contacting local members. She organized a Bahamas cruise for 22 survivors she’d met online.

She also joined Northwest Young Survivors, a local group that meets at Gilda’s Club on Capitol Hill, and took over running it after her first year. Taylor made brochures that members could take to their oncologists, who could tell other women under 45 about Northwest Young Survivors. “This is my path: to pay it forward,” Taylor says. “People were there when I needed it and we (in the support group) are helping other women through it. We’ll be there if cancer recurs … we share babysitting and fixing meals.” When she went back to work, she wanted to find a job connected with helping cancer patients, and became the volunteer coordinator for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure at the Puget Sound Affiliate.

“I wouldn’t wish (the experience of breast cancer) on anyone, but it made me a strong, resilient person,” Taylor says. “I keep a picture of myself at my desk at work — bald as an egg — and it reminds me that no problem is as big as that.”

WENDA REED

I personally had what I call “cancer lite” — an early stage lump surrounded by pre-cancerous cells. I had three lumpectomies and radiation, but no chemotherapy. I am two years past diagnosis, and aside from a tremor of fear at the six-month mammograms, I don’t think about it or worry about recurrences. I have huge empathy for women who must go through mastectomies or chemotherapy. I am one of those who consider the experience, on balance, a blessing. It brought me closer to God, who comforted me with His promises and gave me incredible peace all through the trial. It brought me closer to my husband and friends and family. It did not change the direction of my life, but brought everything into clearer focus. I consciously thank God each morning for the day, and consciously enjoy a family dinner, hikes, kayak trips and so many other pleasures because I do not take them for granted. For me, the shadow of mortality makes the light of day brighter.

Wenda Reed is a Bothell-based writer and two-year breast cancer survivor. In common with most breast cancer survivors, she tells women, “Get your mammogram. Don’t put it off.”

©2008 Caliope Publishing Company