daily journal brave hearts

DAILY JOURNAL FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2010 C1

BRAVE HEARTS

Almost 200,000 women this year will

learn they have breast cancer. But as those who’ve fought

the disease know, amid the despair, fear and pain can be found

hope, life and even laughter.

Everything freezes

HEARING THE NEWS

‘You have to fight’

COPING WITH CANCER

Screeningssave lives

NEW TREATMENTS

Preventivemastectomy

NUCLEAR OPTION

Raising money, hope

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

C2 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2010 BRAVE HEARTS DAILY JOURNAL, JOHNSON COUNTY, IND.

80%Risk of developing breast can-cer if BRCA genes are present

70%Breast cancers that develop in women with no family history of the disease

14minutes

Someone dies from breast cancer once every

From the editor

Life takes on a new hue when you hear the words, “You’ve got breast cancer.” To be sure, there is disbelief and fear. But in the midst of tears and treatment comes power. The power

of hope. The power of inspiration. The power of faith. And even the power of laughter. We’ve felt that strength as we have spent the past few months talking to dozens of families, caregivers and breast cancer survivors who all have stared down a disease that kills one person every 14 minutes.Our initiative focuses on breast cancer, but the stories really are about the remarkable resil-iency of the human spirit. The Brave Hearts in this special section gra-ciously and frankly shared what it means physi-cally, spiritually and mentally to be confronted with their mortality. They let you in on their darkest hours. The moment in the still of the night when she won-dered if her children would grow up without a mom. The moment when she took a deep breath, looked in the mirror and saw only scars where her breasts had been. The moment when she learned the cancer had spread beyond her breasts. The moment when she buried a sister.But they also show you how light overtakes darkness.The moment when she knew God and her faith were stronger than any disease. The moment when she put on a rhinestone tiara and pink boa and did the dance of joy after a clean mammogram. The moment when she heard her husband tell her she was the most beautiful woman in the world even if she was bald and sick. The moment when she thought cancer just might be a blessing that taught her the most important of life’s lessons.There’s Stephanie Stewart, who first thought cancer was a curse.“To me, it ended up being a good experience. It changed me in many ways. I’m closer to God,” she saidThere’s Kelly Gough, who lost a sister to cancer and now knows life is a precious gift. “I could be filled with anger because of my sister’s outcome, but instead I am a little more patient and positive in everyday life,” she said.There’s Terese Carson, who learned strangers can be angels. “I realized how much people love and care for you, even if they don’t know you. People who I didn’t even know were praying for me, and that’s a powerful experience,” she said.Indeed it is.We are grateful to the men and women who opened their hearts and so honestly shared their stories. We were inspired by their brave hearts. You will be, too.

— Scarlett Syse, editor

Breast reconstruction restores normalcy .....................................C4“No one knows what you’re going through but God.” ..................C5Better technology leads to better screenings ...............................C7Genetic mutation radically increases cancer risk .........................C8When preventive mastectomy is the best choice .........................C9Patient urges others to keep sense of humor .............................C10Husband recalls wife’s fighting spirit .........................................C11Woman insists on visit to specialist ............................................D2Mother, daughter battle cancer decades apart ..............................D3Fundraiser inspired by late sister ................................................D4Hitting the pavement for a good cause ........................................D5Tissue bank researchers working for a cure .................................D7Breast cancer makes second appearance ....................................D8Woman struggles with side effects of treatment ........................... E2“Why not me? Look at the statistics.” .......................................... E3Changes to federal screening guidelines spread confusion ......... E4Children help woman through cancer fight ................................. E5“Being aggressive is what I needed to do.” ................................. E6

A family historyD6

Don’t give up hopeE1

Missing the callC6

Drawn togetherD1

40,000Women in the United States expected to die from breast cancer this year

4,400Indiana women who died from breast cancer between 2003 and 2007

337Women in Johnson County diagnosed with breast cancer between 2003 and 2007

On the cover: Photo illustration by Scott Roberson; section design by Jennifer L. Gaskin. Statistics throughout provided by American Cancer Society and health agencies.

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DAILY JOURNAL, JOHNSON COUNTY, IND. BRAVE HEARTS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2010 C3

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Getting back tonormal

Bargersville resident embraces reconstruction process

Judy Allen has offered to let near-strangers touch her breasts.

The 62-year-old Bargersville resident doesn’t mind being open with fellow cancer survivors when they ask her about reconstructive surgery. She believes that knowledge is what women need when

making decisions about their treatment.And she lost most of her bashfulness when she

went through months of surgeries and treatment after being diagnosed with breast cancer in October 2009.

“Before, I would never even go shower in a state park. But now, I’m not modest. I’ve showed my breasts to so many doctors and nurs-es, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Allen said.

A year after being diagnosed with Stage 2 cancer, Allen is undergoing a mild version of chemotherapy treatments every three weeks and is nearly finished with reconstructive sur-gery after a double mastectomy.

Allen tells anyone who asks about the process of reconstructive surgery, one that scared her initially but now fascinates her.

When she decided to have a double mastecto-my, Allen was terrified of the pain she thought she’d be in.

She had never had surgery in her life, not even a tonsillectomy, so she had no idea what to expect.

But she was surprised when she woke up to find a small incision where they had cut her open, taken off her nipple and hollowed out her breast.

She took pain medication for a while, but a few days after surgery, she was back on her feet, eating normally and feeling fine.

The day of her surgery, she had the doctors insert tissue expanders, the first step of reconstructive surgery.

She hadn’t initially been worried about losing her breasts.“To me that wasn’t important. I just wanted them to get it all,”

she said.She already had been through so much, with chemotherapy

that left her weak and dehydrated and then the mastectomy. She questioned whether she wanted to go through even more surger-ies to have her breasts reconstructed.

Her husband said he didn’t care if she had the surgery, but he didn’t want her to regret her decision later if she chose not to have it done.

Then she read books her doctor gave her that talked about con-fidence and self-esteem and she thought about the pool in her back yard, where she often swims with her grandchildren.

“I thought I may as well go all the way. It puts you back to as much of a normal appearance as you could be,” she said.

Normalcy was important to Allen while she was going through treatment.

During chemotherapy, she continued working long days for a local accounting firm, helping out during tax time. Her typical 12-hour days sometimes were shorter and often broken up by a nap or two at the office.

But working was important to her.“That kept me determined. I’m going to beat it. It’s not going

to slow me down. I’m going to continue working,” she said.

And she didn’t want people to see her bald head, even if that meant she put on a wig whenever she left her house.

Losing her hair was extremely upsetting to Allen, something others just couldn’t understand.

“Everybody else would say that should be the least of your worries. But it was really important to me,” she said.

By February, when her hair began growing back, Allen started becoming more comfort-able going out without her wig. And she was surprised at people’s response: They didn’t stare.

She got one question from a child at an Easter egg hunt, asking what kind of cancer she had. And she was shocked that he was so familiar with it.

Her quest for normalcy may have been another reason Allen decided to have recon-structive surgery, which she knew would require extra surgeries.

After the tissue expanders were put in place during her mastectomy, doctors would fill them every so often so they could expand her breasts. This summer, when she felt they were at the size she wanted — the same size she’d always been — Allen went in for anoth-er surgery this summer to have implants put into her breasts.

Her surgeon did tell her that if she ever wanted to change her breasts, now would be the time. And he joked with her husband before surgery about what larger size he would want them to be.

“He said, ‘The first time, you get what nature gives you. The second time, you get to pick,’” she said.

Once the implants are in place, the next surgery is to create nipples. The surgeon cuts three triangular pieces of skin into the breast and twists them to form a nipple.

The final step is to have the skin tattooed a darker color, resembling the look of natural nipples, she said.

Allen was amazed at pictures she saw of women after they had reconstructive surgery and how natural their breasts looked.

And that’s why she is willing to let new patients touch her breasts, so they can have an idea of what they will feel like if they decide to have surgery.

Since being diagnosed, Allen has become much more interest-ed and involved in cancer groups and awareness. She attends meetings with support groups, where she tries to help women recently diagnosed.

And she has become an advocate for regular mammograms, since that is what likely saved her life.

Allen was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in October 2009, only five months after a mammogram in May showed a tiny spot, likely about the size of a grain of sand. In September, she found a lump in her breast while she and her husband were on vacation in Europe.

Her mammogram showed she had two lumps, the size of her thumbs.

She can only imagine how much the cancer could have spread if she had waited a year or even two years for her next mammogram.

“If I wouldn’t have caught it, it could have spread fast,” she said.

Judy AllenAge62

ResidenceBargersville

DiagnosedOctober 2009; Stage 2 Her2-positive

TreatmentDouble mastectomy, chemotherapy, Herceptin

What cancer taught meI have a new appreciation for life. I don’t take family or friends for granted.

How cancer changed meI do more volunteer work. I am working with cancer support groups to help other women who have been diagnosed. I talk to almost everyone I see about cancer.

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancerDo research. Know your options. Talk to other patients about what they did and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Before, I would never even go shower in a state park. But now, I’m not modest. I’ve showed my breasts to so many doctors and nurses, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Judy AllenBargersville

“

Pictured: Nurse Deanne Lough attaches an IV to a port that was placed in Judy Allen’s chest last year. The port makes giving medi-cation simple and keeps veins from being damaged by needle sticks.

STORY BY ANNIE GOELLER

PHOTO BY SCOTT ROBERSON

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‘Enough surgeries’Medical crises follow chemotherapy

As she lay on the operating table, her skin pale and her body weak from blood loss, Barbara Brownfield won-dered for the first time if breast cancer was going to claim her life.

She already had gone through multiple hospital visits, chemotherapy and a double

mastectomy. Now, she had to have yet another surgery to fix a hematoma, where blood pools inside the body.

She was exhausted, mentally and physically. And she was worried what would happen next.

Brownfield, 65, doesn’t like to tell everyone about her cancer treatment.

It’s not that she feels her experience was too personal or she doesn’t feel comfortable talking about it. Brownfield worries she will scare people.

“You want people to be aware. I just don’t want people to think it is going to happen to them because it may not,” she said.

After being diagnosed in August 2009, Brownfield got two blood clots during chemother-apy and suffered from a hematoma after a double mastectomy.

She made multiple trips to the emergency room, and she became a hermit for months, clos-eting herself in her Trafalgar home to avoid any possible illnesses she could get by coming in con-tact with people.

At times, she couldn’t even see her grandchildren.She remembers the looks on her family’s faces

as she prepared to go into surgery to drain the pooling blood from the hematoma and stop the swelling in her chest. They were crying, and she was barely strong enough to speak.

Her surgeon stroked her arm, a concerned look on her face, and told her she’d be OK.

In the end, she was. But Brownfield credits her faith with helping her get through it all.

“Everything I went through is a blessing. If people aren’t reli-gious, they don’t understand that. You really don’t know what you can go through until you go through it,” she said.

Brownfield was diagnosed with cancer after a routine mammo-gram showed an abnormality. She was called back in, which wasn’t unusual because she’d had cysts in the past.

But she thought the doctor would want an ultrasound. Instead, her doctor told her she would need a biopsy.

When the tests came back, the news was cancer, but her doctor wasn’t sure how bad it was.

At first, she thought she could do a lumpectomy; but when the cancer was determined to be Stage 2, that wasn’t an option.

Brownfield was going to have chemotherapy and radiation, and then she decided to have a double mastectomy.

Soon after starting chemotherapy, problems began.

Brownfield was short of breath, which was a possible side effect of the chemotherapy.

But she got concerned when the symptoms didn’t stop, so she went to the hospital. They found a blood clot in her lung. Shortly after, doctors found another in her leg.

For about a month, Brownfield spent nearly every weekend in the emergency room.

Her body ached from the chemotherapy treat-ment, but with every ache and pain, Brownfield panicked and wondered if it was yet another blood clot.

“I was in tears. I was just so tired of it,” she said.Doctors put her on a blood thinner to stop the clots.

A few months later, she had the double mastectomy.A few days later, Brownfield woke up, sensing

something was wrong.Something in her body hurt, and she began

pulling at her skin. She turned on the light and found that she was lying in a pool of blood.

She called a neighbor, who works as a nurse. She helped wrap Brownfield and clean up the bed. They called her doctor, who met them at the office and then sent her straight to the hospital.

Brownfield had a hematoma, causing swelling and causing her body to drain too much blood. The doctor planned an immediate surgery to drain the excess blood and stop the swelling.

Brownfield was pale and exhausted. Her family came to see her, with tears in their eyes and con-cerned looks on their faces. They kissed her and told her they loved her.

She didn’t speak. All she could think of was stopping the pain.

“That day, when I went into surgery, was the first time I thought, ‘Am I going to make it?’” she said.

She did, but her recovery was rough after that second surgery. She didn’t feel well. She had to visit the doctor two more times for problems with her incision.

In the end, when she was presented with the option of having reconstructive surgery on her breasts, Brownfield knew the answer immediately.

No way, she said.Not having the surgery can make clothing and bathing suit shop-

ping more complicated. But Brownfield had had enough surgeries.“I said, ‘I’m 65, and I just don’t want any more,’” she said.Brownfield credits her family, friends and her faith in God with

helping her make it through her treatment.Family and friends came over and brought dinner. They sent her

flowers. They prayed with her.But she felt like God was the only one who truly understood what

she was going through.“When you’re by yourself on those tables, no one else is with you or

knows what you’re going through. But God does,” Brownfield said.

Everything I went through is a blessing. If people aren’t religious, they don’t under-stand that. You really don’t know what you can go through until you go through it.

Barbara BrownfieldTrafalgar

“

Barbara BrownfieldAge65

ResidenceTrafalgar

DiagnosedAugust 2009 with invasive ductal carci-noma Stage 2 triple negative

TreatmentDouble mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation.

What cancer taught meSlow down. Had always been a very stressful person. Took everything home with me. And I don’t anymore. More religious now, you have to turn that over to the Lord.

How cancer changed meMore compassionate now. I really want to be a good example for a cancer patient and for my religion. I want to pay it forward. I want to use this to help other people.

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancerTurn it over to the Lord. You’ll get through it. You think you can’t, but you can.

Pictured: Trafalgar resident Barbara Brownfield says her faith in God guided her through a bout with breast cancer.



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Waitof alifetime

Entire family affected by delayed diagnosis

Traci Cox turned in bed, clutching her sheets as she looked to the clock on her nightstand.

It was almost midnight and she still hadn’t fall-en asleep. She sighed and turned again. Her mind was buzzing with thoughts that wouldn’t let her relax.

She had cancer. Or at least she was pretty sure she had can-cer. She had to wait for the entire weekend to pass before she would find out for sure.

She would have known already, but she had missed her doctor’s call on Friday. So she had to wait. Until Monday.

Maybe it wasn’t cancer, she thought as she turned again and tried to get comfortable. Maybe she had a calcium buildup or a clogged duct or something.

No, that’s wishful thinking, she told her-self.

“Deep down, I knew,” the Franklin resident said. “My body was telling me that some-thing was wrong.”

Cox was diagnosed with breast cancer in July 2008, and after more than two years, she’s still recovering from her battle with the invasive disease.

A single mom, Cox didn’t have a hand to hold throughout the ordeal, but she did have help from her children and her mother, she said. Cox’s mother is in her 80s but still healthy enough to run marathons, she said.

Cox’s battle with cancer started when she kept getting pains on the right side of her chest.

She went to see her doctor, but a mammo-gram showed no signs of lumps; neither did any of her mam-mograms from the previous eight to 10 years, she said. She later would learn the lump wasn’t showing because she had dense breasts, she said.

The pain persisted, and eventually, her armpits started swelling. She went to the doctor again for a different test, sim-ilar to an ultrasound.

“That’s when everything started going downhill,” she said. She saw other women in the doctor’s office have the same

kind of test and leave immediately, but she was asked to stay and wait after her test was done, she said.

“I knew then it wasn’t good,” she said. Doctors avoided using the “C” word when they shared her

results and told her about the lump they had found, Cox said. She had to wait about a week to get the results, and she

assumed they would be positive. She wouldn’t have had to wait as long as she did, but she missed her doctor’s call on a Friday and had to wait until Monday.

“They called, and I told them, ‘It’s positive for cancer, isn’t it?’” she said. “They said ‘Yeah, it is.’”

Her children were more worried about the results than she was, she said.

Their grandfather had died of cancer, and they wanted to know what would happen to their mother, Cox said.

“I had to keep telling them, ‘It’s going to be fine; it’s going to be all right,’” she said.

Daughter Katt Cox was about to start her first semester at college when she found out about her mother’s cancer, but she decided to take a semester off and stay home instead.

“I knew college could wait,” she said. “I didn’t know how much help she was going to need, so I wanted to be there.”

Katt Cox was used to having a mom who was always con-cerned and nagging, in that loving way only mothers can get away with, she said.

“She was the one who was always asking me if I was doing my homework and stuff like that,” she said.

Their relationship changed after her mother was diagnosed with cancer.

“I was asking her, ‘Do you need me to call you in sick? Are you making sure you’re drinking your water?’” Katt Cox said. “It was very different. It took some getting used to.”

Traci Cox’s mother would help by making meals and taking care of the two family dogs, Dodge and Maggy. She was glad

to have her mother’s help, but at the same time, felt guilty, she said.

“A lot of times it bothers me,” Traci Cox said. “I’m supposed to be the one taking care of her, not her taking care of me.”

Cox’s treatment started about a month after she was diag-nosed. She had six months of chemotherapy, and each chemo session lasted up to five hours.

She’d sit in a room filled with seven or eight people going through the same proce-dure, and they’d watch television, look out the window at bird feeders and talk.

They’d chat about how they were dealing with their cancer, whether they still were working and their families.

“It was my little chemo clique,” she said. The friends helped distract her from the

bags of chemicals pumping into her body through a small port surgically installed on her chest.

Her first few treatments were relatively easy, she said. She had expected severe nau-sea and crippling fatigue, based on horror stories she had heard.

But the chemo didn’t start to wear her down until after a couple of weeks.

She often felt weak and didn’t want to get out of bed. A part of her wanted to stop going to the sessions, but she knew that was ridiculous thinking.

“It was very nerve-racking,” Katt Cox said. “She would get up in the morning and be perfectly fine, then five hours later, she’d be sick and wouldn’t move.”

Cox lost her appetite during her chemo-therapy, and for some reason, Wendy’s was the only food she had a craving for, she said.

Her daughter would take frequent trips to the restaurant to pick up baked potatoes with sour cream or Baconator sand-wiches.

Two weeks of chemo passed before she started losing her hair, and she decided she didn’t want to buy a wig, she said.

She’s not sure why; she just didn’t want to mess with one, and a bandana worked just as well for covering up her bald-ness, she said.

The only time she did wear a hairpiece was Halloween, when she bought a long pink wig.

Katt Cox thought the reality of the situation had settled in, but then she saw her mother without hair for the first time.

“That’s when it really hit home,” she said. “That was when I first really realized she was sick.”

Traci Cox’s moment of realization followed her double mas-tectomy in December.

Afterward, she went home and looked at herself in the mir-ror. She saw herself with a flat chest and no hair, and the image showed her the seriousness of her situation and how cancer had changed her, she said.

But she didn’t break down and cry until later, during a visit to a gas station.

She was wearing her bandana at the time and walked up to a clerk to pay.

“She called me ‘sir,’” she said. “I just rushed out crying.” Cox refused to let her grief and stress shut her down com-

pletely, she said. She kept working as a Greenwood police dispatcher during

her treatment, although she had to take a leave of absence from a second part-time job she had as a bus driver for Franklin schools.

Cox lost about $800 a month in income and at the same time had thousands of dollars worth of hospital bills.

Luckily, she discovered she had signed up for a cancer poli-cy through her insurance without realizing it, she said.

The insurance helped, and two of her co-workers with Greenwood police organized a golf benefit for her, she said.

Everyone involved with the benefit signed a large pink flag that Cox framed and hung on her living room wall.

“It’s my most cherished possession,” she said.

Traci CoxAge42

ResidenceFranklin

DiagnosedJuly 21, 2008. Doctors found a lump in her breast. Initially, mammograms showed no signs of a lump because she has dense breasts.

TreatmentSix months of chemotherapy, a double mastec-tomy and two months of radiation. She had reconstructive surgery in July.

What cancer taught me“If you want to do something, do it. Don’t wait.” Whether you want to learn Spanish, take piano lessons or learn how to use a bow and arrow, don’t delay.

How cancer changed me“I used to tolerate a lot of things. Now, if some-thing’s not going right, I don’t have patience.” When dating, for example, she can tell within minutes whether a relationship with the man would work out. If she knows a relationship would never work, she doesn’t bother with a second date.

What I would tell someone recently diagnosed with cancerAll of what you are feeling is valid.

Pictured: Melia Vandivier, left, draws eyebrows onto Traci Cox at her Franklin permanent make-up studio. Cox still is taking chemotherapy for breast cancer and has been self-conscious about not having eyebrows.

STORY BY JASON MICHAEL WHITE


A lot of times it bothers me. I’m supposed to be the one taking care of her, not her taking care of me.

Traci CoxFranklinOn her daughter helping through her recovery process

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Atiny scope, inserted into the breast duct, can find lesions that are years away from turning into cancer.

Increasingly intense imaging can spotlight a cancerous cyst the width of a grain of rice.

In Dr. Denise Johnson Miller’s daily struggle against breast cancer, better technology means more sur-vivors.

Since Johnson Miller took over as director of breast surgery at St. Francis Hospital, her approach blends high-tech tools with estab-lished techniques such as mam-mograms and self-exams. New tools seek out cancers in their infancy, making for earlier diagnoses and saving more lives.

“If you’re in early stage, chances are good you’re not going to die from breast cancer,” she said. “Get your screening done, and if some-thing is found early, you’re most likely going to live.”

Johnson Miller joined St. Francis Hospital last year. Her specialty is breast cancer and melanoma sur-gery.

Before coming to Indianapolis, she was associate professor of sur-gery at Stanford University School of Medicine. She also directed the melanoma surgery program at the school and was the general surgery section chief at Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Her focus in California was on general surgical oncology, but breast cancer education was one of her passions. Throughout the Stanford and Palo Alto, Calif., com-munity, she helped organize cancer awareness events and screenings for the general public.

Coming to St. Francis presented an opportunity to work specifically with breast cancer patients, she said.

“Women are fun to be around, even after the worst circumstances,” she said. “Cancer can be a life-alter-ing disease, but the support they show each other is incredible.”

Since arriving in Indianapolis, Johnson Miller has turned her focus on increasing both St. Francis’ capacity to treat cancer and inform-ing the public on the best ways to be vigilant.

She has found that magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, has become increasingly important for detecting cancer that mammograms might miss. The technique uses a magnetic field and radio frequency pulses to produce a detailed picture

of soft tissue. Mammograms use low doses of radiation, which can under-estimate the disease in women with dense breasts.

Johnson Miller recalls a 38-year-old patient who recently came into her office complaining of nipple discharge. A mammogram had not shown any cancer, but Johnson Miller recommended an MRI as well.

The scan lit up with tiny cancer-ous tumors.

“When you have to tell someone at age 38 that they have pretty bad cancer, it can be life altering,” Johnson Miller said. “But we caught it early, and that’s what is impor-tant.”

Newer tools allow specialists such as Johnson Miller to diagnose prob-lems even earlier.

One of her most exciting new tools is ductoscopy. A tiny scope, less than one millimeter, can be inserted into the breast duct. When a patient complains of pain or discharge from the breast, the physician can see inside the body to search for any-thing out of the ordinary.

Research has shown that 90 per-cent of all breast cancers start in the duct, Johnson Miller said. As that cancer progresses, it grows out-side the duct and into the surround-ing tissue.

Ductoscopy displays potential problems that a mammogram or MRI wouldn’t pick up, meaning Johnson Miller can spot a potential growth years before it develops into cancer.

“I don’t want to operate on breast cancer. I want to find these prema-

lignant lesions that could become a problem, before that can turn into cancer,” she said.

Another advancement, which Johnson Miller is working to bring to St. Francis, is positron emission mammography. The scan creates a three-dimensional view of the breast, allowing doctors to see angles that other scans don’t show.

The images can turn up cancerous tissue as small as 2 millimeters, or the width of a grain of rice.

“For every patient, the standard testing can still miss stuff, even with an MRI,” she said. “This lets us see even closer and makes sure we miss less.”

But as the tools have become more adept at spotting abnormali-ties in the breasts, challenges have emerged. Better equipment means the chances increase for more false positives, Johnson Miller said.

She points to a recent patient who came in for a breast MRI. The imaging showed a smattering of small, suspicious dots, and Johnson Miller could not tell what they are.

Additional imaging and biopsies revealed the growths were not can-cerous. But the patient already had gone through the trauma of fearing the worst.

Still, Johnson Miller would prefer being overly vigilant in identifying cancer than waiting too long to take action.

Even with the prospect of a false positive, she recommends question-ing any abnormalities that show up on a mammogram. She encourages patients to get a second opinion, even if your first doctor says every-thing is fine.

“It doesn’t hurt to hear ‘You’re OK, you’re fine,’ a second time,” she said. “Way too often our patients come to us saying their doctors told them they’re too young to have breast cancer. That’s never true.”

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Testing positive for the gene mutation that significantly increases the risk of ovarian and breast cancer wasn’t the main concern for a group

of sisters.Kari Findley of Franklin and her

two sisters were worried about being the only one who didn’t test positive and watching the other two siblings struggle with the diagnosis. But all three women learned they carry the genetic mutation that is found in only 5 percent to 10 percent of cancer patients.

Their mother’s breast special-ist encouraged the women to get tested after both their mother and aunt were diagnosed with aggressive cancer.

“(The doctor) said, ‘You need to. There is something going on in your family,’” Findley said.

Findley and her sisters were among a small minority of people whom doctors test for genetic muta-tions, called BRCA 1 and 2.

The women who have the mutations have an up to 85 percent chance of getting breast cancer and 44 percent chance of getting ovarian cancer in their lifetime, compared with a nor-mal risk of 8 percent and 1 percent, respectively, said Amanda Wood, practice administrator at Community Breast Care in Greenwood. Wood has studied the genetic testing and does genetic counseling at the practice.

Having the genetic mutation is rare. Some studies have shown that the genetic mutations are found in fewer than 5 percent of people with cancer, others have shown the rate closer to 10 percent, local doctors said.

Dr. S. Chace Lottich, a surgeon with Community Breast Care, said she has heard from patients who want the test to be positive. That way, they can plan better for their treat-ment and their family members can, too, she said.

The testing has armed women with

even more information and data to make a choice about their treatment plan, Lottich said.

Not all testedWhen patients have the mutation,

doctors and specialists try to focus on the positive aspect, which allows them to treat the woman before she gets cancer.

“The neat part of genetic testing is that if we find something, we can hopefully prevent them from develop-ing breast or ovarian cancer,” Wood said.

Doctors don’t send all their patients to be tested, said Dr. Erin Zusan, a surgeon at Community Breast Center in Greenwood.

First, they look at the patient’s fam-ily history and her age. A counselor will sit down with the patient and go through the past four generations of her family, looking for people who had cancer and when they died.

If the woman has had several rela-tives with breast, ovarian or prostate cancer, and especially if she is young-er than 50, then she likely should be tested, Zusan said.

The next step is determining if other relatives, who don’t have cancer, should be tested. And, if they test posi-tive, what to do with the information.

Doctors don’t recommend the test for everyone because the gene muta-tions are so rare. Plus, the test can be expensive, costing around $3,000, and sometimes insurance doesn’t cover it, she said.

That was true for Glennda Watson and her mother, Madonna Musgrave, who both live in the Center Grove area. When they decided to have the testing done, they both already had had the same kind of cancer, and so had Musgrave’s mother. So only one had to be tested.

They chose Musgrave, since her insurance would cover the cost and Watson’s wouldn’t. The test was nega-tive.

Some patients don’t want to be tested, Wood said.

Before a test is done at Community Breast Care, a counselor will sit down with the patient to discuss what the test is, what the mutations are and what it means if they test positive or negative, including treatment options.

Most patients who are recom-mended to be tested do get the test, but some decide they don’t want to know because they are scared, they worry it will affect their health insur-ance or they are afraid their children will view it as a death sentence, Wood said.

The decision is left completely up to that patient, she said.

What happens?The test requires the patient to

have one vial of blood drawn. The blood is sent to Myriad, the only company that does the testing; and results usually come back in 10 to 14 days, she said.

If someone tests positive for a mutation, that mutation is narrowed down to what it is, the typical risks of cancer it carries, and then treatment options are discussed.

In some rare cases, only about 7 percent of the time, the test may find a mutation that has not been identi-fied. That information is then studied to try to determine what that new mutation is and what it might mean for patients who have it, she said.

If a woman gets a positive test, her doctors, genetic counselor and other specialists must talk with her about what that means, Zusan said.

“We don’t just test and say that’s it. We tell them what that means,” she said.

Typically, they will develop a plan whether the test is positive or nega-tive, she said.

If the test is positive, then one question patients must answer is whether they plan to tell their family members so they can be tested. If a person is found to have a mutation, then they have a 50 percent chance of passing that on to their children, both boys and girls, Wood said.

Doctors and counselors won’t tell a patient’s family members about a positive test, since that is private information, but they often encour-age the patient to tell their relatives, Wood said.

Each family is different. Some parents may believe their teenage children are old enough to know and understand. Others want to wait until their children are older. And some others don’t want to tell them at all, fearing their children will think the worst.

If a patient does tell her children, the child then decides whether to be tested, Wood said.

And counselors and doctors try to talk to the patient and their family about what a positive test means and how it can help them, she said.

“We make sure they are well-edu-cated. This is not a death sentence. This is information that will hopefully help them in the future,” Wood said.

What to do?Another question is what the

women want to do to reduce their risks of ever getting cancer or catch it very early on. That includes mul-tiple options, ranging from more vigi-lance in self-exams and twice-a-year testing to medication and surgery.

A patient can decide to go with extra surveillance, the most conserva-tive route, including monthly breast self-exams, doctor examinations twice a year, instead of once, and alternat-ing between mammograms and MRIs every six months, she said.

The middle of the road route is medication, which includes Tamoxifen, which can reduce a wom-an’s chance of breast cancer up to 53 percent, and birth control pills, which can reduce the chances for ovarian cancer up to 60 percent, Wood said.

The most aggressive route is sur-gery, in which women can decide to have a mastectomy before ever being diagnosed with cancer. If patients are considering a preventive mastectomy, then Zusan recommends they look at

the risks of that, since surgery has risks, too.

Whether a woman will have preven-tive surgery, such as a mastectomy, is a choice that they should make with their doctors, said Dr. Danielle Doyle, oncologist and medical hematologist with Central Indiana Cancer Centers. Some factors they should consider is their age, whether they already have children or are married and their emotions and anxiety level, she said.

“Some women feel OK with just surveillance. Some would rather just go ahead and have surgery,” Doyle said.

Each woman makes the decision on her own, Wood said.

Some don’t want to have surgery. And often younger patients opt to have surgery, so they can stop them-selves from ever getting cancer, she said.

Findley and her sisters all chose to get a preventive mastectomy, which reduced their chances of ever devel-oping cancer by nearly 90 percent.

‘It’s about my health’The mother of Franklin resident

Darci Wertz was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 31, when Wertz was 5. Her mother died when Wertz was a teenager after battling the dis-ease for a decade.

When she tested positive for the genetic mutation, Wertz saw only one option for preventing the same thing from happening to her: Having a double mastectomy.

“It’s not about breasts; it’s about my health,” she said.

Typically, doctors will recommend patients try the more conservative routes of surveillance and medication before surgery.

But in some cases, such as if a person has had a long family history of cancer, the doctor will encour-age them to be more aggressive and could recommend surgery, Wood said.

“We do know that’s not an easy decision. It’s very difficult for every-one,” Wood said.

When it’s in your genesRare genetic mutation dramatically increases risk


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Darci Wertz knew it could come.

She felt it, and the odds were against her. The test results said

her chances of developing the disease were nearly 90 percent.

She thought she would get breast cancer.

But the Franklin resident didn’t wait for the diagnosis, which could have come the next day or 15 years in the future.

Wertz didn’t want to face her 4-year-old daughter, Halle, and tell her that her mom had a chance of preventing breast can-cer but didn’t.

Instead, Wertz had both her breasts removed as part of the most radical treatment available for women with breast cancer, even though she didn’t have a trace of the disease.

Wertz, like other local women with a deep family history, decid-ed to get special testing that would reveal if she carried a gene mutation that makes her more likely to develop breast cancer.

Her results came back positive, and her doctor said she had an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer before she reached menopause.

Wertz’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 31, when Wertz was 5. Her paternal grandmother also had breast cancer, so Wertz already knew her risk was high.

“I felt like a walking time bomb,” Wertz said.

Positive tests results were enough to convince Franklin res-ident Kari Findley, 33, and her two sisters that they needed to

get their breasts removed. Their mother also had tested positive for the gene, after both her grandmother and aunt died of the disease.

Findley’s doctor told her that she could take medication to reduce her chances of getting cancer and also could come in for frequent exams and mammo-grams to see if any tumors had developed.

“To me, that would be agony, the waiting,” Findley said. “Each day, in the back of my mind, I would be saying, ‘Will I find a lump today?’”

Both women also wanted to set an example for their young daughters to put your health, not appearance, first.

Living a long, healthy life is

more important than having your natural breasts, Wertz said. And unlike other women, the idea of being without breasts didn’t shock her.

Her mother had one of her breasts removed during her bat-tle with cancer, which eventually claimed her life when Wertz was a teenager. Her mother slipped a prosthetic breast into her bra and also wore a specially designed bathing suit in the sum-mer.

“It was really nothing unusual for me,” Wertz said. “I just never thought of it as odd.”

Having the mastectomy gave her and her family assurance that she did everything possi-ble to keep cancer away, Wertz said.

She was given two other options — get mammograms and other special tests every six months that could catch cancer, or take a medication that blocks estrogen and lowers the risk for the disease.

But those options didn’t cut her chances of getting cancer as much as a mastectomy, Wertz said. Nine months after her first surgery, she has never regretted her decision.

Wertz often pauses when she’s around the dinner table with her husband, their daughter and their son, admiring the family she helped create.

“You look at it differently when you have kids,” Wertz said. “Why would I have ever made a deci-sion other than to save my life?”

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‘I felt like a time bomb’Many with BRCA gene choose preventive mastectomies

STORY BY SARAH MICHALOS

PHOTO BY SCOTT ROBERSONA CLOSER LOOKHere is some more information about the genetic mutations that cause some cancers:What are they? Genetic mutations are found in 5 per-cent to 10 percent of patients with cancer. The muta-tions are known as BRCA 1 and 2.What is the difference? BRCA 1 and 2 are different types of mutations that carry different risks of cancer for patients. BRCA 1 is more commonly known to carry a higher risk of uterine, breast, colon or ovarian cancer. BRCA 2 carries a higher risk of breast, ovar-ian, pancreatic and prostate cancer. But patients can develop any of those cancers with the mutations.What is the test? A blood test, which typically takes 10 to 14 days. Many doctors also want the patient to begin genetic counseling before ever being tested to discuss what happens if they are positive and negative.Who is tested? Only certain patients with higher risk factors are tested for the genetic mutations, since they are so rare. A person with cancer who is younger than 50, has had multiple family members with cancer or who has had cancer more than once is at a higher risk and is more likely to be tested. Then, the person’s family mem-bers who don’t have cancer can be tested to determine if they have the mutation and are at a higher risk for cancer.What is the risk of cancer? Women with the muta-tion have an up to 85 percent chance of getting breast cancer and 44 percent chance of getting ovarian cancer in their lifetime, compared with a normal risk of 8 percent and 1 percent, respectively. They also have a 50 percent chance of passing the gene to their chil-dren, both male and female.What happens if you’re positive? Women and their doctors decide how aggressive they want to be. If a person has a family history with a significant amount of cancer leading to death, her doctor may recom-mend a more aggressive route. Options include addi-tional testing, medication and surgery. More testing could include more vigilance with self-breast exams, doctor visits, mammograms and MRIs. Medication can include Tamoxifen, which reduces the risk of breast cancer up to 53 percent, and birth control pills, which reduces the risk of ovarian cancer up to 60 percent. Surgery, including preventive mastectomy and hyster-ectomy, is the most aggressive form of treatment but also can reduce the risk of cancer by 90 percent.SOURCES: Amanda Wood, practice administrator at Community Breast Care in Greenwood; Dr. S. Chace Lottich, a surgeon with Community Breast Care; Dr. Erin Zusan, a surgeon at Community Breast Center; Dr. Danielle Doyle, oncologist and medical hematolo-gist with Central Indiana Cancer Centers; and Dr. Subhash Sharma, medical oncologist at St. Francis Hospital and Johnson Memorial Hospital

Franklin resident Kari Findley, 33, had a preventive mastectomy after a test revealed she had a nearly 90 percent chance of developing breast cancer before she reached menopause.

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Shara Haggan tried to hide her cancer from the kids as best she could. She bought a wig similar to her pre-chemotherapy hair and always wore

that or a towel on her head when at home. Neither would come off until the boys were sound asleep.

Then one day, a slip. Colin, then 4 years old, opened the bathroom door and caught Haggan in the shower.

Bald.“And he started laughing — ‘Ha-

ha, Mommy doesn’t have hair,’” Haggan said. “So I started laughing.

“I had this conversation with people, about how if your kids catch you, whatever their reaction is, just kind of make a joke about it. Lighten it up.”

No laughing matter, of course, in April 2009 when Haggan found a lump almost by accident in her left breast. On April 7, the breast cancer diagnosis arrived, and life would never be the same.

Yet at the same time, young sons Colin (now 5) and Sean (3) still needed a mother. The mother still needed to provide for them through-out almost a full year of chemother-apy and a mastectomy.

Haggan’s most intense chemo ses-sions lasted from April through July 2009. Less intense chemo sessions, once every three weeks, continued through March of this year.

She missed one day of work at her dental care office.

“There were times I was tired and sick, but I took care of the kids,” said Haggan, 32, of Franklin. “I had to do it; I’m a single mom. I needed money to pay for the mortgage and

to send them to school in clothes.”Not that this was easy; Haggan

recalls Mondays after the Friday chemotherapy sessions in which she “totally zoned out” and is unsure how she got through. But co-workers knew what she was going through, and an extensive support system also helped.

“She had a lot of support from me and her father, and an absolutely fantastic medical team,” said Nona Pardue, Haggan’s mother. “And we know that prayer helps.

“We went on living like nothing was going on. I told her that was going to

be the only way she was going to get through it, just go with it and every-thing would be OK. She was one of the lucky ones — she got through it.”

There were some unusual circum-stances along the way. One little-known side effect of chemotherapy — at the other end of the spectrum from the hair loss that everyone identifies with — is memory loss. “Chemo brain,” as some jokingly call it, can be no laughing matter.

Haggan’s most unusual brush with “chemo brain” came one day when talking to a friend about another

friend who had died a few years before. Haggan had no recollection of the friend’s death and later called her mother crying over the embar-rassment.

“I had to very gently explain it to her, and after I started talking, she remembered it,” Pardue said. “She said, ‘What else have I forgotten?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ll find out.’ But so far, that’s as weird as it’s gotten.”

Today, Haggan feels fine but still has blood drawn every couple of months to monitor her progress. The port placed inside her chest

for chemotherapy still is there, in case more treatment is needed in the next year. The hope is that her cancer is completely in the past — doctors said there was a 7 percent chance of cancer reoccurring in her right breast — but there are no guarantees.

What she can control is her out-look.

“It’s all about your attitude,” Haggan said. “You just have to think positive. You have to fight, or you’ll die.”

‘Lighten it up’Woman uses humor, support from friends, co-workers

STORY BY JOHN SCHWARB


Franklin resident Shara Haggan was diagnosed last year with breast cancer and had a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy.

Shara HagganAge32

ResidenceFranklin

When diagnosedApril 7, 2009

TreatmentSingle mastectomy and chemo-therapy

What cancer taught meDon’t sweat the small stuff.

How cancer changed meBrought closer to God, family

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancerThere are other women in this world who have had to go through it and have gotten through it. You will be fine.

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Jerry Ennis lost his wife to breast cancer; but during her struggle, she never stopped living.

Jacque Ennis didn’t stop traveling with her family

when her cancer resurfaced after three years.

While struggling with cancer, she planned family vacations around her chemotherapy schedule and took the trips even if she wasn’t feeling well.

She fought hard against her can-cer; but in 2006, she died after eight years of battling the disease.

What she taught her friends and her husband is that just because you have cancer doesn’t mean you have to stop living your life, Jerry Ennis said.

“People know this is a terrible dis-ease and you might die from it,” said Ennis, a Greenwood resident. But they need to know that life doesn’t end the moment you are diagnosed.

“She got almost 10 years of life,” he said.

Ennis said he and his wife had known each other since they were 13. They never dated while in school, but they were friends, and Jacque would occasionally try to fix him up with girls, he said.

“In high school, Jacque was way out of my league,” he said.

After high school, they lost touch until Jacque Ennis graduated from Butler University.

Jerry and Jacque Ennis met up with groups of friends to listen to a local band, and they saw each other there. They talked about how they hadn’t seen each other in forever and danced, although Jerry Ennis was wearing boots and kept stepping on his future wife’s toes.

They got married a month later, and their years were filled with fami-ly vacations to beaches and time spent with friends.

And she didn’t let her cancer diag-nosis slow her down.

Jacque Ennis was first diagnosed with cancer when she was 39 in 1998. She found the lump herself and made an appointment to see an oncologist.

She was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer and soon went through chemotherapy, radiation and surger-ies.

When Ennis thinks back to that time, he doesn’t think about the effects of the chemo drugs or radia-tion. What he remembers is the hope his wife showed and her ability to cope with the situation, which was an inspiration to all her friends and fam-ily, he said.

“She never stopped living,” he said. Jacque Ennis would coordinate

vacations around her chemotherapy schedule, so she knew she would be feeling as good possible for family trips, Jerry Ennis said.

And every year her family, friends and their families took spring break trips to Florida, family friend Janelle Clements said.

“She would be sicker than a dog, just exhausted,” Clements said. “But she would just say ‘whatever’ and go. It was just amazing.”

One year her son Matt wanted to take a snowboarding trip to Colorado, and even though she had trouble breathing because of her cancer and that high altitude would have made it worse, Jacque decided that she and her husband would take him.

“She wanted to do that for her son,” she said. “Her family was so impor-tant to her.”

She never let her chemo get her down, Clements said. She’d be sick or nauseas but still go out to dinner, and she’d never complain about how she was feeling, Clements said.

She also made sure the people around her didn’t worry too much.

Her daughter Cortney didn’t want to go to college because she wanted to stay home with her mother.

“She kept saying, ‘I’m not going to go, I’m not going to go,’” Clements said. “But Jacque told her, ‘You’ve got to go. You’ve got to live your life. You’re close enough to come home to me if you need to.’”

During her struggle with cancer, Jacque Ennis kept working as a library assistant at Center Grove Elementary School.

“Her doctor told her to stay home,” Clements said. “But she would be throwing up and still going to work.”

Her attitude after her chemothera-py and treatments was always to shrug it off and move on.

“It was just amazing how she let life go on and cancer was on the backburner,” Clements said. “I just couldn’t believe she did that. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you are so strong.’”

She did her best to stay healthy during her treatments, Ennis said. She’d wake up at 4 a.m., jog on a treadmill and do crunches whenever she was able, he said.

Her inner strength was inspiring, and the struggle they went through together let them know their love was real, and that their relationship was not a simple matter of convenience, Ennis said. He still would have mar-

ried her even if he had known what was going to happen to her.

“That’s 25 years of knowing that somebody loves you and vice versa,” he said.

The last trip they took together was in the fall of 2005. Jacque Ennis was feeling good and decided she wanted to take an anniversary trip to Jamaica.

They decided to leave the children at home and travel alone.

“We had never done that before,” he said. “Thank God we did.”

She died a few months later.

‘She never stopped living’STORY BY JASON MICHAEL WHITE


Greenwood resident Jerry Ennis talks about his wife, Jacque, who died from breast cancer in 2006.

Jerry EnnisAge54

ResidenceGreenwood

ChildrenCortney Hendess, 26, and Matt Ennis, 22

DetailsHis wife, Jacque Ennis, was diag-nosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in 1998. Signs of the cancer were gone by 1999 but returned in 2002. She died in 2006.

CareerJacque Ennis was a library assis-tant at Center Grove Elementary School.

What cancer taught meJust because you are diagnosed with cancer doesn’t mean you have to stop living. Live your life.

What I would tell someone recently diagnosed with cancerCancer is not a death sentence.

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‘You’re supposed tohelp me’

Chance encounter draws women togetherO

n a fall day just more than two years ago, Janna Shepard was on the sideline of her son’s soc-cer game; but her attention was elsewhere.

She couldn’t help overhearing what the coach’s wife told another parent: The coach’s wife had survived breast cancer.

For days, Shepard couldn’t get the woman’s words out of her head. She had a job, two young children, a husband and a home, but the coach’s wife was living in her head.

Within days, Shepard did a self-exam and found a lump.

She immediately went to her doctor and had a mammogram.

A biopsy was scheduled for Wednesday. At noon Thursday came the diagnosis of invasive cancer.

She went home and crawled into bed. Morning came, and she attempted to work.

She dropped her children off and drove to the Franklin library parking lot to access the Internet on her laptop computer in her job as a vaccine sales representative. A vehicle backed in next to her.

The coach’s wife came around to get books out.Shepard rolled down her window and said

these words to the woman: “I just found out I have breast cancer, and I think you’re supposed to help me.”

‘Part of my life now’Stacey Byerly, the coach’s wife, had been

diagnosed more than two years earlier. With a young child and a 15-month-old baby, she had fought through her living hell, her fear that breast cancer was going to kill her, chemothera-py and radiation. She had survived.

But since her recovery, she has talked about breast cancer to as many people as possible.

“I’m not shy to talk about it. It’s part of my life now. We don’t live and die breast cancer, but we are very aware of it.”

She still wonders what prompted her to talk about breast cancer that day on the soccer field. The man she was talking to already knew her story. But deep down, she knows it was because Shepard, a Franklin woman she barely knew, needed to hear what she was saying.

“God places people in your path for strange reasons,” Byerly said.

The women met at Starbucks within the hour of that chance meeting at the library. Byerly gave Shepard a list of doctors and information to find online and was immediately impressed.

Shepard was dressed up, calm and cool.“I remember thinking, ‘How did you have it

together?’” Byerly said.Because when Byerly, of rural Franklin, was

within days of diagnosis, she believed she would die from breast cancer. And she didn’t hide it.

When she was 39, she found her third lump. The first two had been benign, and this lump definitely felt like the others. Her doctor went on and on about reasons it probably wasn’t cancer but said to watch for changes and come back in six months.

But she went to the doctor before the six months had passed because she felt like the lump was growing. On a Friday, all three lumps were removed. She would have the results by Wednesday, but the doctor was 99.9 percent sure it was not cancer.

Wednesday came, and she was standing in her front entryway talking on the phone to the doctor’s office. The first two lumps looked OK. The third they think is cancer.

Byerly froze. Everything was surreal. She said she simply stopped functioning.

The next day’s results confirmed the cancer. She went on autopilot. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep. She could only cry.

That week she went into the surgeon’s office with her husband.

“I think I’m going to die,” she told the surgeon.“I just don’t think that’s going to happen,” he

responded.Her tumor was 1.7 centimeters, which is con-

sidered small, and was not fueled by hormones. Another surgery was scheduled to determine the stage of the cancer based on nearby tissue. None of the seven lymph nodes that were removed had been invaded by cancer, and doctors were able to get clear margins, meaning no cancer was found between the edge of the lump and the surround-ing tissue.

The oncologist said there was no greater sur-vival rate.

That was the good news. The bad news: Her type of cancer was highly aggressive and quick moving. The oncologist recommended four rounds of chemotherapy and radiation.

Byerly sought a second opinion and settled on a combination of both. She had eight rounds of chemotherapy and 28 rounds of radiation.

She took a year off from her job at Indianapolis Public Schools but continued to teach aerobics throughout chemotherapy. She never had a bout of throwing up but did develop a fever and had to go on high-dose antibiotics.

She survived, but the memory of her paralyz-ing fear hadn’t faded.

Her immediate response to a breast cancer diagnosis was in stark contrast to the woman she barely knew asking for help.

“I swear, it was fate she was placed there,” Byerly said.

Mutual supportShepard and Byerly considered each other

acquaintances when their preschool sons played on the same soccer team. To be honest, they prob-ably wouldn’t have ever developed a friendship had it not been for the sisterhood of breast cancer.

Byerly is a loud 43-year-old who has worked as a reading specialist and taught aerobics. What you see is what you get.

Shepard, 40, is more reserved. And more sen-sible, Byerly said.

Byerly is the yang to Shepard’s yin.“She’s pragmatic, I’m emotional,” Byerly said.It took Shepard time to get used to Byerly

being more emotional and sensitive. Byerly was the hugging type, she said.

The differences would become key in how they helped each other through breast cancer. Although Shepard was the one experiencing cancer at the time, time would show that Byerly needed her as well.

At first, Byerly gave Shepard instructions on whom to call, where to go and what questions to ask.

“You’re scared, you’re alone, you think you’re on death’s door, and it freaks you out,” Byerly said.

Janna ShepardAge40

ResidenceFranklin

DiagnosedSeptember 2008, with invasive can-cer, borderline Stage 2, triple posi-tive tumor

TreatmentInitially a lumpectomy, followed by a double mastectomy, six chemother-apy treatments and a year of the drug Herceptin

What cancer taught meThere are so many things that God used cancer to teach me. Mostly I learned to slow down and listen to the messages.

How cancer changed meI am more grateful for life’s gifts and more patient with myself. I don’t try to rush through life anymore.

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancerBring someone with you to appoint-ments who is good at asking ques-tions and taking notes. There is just so much to take in at first. Husband Brian stayed up late one night com-piling notes from all appointments we had been to and researched and inserted definitions of medical ter-minology so we would have one document to refer back to. That helped and helped him.

Stacey ByerlyAge43

ResidenceRural Franklin

DiagnosedMarch 2006 with 1.7 centimeter tri-ple negative Stage 1 tumor

TreatmentHad tumor removed with two cysts, eight rounds of chemotherapy, 28 rounds of radiation

What cancer taught meIt reiterated the fact to put family first and life is too short

How cancer changed meI’m definitely more anxious about health now, not that I didn’t take care of myself before. But I get freaked out by any test I have to go through. At times, it makes me more patient.

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancer Call a survivor who has gone through the same thing because they can give you a first-hand account. Doctors haven’t been through it. Survivors can give you a better first-hand account, and they also offer hope. Wow, if they can beat it, I can too.

Pictured: Stacey Byerly, left, and Janna Shepard were drawn together because they both battled breast cancer.

STORY BY MICHELE HOLTKAMP


(SEE HELP, PAGE D10)

D2 FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2010 BRAVE HEARTS DAILY JOURNAL, JOHNSON COUNTY, IND.

Somethingwasn’t right

Visit to breast specialist reveals tumor at age 30A

s a nurse, she knew that something was lurk-ing inside the tissue of her right breast. She can’t explain why.

“I just had that nagging feeling that some-thing wasn’t right,” Stephanie Stewart said.

Her doctor said that the liquid leaking from her breast was noth-ing, that it was normal even though she had her baby two years before.

The rural Franklin resident requested a mammogram, which came back negative. Stewart had doctors test the discharge, and results revealed nothing unusual.

Her final step was meeting with a breast specialist, who gave her a thor-ough exam and recommended a biopsy.

When the results came back, Stewart’s nagging feeling was solidified. The biopsy showed a cancerous tumor nearly 2.5 inches wide in her right breast.

“I had to push,” Stewart said. “If I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be alive today.”

This was nine years ago, when Stewart was 30 and the mother of 5-year-old Travis and 2-year-old girl Sydney.

Today, she delivers speeches to people about how to take control of their own health and not let a diagnosis of breast cancer be a death sentence.

Getting the cancer outMany people view breast cancer as a

curse, and it was no different for Stewart when she was diagnosed in December 2001. Her immediate thoughts were that she could lose her breast or potentially her life.

“Being 30, you think, boobs are everything,” Stewart said. “Your life is the most important, but boobs are an important part of a woman’s identity.”

Because of the size of her growing tumor, Stewart chose the most aggressive approach — rounds of chemotherapy before having both breasts removed, lowering the chance the cancer would ever return.

Stewart chose to have reconstructive surgery the same day as her double mastectomy. Surgeons spent eight hours removing her breasts, giving her a tummy tuck and using the flesh to form new breasts.

Family members chronicled the day in a journal they gave to Stewart after her surgery. Entries detailed the tense hours in the waiting room, like, “It’s 3 p.m. and you’re still in surgery. Come out soon.”

Stewart’s quick recovery is best described by a fortune she got at a Chinese restaurant after her last chemotherapy treatment, shortly before her surgery. Stewart cracked open the cookie, and the message read, “Your health is wonder-ful.” She still keeps the tiny scrap of paper in her wallet.

In the nine years since her diagnosis, Stewart’s cancer has not returned.

A self-diagnosisStewart never felt a lump in her breast, and a mammo-

gram came back with normal results. It was only after a thorough exam by a breast specialist and a biopsy that her tumor was discovered.

Doctors told Stewart that the cancer was difficult to spot because of her dense breast tissue. Younger women have firm-er, more compact breast tissue, she said.

Stewart wouldn’t typically have got-ten a mammogram because she was 30. Although she can’t identify exactly why, Stewart knew something wasn’t right inside of her and asked for a mammo-gram 10 years before doctors recommend women get them.

She hopes other people listen to their bodies and push for more tests and answers.

“I was diagnosed with Stage 3, which means I was pushing the doors right there,” Stewart said. “If I had not gone to see a breast specialist, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

Cancer patients can never let their positive attitudes waver, even afterreceiving devastating news, Stewart said. Her cancer was designated as Stage 3, which means the disease has spread into lymph nodes on the sides of her breast and along the arms.

The oncologist told Stewart that if she lived five years after her surgery, she would be in remission. Stewart didn’t want to look at things in terms of time-lines.

“My kids would be 12 and 7 after five years,” Stewart said. “That’s still too young to lose their mom.”

Getting through treatmentHer kids don’t remember much about when their mom

was battling cancer, especially Sydney, who was 2 at the time.

The toddler was used to seeing her mother’s bald head, and posed an interesting question when Stewart walked into the room wearing a new wig.

“She said, ‘Mom, where’d you get all that hair?’” Stewart said.

Her husband, Tom, took over most of the parenting while Stewart took naps after chemo treatment and stayed in bed for days after her extensive surgery.

Stewart also relied on her sisters and mother, Sandy Weddle, during the long months after her surgery. Weddle found little things to do around the house, like watching her grandkids, doing laundry and making dinner.

“You feel like you can’t do a lot,” Weddle said. “But you need to take care of them. Even though they’re adults, they’re still your children.”

Stephanie StewartAge39


DiagnosedDecember 2001 with a 6-centimeter cancerous tumor.

TreatmentUnderwent a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery in one day. Doctors gave Stewart a tummy tuck and used the flesh and skin to create new breasts during the eight-hour surgery.

What cancer taught meFirst, I thought cancer was a curse. To me, it ended up being a good experience. It changed me in many ways. I’m closer to God.

How cancer changed meBrought my husband and me closer. I used to care about how I looked, but I went bald because of my treatment. Tom told me he still loved me and I still looked beautiful. It strengthened our relationship.

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancerAnything they wanted to know. When I got diag-nosed, I wanted to talk to someone who had cancer and see what their experience was like. What did you think when your hair fell out? What food made you sick? My eyelashes fell out, my eyes watered, and any spaghetti-like casserole made me sick.

I was diag-nosed with Stage 3, which means I was pushing the doors right there. If I had not gone to see a breast spe-cialist, I proba-bly wouldn’t be sitting here today.

Stephanie StewartRural Franklin

“

Pictured: Stephanie Stewart was diagnosed with breast cancer nine years ago after insisting on more tests after a mammogram and other tests were negative.



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Glennda Watson remembers the day her mother hand-ed her a chunk of her hair in a paper towel and asked her to buy her a wig.

It was 1979. Watson was a teenager.Her mother, Madonna Musgrave, was

undergoing chemotherapy. She woke up one morning and pulled out a chunk of her hair. She told her daughter to go to a department store and match it to a wig.

Watson, 48, thought of that moment last year, as she searched for her own wig to cover up her quickly balding head.

Thirty years apart, both mother and daughter were diagnosed with breast caner.

Both had the same kind, invasive duc-tal carcinoma, meaning the cancer doesn’t stay in the milk duct. And both had it on the same side, the right breast.

As soon as she was diagnosed, Watson knew her mother would think it was her fault.

“I heard the diagnosis, and I felt so bad, like I had given it to her,” Musgrave said.

Eventually, some of that guilt was lift-ed when genetic testing showed Musgrave, now 82, didn’t have the gene marker that can predict a likelihood of cancer within a family.

But Watson viewed the repeat diagno-sis differently than her mother.

She looked at Musgrave and saw a woman who had lived a healthy, happy life after breast cancer, even after two recurrences in 1990 and 2008.

And she knew she had someone to talk to, who would understand exactly what she was going through.

“I looked at Mom and said here is a woman who has lived more than 30 years since she got it. I can do that, too,” Watson said.

Now, both in remission, the women

often share memories of their breast cancer experiences.

Despite having the same diagnosis, their treatment experiences were worlds apart.

When Watson was diagnosed, she felt empowered with the information she was given and the choices she could make about her own care.

Watson decided she wanted a lumpec-tomy instead of a mastectomy, since she could get in for surgery quicker and the procedure was much easier. Plus, her mother had a mastectomy, and the can-cer still came back.

She got a bag of pamphlets and hand-outs, a nurse who would guide her through her treatment and a sit-down question-and-answer session with her doctor. And when her doctors changed her treatment to include chemotherapy, she argued with them and debated whether a 5 percent change in her chances of reoccurrence was worth the awful side effects.

But for Musgrave, in 1979, arguing with her doctor was unheard of. She was

given two pamphlets and an order from her doctor to get a mastectomy and che-motherapy.

She never even considered questioning what her doctor told her, she said.

“I never felt I could question my doc-tors. And I wouldn’t know what to ask. I was just sort of dumb to a certain extent,” Musgrave said.

The difference is generational, Watson said.

With Musgrave’s generation, when a doctor told you what to do, you did it and didn’t ask questions. But Watson’s generation are the people who get sec-ond opinions and want options for their treatment.

And time has changed how doctors treat cancer patients.

When she was first diagnosed, Musgrave went for her treatments when her doctors told her to. But when her cancer came back two years ago, she was able to schedule her treatments around her granddaughter’s graduation.

30 years, 2 patientsMother, daughter diagnosed decades apart


PHOTO BY MATT QUEBE

Glennda Watson, left, and her mother, Madonna Musgrave, both have battled cancer.

Glennda WatsonAge48

ResidenceWhite River Township

When diagnosedMay 2009 with invasive ductal carcinoma in right breast

TreatmentLumpectomy, mammocite radiation and chemotherapy

What cancer taught meBe compassionate to other individuals who have or had cancer. Some things are really important and other things really aren’t.

How cancer changed meI hope that it didn’t. I didn’t want it to rule me. I wanted to be in charge.

What I would tell someone just diag-nosed with cancerIt’s not the end of the world. There are so many treat-ments out there. Would rec-ommend they investigate their options since there are many out there. Pray a lot.

MadonnaMusgraveAge82

ResidenceWhite River Township

When diagnosedInitially diagnosed in 1979, reoccurrences in 1990 and 2008; invasive ductal carci-noma in right breast

TreatmentMastectomy of right breast and chemotherapy in 1979. Lumpectomy and medica-tion in 1990. Lumpectomy and 33 radiation treatments in 2008.

What cancer taught meTo have patience and what kept me going was faith, family and friends.

How cancer changed meWe’re a closer family. It made everybody closer.

What I would tell someone just diag-nosed with cancerBe patient. Think positive. And faith, family and friends are the way to stay.

(SEE YEARS, PAGE D9)

~'11

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AWhiteland woman admires her big sister for fighting against breast cancer like a heroine.

Kelly Gough, 39, lost her only sister, Holly Harlow,

to breast cancer in February 2007. She vividly remembers the day her

sister told her the diagnosis in 1996. Together, she and Harlow sat at their

mother’s kitchen table and cried for hours, Gough said.

“But we came to realize that it wasn’t the end of the world that day. And that’s what my sister always said.”

Harlow was a well-liked math teacher at Whiteland Community High School.

Despite losing an 11-year war with the disease, Harlow never let the illness conquer her everyday life, at school or at home.

Gough recalls her sister planning che-motherapy appointments around class-es. She never missed a day of school until two weeks before her death.

Even if she felt lousy, Harlow attended her daughter Kailee’s swim meets and her son Jarrett’s baseball and football

games. They were 12 and 16 at the time of their mother’s death.

“Quitting was never an option for her,” Gough said.

Harlow’s body never made it three years without the disease reinvading her body.

She took control of her disease instead of letting the cancer take con-trol of her. Before the chemotherapy thinned and destroyed her hair, Harlow shaved her head.

She wore a wig throughout the first course of chemo but hated it, Gough said.

Harlow’s hair eventually grew back in; but when the cancer reinvaded her body, Harlow underwent more chemotherapy. Gough shaved her sister’s head the sec-ond time.

Instead of the uncomfortable wigs, she told her students at school, “‘It’s hot, it’s itchy, and I don’t like it. So I’m gonna wear bandanas on my head,’” Gough said.

Harlow’s students started bringing her festive, bright-patterned bandanas to wear.

Harlow organized the annual Race for Cure with her students and co-workers at Whiteland Community High School.

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Doing it for HollySister’s battle inspires

Whiteland resident

Kelly GoughAge39

ResidenceWhiteland

DetailsGough lost her only sister, Holly Harlow, to breast cancer in 2007. Gough wants the world to know and carry on her sister’s positive outlook on life.

What cancer taught me and how cancer changed meI really think what cancer taught me is how cancer has changed me. So for me the two go hand in hand. Cancer has made me see life as a precious gift, appreciating all that we have in this world and realizing we should be grateful for it now. I could be filled with anger because of my sister’s outcome, but instead I think I am a little more patient and positive in every-day life. I know this is what my

sister would want and expect of me too. I try not to let little things get to me. In the grand scheme of things, I know the little things that go wrong really don’t matter so much. I think I am a stronger person with a can-do attitude and think often of my sister’s favorite saying, “Live for today!”

What I would tell someone who was just diagnosed with cancerI would tell them to be assertive in gaining as much information on your diagnosis, prognosis and treatment as you can. Do the research and ask questions. Also, lean on others for support. I think it is so important to involve fam-ily and friends, because you need them and in a different way, they are affected too. It is hard being on the other side too and not knowing how to help. But being together sure does help. Lastly, I would remind them that having a positive attitude is half the battle.

STORIES BY SARAH SCHULZ


Whiteland resident Kelly Gough holds a photograph of herself with her sister, Holly Harlow.

Turning bad into good

By walking 60 miles with hundreds of other people affect-ed by breast cancer, Kelly Gough has kept her sister’s

memory alive.The physical therapist lost her

only sister, Holly Harlow, to breast cancer in 2007. She’s decided to do all she can until there is a cure for the disease.

For the second consecutive year, the Whiteland woman spent many hours training and fund-raising to walk the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure.

Gough and her niece, Kailee, (Harlow’s daughter) first com-pleted the challenge in 2009.

It took them more than a year of talking about it before they actually signed up for the event in Chicago. They wanted to do it because Harlow was a huge sup-porter of the Susan G. Komen foundation, as she battled breast cancer for 11 years before her death.

After she finished it once, Gough was determined to do it again.

She said she wants to make her sister proud and help researchers get as close as possible to finding

a cure in her lifetime.“It’s hard to turn a negative

thing into a positive. You can let anger eat at you; but at some point, we had to turn this into a positive for my sister,” she said.

Gough and her energized clan drove to Chicago on Aug. 5 and were up by 4 a.m. the next day to attend opening ceremonies. Walkers remembered those they lost and honored those who sur-vive.

Last year, Gough remembered thinking, “Oh my gosh, I hope it’s not like this for 60 miles. I don’t have enough tears.”

But the power of hundreds of people in pink, all walking for the same cause, overshadowed some of the sadness Gough felt.

“When training and walking, you get in a zone. It makes you put things in perspective and see things in a brighter way,” she said.

She and a group of girlfriends covered 22.1 miles on Day 1.

A 19.3-mile jaunt on Day 2, accompanied by blis-ters, was made a little easier by the appearance of three of Gough’s family members, her mother, an

It’s hard to turn a negative thing into a positive. You can let anger eat at you; but at some point, we had to turn this into a positive for my sister.

Kelly GoughWhtielandOn a charity event

“

(SEE HOLLY, PAGE D11)

(SEE GOOD, PAGE D11)

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Walking for a cureNineveh woman training for event

In her heart, she knows there one day will be a cure for breast cancer, and Chandy Wilcoxon is doing what she can to make that day arrive.

So she walks. And walks. And walks some more.When the Nineveh resident learned in

2007 that her high school friend was diagnosed with breast cancer, she felt helpless.

Wilcoxon’s daughter, Melissa Hannebaum, 25, saw a commercial for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure. Since 2003, the 60-mile walk travels to different cities across the country each year to raise funds for breast cancer research.

Participants are advised to train for at least six months and are required to raise $2,300 in order to walk. About 75 percent of funds bene-fit national research; and the rest supports the Komen affiliate network and community-based breast health programs.

In 2009, the three-day series took place in 15 cities and raised more than $91 million.

About 2,700 walkers are registered to walk with Wilcoxon Oct. 28 to 30.

In 2007, Hannebaum wanted to complete the walk as a physical challenge; Wilcoxon wanted to do it for her friend, Tammy Butrum of Beech Grove.

Even though she developed 13 blisters on her feet the first time around, Wilcoxon, 52, has been training since February for her second walk in Tampa, Fla. It’s something she feels she has to do, she said.

Every year, Wilcoxon adds more names to her list of people diagnosed with the disease. A member of her church was recently diagnosed; the woman she buys Pampered Chef items from has breast cancer; and after receiving the most radiation her body could in a lifetime, Butrum had a recurrence in December 2009.

This year, Wilcoxon also will walk in remembrance of a fami-ly member. A close cousin, Paulette Hocker of Michigan, recently passed away from the disease at age 42 after a four-year struggle.

Walking such a great distance can be tough, she said, but Wilcoxon is determined.

“I have no idea what they (family and friends) are going through, so I have to do what I can to raise awareness and encourage people to get mammograms,” she said.

There were times during her first walk in 2007 when she felt like quitting, but something inside her kept her going.

Wilcoxon recalled a moment when she felt like she couldn’t move her right foot in front of her left anymore.

“Right then, there was this little old lady sitting in her drive-

way in her wheelchair, with her little bald head, and we made eye contact. She looked and me and said, ‘Thank you, thank you.’ So I was like, what am I griping about? Things like that went on throughout the whole three days.”

Overwhelming support and encouragement surrounded Wilcoxon and her daughter during the event.

“There were people driving by, playing music and honking their horns, yelling, ‘Keep going!’” she said.

Teams were dressed up in outrageous out-fits, pink wigs, accessories and other amusing garb to make a somber event more fun. “It’s really something else,” she said.

With sore feet and soaked shoes from walk-ing in the rain, the thousands of survivors walking and cheering on the sidewalks gave her strength.

She realized she was walking for something much bigger.

“I just feel like I have to keep doing what I can do to raise money. I just know that some-thing’s going to happen. Someone’s going to find a cure.”

A moment that stood out to Wilcoxon during the 2007 three-day event was when an elderly man stood up and told the story of how he had lost both his wife and a daughter to breast cancer. His other daughter was expecting a child at the time, and he hoped there could be a cure for his unborn granddaughter’s genera-tion.

After hearing the man speak, Wilcoxon real-ized that she doesn’t just walk in memory of loved ones or for survivors. She walks for future patients like her two young grand-

daughters, Kaylie and Whitney Hannebaum. She had never thought of the walk in that light before, but now her grand-daughters are an inspiration to her.

“There may not be a cure in my lifetime, but hopefully there will be for them,” Wilcoxon said.

Wilcoxon feels extremely lucky breast cancer hasn’t affected her, her daughter or granddaughters. It’s because she knows the strain breast cancer can take on a woman.

She witnessed a longtime friend undergo multiple surgeries, struggle financially, loose her hair and breasts and fall into depression.

Her cousin’s struggle and ultimate death has taught Wilcoxon to encourage women to get an annual mammogram. “It’s all about catching it early. That way we’ll have more survivors instead of walking in memory of loved ones,” she said.

I have no idea what they (fam-ily and friends of cancer patients) are going through, so I have to do what I can to raise aware-ness and encouragepeople to get mammograms.

Chandy WilcoxonNineveh

“

Chandy WilcoxonAge52

ResidenceNineveh

DetailsWilcoxon’s friend, Tammy Butrum of Indianapolis, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007. Butrum’s diagnosis inspired Wilcoxon to take action.

What cancer taught meIt has taught me that there is always hope when you are diagnosed. With medical breakthroughs and ongoing research, the amount of people who are survivors is awesome.

How cancer changed meI complete my visits with my doctors each year. I think there are so many survivors because they have caught their cancer early. My little scare when I was in the hospital was very enlightening.

What I would tell someone who was just diagnosed with cancerI would say something positive, ask questions about their treatments and let them know I care and will be there for them. I usually ask if I can add them to my list of individuals I walk for.

Pictured: Chandy Wilcoxon, left, and daughter Melissa Hannebaum walk near the Franklin College campus.

STORY BY SARAH SCHULZ


(SEE WALKING, PAGE D11)

LE J

I I.

L i11

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Not if, but whenWoman determined to survive despite family history

Her mother survived breast cancer, and so did her aunt.

Six of Terese Carson’s family members suf-fered from the disease, so she believed it was a matter of when, not if, she would be next. She’s gotten annual mammograms and done

monthly self-examinations since she was 22, so she could catch it early.

The Greenwood resident wasn’t surprised but still was terrified when she found a lump in her breast three years ago, when she was 42.

Despite her fear, she was determined she would survive.Carson knew that she would get radiation, chemotherapy

and a double mastectomy, like her mother did. She wanted to get all the available treatments at once to eliminate any chance that the cancer would come back.

Her family history meant there was a high chance of recurrence. So she planned to get a double mastectomy because it would improve her chances of survival and, also, make the reconstruction more symmetrical.

A genetic test she had after her diagnosis confirmed her fears by giving the worst possible results: inconclusive. That result meant that she was genetically predisposed for breast cancer but with a marker that doctors hadn’t identified yet.

The test also meant the chances of her developing cancer in her other breast or getting ovarian cancer was 65 percent.

“It’s a ridiculously huge chance of recur-rence,” she said. “I told all my doctors that I would do whatever they wanted, but that I would only do it one time. So you tell me what I need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again, and I will do it with a smile on my face, but I will only do it one time.”

Inspired by motherShe said she learned to defer to whatever

doctors advised from her mother, Jane Paterson. Paterson was diagnosed with breast cancer three decades ago at the age of 37, considered young at the time.

Carson was 16 then. She initially didn’t know what to think and feared the worst for her mother.

But she was reassured when her mother kept working, didn’t let on about her wor-ries at home and traveled out of town to Ohio State University to seek the most modern treatments available at the time. Her mother’s strength in her battle with breast cancer gave Carson hope.

“It’s beneficial to know that just because you get this diagnosis, it’s not the end of everything,” she said. “You know you can come out on the other side of it positively and survive.”

Years of thinking over what she would do after she was diagnosed with breast cancer still failed to prepare Carson for the gut-twisting fear she felt when she found a lump during a self-examination during the fall of 2007. She just had a mammogram that came back clean in May of that year.

“I was terrified,” she said. “Even though you’ve been preparing for it, it’s a whole different thing when it happens. It just turns your world over. It’s so very shock-ing.”

But the decades of anticipation and plan-ning served her well. She immediately called the doctor who had given her mam-mograms over the years to get another mammogram and talk about treatment options.

Carson had an aggressive cancer that had spread quickly within months. She had found a 5-inch mass, but an MRI revealed that she had a second mass in the same breast.

Both tumors ranked as Grade 3 on a scale of 4 in terms of severity.

After learning from a biopsy she had two cancerous tumors, Carson first called her mother, who immediately

got into her car and drove more than three hours from cen-tral Ohio. She then summoned her daughters to her office

and told them, so that they wouldn’t learn the news secondhand.

‘It can be done’She reassured them that she would do

everything she could to survive. “Knowing that there’s a really good

possibility that they’re going to be num-ber eight and number nine, they need to see that it can be done,” she said. “It will make them stronger, because my mother set a good example for me. They can look at me and see that it didn’t get the better of me. If they can see that I made it through all of it, then they can do it, too.”

The only other person she told on the first day was her boss at Roncalli High School, where she works as vice presi-dent for development. She had to tell her employer because she got the news just hours before a fundraising dinner she had spent months preparing for.

Roncalli typically raises about $500,000 at the dinner, so Carson smiled, shook hands and never let on that she had received devastating news at a doctor’s office.

The next day, she was entirely focused on her treatment. She had to start che-motherapy within a few weeks to control the cancer because the mass was so large and it had grown so fast.

Carson went in for chemotherapy ses-sions every other Monday. They left her so exhausted that she slept for entire days, including Thanksgiving.

The chemotherapy affected her memo-ry. She had a harder time matching faces with names and became fuzzy about dates.

She lost her appetite, suffered from nausea and struggled to eat. She became numb in her hands and legs. She lost so much feeling that doctors delayed her final chemotherapy session for fear that it could cause permanent nerve damage.

“It was harsh,” she said. “It was a real shock to the system.”

Tattoos for supportShe felt most tired right after treat-

ments but became more energetic after a week passed. Though she didn’t have to, Carson contin-ued to work at Roncalli during her 16 weeks of chemothera-py.

“I didn’t work every day and I didn’t work all day,” she said. “It really helped me to keep our lives at home and at work as normal as possible.”

Terese CarsonAge45

ResidenceGreenwood

DiagnosedSeptember 2007 after a self-examination revealed a Stage 3 growth, just months after a mammogram turned up no signs of a tumor

TreatmentUnderwent a double mastectomy, chemotherapy and radi-ation

What cancer taught meIt taught me the value of your faith. I know that prayer and the prayer of so many people was a major part of my recovery. I had a positive attitude. I’m an extremely ener-getic, positive person and that was to my benefit. I already had that positive outlook on life, but it reinforced that that’s how you need to live life. Also, to realize how much people love and care for you, even if they don’t know you. People who I didn’t even know were praying for me, and that’s a powerful experience.

How cancer changed meYou feel a newfound strength. After you tackle something like that and come out on the other side, you find strength within yourself that you maybe didn’t realize that you had before.

What I would tell someone who was just diag-nosed with cancerBe strong. There’s hope. There are so many survivors and there’s hope. Do what your doctors tell you to with a smile on your face. Your life is in their hands. Do whatever they tell and do whatever you need to do to survive.

Knowing that there’s a really good possibil-ity that they’re going to be number eight and number nine, they need to see that it can be done. It will make them stronger, because my mother set a good example for me. They can look at me and see that it didn’t get the better of me. If they can see that I made it through all of it, then they can do it too.

Terese CarsonGreenwoodOn her daughters

“

Pictured: Ali Carson, Terese Carson and Kati Carson, from left, along with several other family members have pink rib-bon tattoos in support of Terese’s battle with breast cancer.

STORY BY JOSEPH S. PETE

PHOTOS BY SCOTT ROBERSON

(SEE HISTORY, PAGE D9)

GreenwoodGreenwoodEducation &Education &

Conference centerConference center

Steven Alvarado, Regional Sites Manager • 317-859-3101

We extend our hopes & prayers to all who have been

affected by breast cancer.


Blood and slivers of breast tissue from Hoosier women who have never had breast cancer are helping researchers find out

why the disease develops and how to cure it.

Indianapolis’ Susan G. Komen for the Cure Tissue Bank was started five years ago by a Hoosier cancer survivor who learned that research had been halted because research-ers didn’t have access to healthy breast tissue to compare with can-cer-infected tissue.

The bank is the only facility of its kind in the world.

“My mantra has always been,we’re going to change the world,” tissue bank founder Connie Rufenbarger said. “If this is the number one obstacle and we’re going to address that, then certainly we’re going to change the world.”

Here’s how the bank works:Women sign up to donate either

blood or breast tissue during one of the bank’s annual donation events.

Donating tissue is an hour-long outpatient surgery that involves a doctor numbing the side of the breast and using an automated tool to carve out a sample about 1½ inches long.

The samples, about the thick-ness of pencil lead, are frozen using liquid nitrogen within five minutes of leaving the body, said Susan Clare, one of the bank’s two doctors.

Since the center opened, about 1,100 women have donated breast tissue. Not all women can donate; only those who do not have breast cancer and who haven’t had breast implants or a breast reduction.

Researchers from as far as England and Australia have been shipped tissue and blood samples cataloged at the bank. They write proposals, which are kept secret until a detailed report with findings is published. The reports gener-ated using the first round of tissue

samples likely will be published in the next year.

The bank gets nearly all of its funding from Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The nonprofit agency gave $1 million to expand the bank in 2007 and has been the main funding source ever since. Details about the funding are not released.

The concept of opening a tis-sue bank was first discussed in the 1990s during a National Cancer Institute conference that Rufenbarger attended. At the time, she was working for a doctor, help-ing explain treatment options for breast cancer patients.

Researchers at the conference agreed that one thing was stopping

the progression of their research — a lack of access to blood and healthy breast tissue samples. Individual researchers were respon-sible for finding donors and col-lecting enough samples to do their study, Rufenbarger said.

She talked to some of her patients and colleagues to see if people would be interested in donating.

“The women said, ‘What do you need?’” Rufenbarger said. “The con-sensus was, ‘If you need blood, tell us where to be and we’ll be there.’”

Rufenbarger’s first event for the tissue bank was a blood drive at the 2005 Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Indianapolis. More than 1,200 women donated blood, which

was used shortly after in a study conducted at the Indiana University School of Medicine. The findings haven’t been published.

Collecting the same num-ber of samples would have taken researchers five years, Rufenbarger said.

She immediately started planning a donation event for the next year and started exploring how to safely and ethically take tissue samples from women.

The tissue bank partnered with the IU Simon Cancer Center, where there already were guidelines in place for taking samples. All women who donate tissue have to sign a consent form agreeing it can

be used for any research project, Rufenbarger said.

The bank hosts about five tissue donation events across the state. So many women are interested in donating that a waiting list has been started.

Rufenbarger credits her passion to her own personal battle with breast cancer.

In the 1970s, she was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 34. Rufenbarger started scouring medi-cal journals and learned about dif-ferent treatments.

Other women in her small city of Warsaw heard about her research and asked advice when they were diagnosed with breast cancer.

Soon, Rufenbarger was hired by a local doctor and began traveling across the nation to learn more about breast cancer. She’s been a patient advocate ever since, and her focus is now spreading the word about the tissue bank.

Many researchers are just now learning about the bank, which started accepting proposals from researchers in January 2009.

Last year, about 15 proposals were received during two appli-cation periods. Only a few are chosen, depending on the number of samples they need and what’s available.

A three-person committee reviews the proposals and decides which researchers will get samples and how many. Research proposals and their contents are confidential until the findings are published, Clare said.

That’s why it’s important for women to keep donating, so that researchers can continue using their samples to find a cure, Clare said. The center can only collect so many samples each year because of the work it takes to catalogue them and the storage space available at the center.

“We can’t stop and say, ‘The bank’s full now and we’re done,’” she said. “Until we have an answer to breast cancer, we’re not done.”

Tissue donations aid researchSTORY BY SARAH MICHALOS About the bank

WhatSusan G. Komen for the Cure Tissue Bank, which is the only healthy breast tissue bank in the world

WhereIndiana University Simon Cancer Center in Indianapolis

How it worksWomen donate their blood and breast tissue so that researchers from around the world can use it to study breast cancer.

WhoWomen with healthy breast tissue are asked to donate. The tissue bank also solicits donations from women of varying racial and reli-gious backgrounds.

BackgroundThe tissue bank was started in 2005 by Connie Rufenbarger, a cancer survivor and breast cancer consumer advocate who learned that breast cancer researchers didn’t have access to healthy breast tissue.

FundingSusan G. Komen for the Cure began funding the tissue bank in 2007 and will provide the majority of funding until at least spring 2013. Donations also help support the bank.

EmployeesFive full-time, plus two doctors who oversee the bank

1,083Number of tissue samples collected since the bank opened

6,959Number of blood samples collected since the bank opened

How to donateRequirementsDonors must be at least 18, not allergic to local anesthetic, not be taking a blood thinner and not have breast implants or have had a breast reduction. The tissue bank takes donations of blood and breast tissue.

How it worksDonating breast tissue takes about an hour and is done by a surgeon. A piece of healthy breast tissue is surgically removed, cataloged and frozen until a researcher needs it.

How oftenPeople are allowed to donate breast tissue only twice in their lives, so tissue samples are varied. The tissue bank hosts about five donation events per year.

More informationkomentissuebank.iu.edu

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Going through ittwice

Beech Grove woman in 6-year battle

Tammy Butrum doesn’t think she’ll ever be the same woman after experiencing the physical and mental exhaustion of cancer.

After twice being diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer, the 52-year-old mother of twins fears the disease could resurface in another

part of her body like her liver.That fear has caused her to slow down, take

care of herself and enjoy life. Her more than six-year battle began in

December 2003 when she was at home in Beech Grove, cleaning, and her right breast suddenly felt like it was on fire.

“I went in to take a shower and felt a quar-ter-sized lump. I just knew,” she said.

Although she had had mammograms in the past, she was not faithful about getting an annual exam. She had noticed the intense heat sensation once or twice in the preceding six months.

Butrum immediately made an appointment at St. Francis Hospital in Beech Grove, where she had a mammogram and in-office biopsies.

“The way the (nurses) looked. They looked at it, and they looked back at me; and I just knew I definitely had it,” she said.

Doctors told Butrum that because she had her children (twins Shelby and Andrew, now 21) after turning 30, she had an increased risk of developing breast cancer.

For one distressing week, she waited to hear the results. On Jan. 4, 2004, her doctor called to tell her both breasts contained Stage 2 cancer tumors.

The diagnosis came the same day Butrum planned to go to an annual slumber party with high school girlfriends. She didn’t attend.

Butrum underwent five surgeries, including bilateral lumpec-tomies; nine months of chemotherapy; and the maximum amount of radiation she could receive in her lifetime on her upper torso region.

Her support system helped her through the months of agony, she said.

“All my 25 girls at the slumber party started to bring me din-ner. Every night for two weeks,” Butrum said.

Her employer, Clarian Health Partners, where she is a pay-

ment applications analyst, was understanding about her miss-ing months of work, she said.

For the next four years, Butrum’s mammograms came back normal. Then, in late December, almost six years to the day, she was given the grim news again, after her doctor said her

scar tissue didn’t look quite right.“You just feel lost, like this is it,” she said.This time, Butrum’s treatment options were

limited, as radiation was not a possibility.Butrum underwent four rounds of chemo-

therapy, followed by a double mastectomy and reconstruction. Due to complications and an infection, reconstruction of her right breast will require several procedures and will con-tinue into next year.

“I’m thinking they never actually got rid of it the first time. To each his own, but I wish I’d had the mastectomy the first time,” she said.

For Butrum, the most depressing part of treatment resulted from the chemotherapy as her hair began to fall out. Looking into the mirror and seeing the loose, dangling strands and empty, pale patches on her head made left her depressed and embarrassed, Butrum said.

“My biggest downfall was losing my hair,” she said. “That was it. I drew the curtains.”

All she wanted to do was hide at home, alone.

Although her hair is slowly coming back, a $200 wig makes her feel more comfortable in public.

“It’s kind of like a Jamie Lee Curtis cut,” she said, now able to joke about the deep blonde bob.

The fifth of six girls in her family, Butrum is the only sibling to be diagnosed with the disease.

That doesn’t mean she suffers alone. Any of her sisters would answer the phone at 4 a.m. if she needed them, Butrum said.

“I have a wonderful, wonderful support group: all my sisters, wonderful friends and the girls at work. I don’t know what I’d do without everybody, knowing I had people out there who cared,” she said.

Co-workers would leave flowers on her desk at work or give

I’m thinking they never actually got rid of it the first time. To each his own, but I wish I’d had the mastec-tomy the first time.

Tammy BurtrumBeech Grove

“

Tammy ButrumAge52

ResidenceBeech Grove

DiagnosisButrum twice has been diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer and is battling the physical and mental effects of the disease and treatment

What cancer taught meIt’s taught me a lot about people — the good, the bad, the ugly. I’ve seen it all through all this. The ugly is the people that treat you like you have the plague. The bad is the chemo, the radi-ation — yuck. The good is the Chandys and the Susies and the Lisas — you know they’re there.

How cancer changed meIt’s taught me to live a healthier lifestyle, be more active and eat better. I walk every day. I don’t do fast food.

What I would tell someone just diag-nosed with cancerI’m sorry, so sorry. I mainly tell them what they ask. I try to answer to the best of my ability, speaking from experience. But every individual is different.

Pictured: Tammy Burtrum twice has been diag-nosed with breast cancer.


PHOTO BY SCOTT ROBERSON(SEE TWICE, PAGE D9)

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‘What do I do?’Another big difference was the

cost.Musgrave said she can’t remem-

ber paying a single medical bill.Watson and her husband do. In

fact, it was one of her husband, Jeff’s, first questions.

But Watson said she knew there was little they could do about it and would find a way to pay the bills, no matter how scary they were at times.

“It’s not something you plan for. It’s not something you save for. And then it happens and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, what do I do?’” she said.

They had co-pays with doctor vis-

its, deductibles to meet and then paying 20 percent of the costs of procedures. And since her treatment stretched over two calendar years, they had to start all over again when 2010 began.

They estimate their bills were about $5,000, though more still could come in for follow-up care. They paid enough to be able to claim medical expenses on their income taxes, which is extremely rare for them.

Both women said they think doc-tors never expected Musgrave to live 30 years after her diagnosis.

Just hearing the diagnosis was terrifying.

Watson remembers finding out as a senior in high school.

“It was scary hearing the word cancer. We didn’t know a lot then,” she said.

But since Musgrave’s diagnosis,

more research has been done and medical advances made. Both doc-tors and society know much more about cancer, Watson said.

Musgrave remembers talking to people about her diagnosis at the Banta General Store that she and her husband owned. They would ask her about her treatment and tell her about a relative who had been diag-nosed with cancer. And they would learn together, with Musgrave keep-ing records of her treatments and what doctors told her so she could share them with her friends and family.

‘The crying is done’When Musgrave was undergoing

chemotherapy, there was little doc-tors could give her to treat the nau-sea and uncontrollable bowel move-ments that kept her in the hospital for at least a day.

Her chemotherapy treatments were solemn, in a quiet room with only her mother there for company. Watson’s treatments were more like a party.

She brought a group of her girl-friends every time. They brought balloons and food and would laugh and talk for the five or six hours she had to sit in an outpatient center hooked up to an IV.

The mood was happy, with the only tears coming the first time they put the needle in, Watson said.

“But then I said I’m done, the cry-ing is done. We can’t do anything about it,” she said.

And doctors gave her multiple drugs before her treatments, includ-ing an anti-nausea medicine and an anti-histamine to fight off those bad reactions.

So while her mother’s biggest con-cern was the awful sickness she

faced after getting her treatment, Watson’s fear was losing her hair.

She wasn’t afraid of throwing up. The reason she fought against the chemotherapy was because she didn’t want to lose her hair. That fear surprised her, she said.

“I never knew I felt that way. But I prayed so hard to be that one in a billion to not lose her hair,” she said.

With her treatments done, Watson said she worries about a recurrence of her cancer, especially since her mother had two. But she isn’t going to dwell on it.

“If it happens, it happens, and we’ll deal with it,” she said.

But with her family history, she has talked to her 20-year-old daugh-ter about her risks and that when she turns 37, she needs to start get-ting mammograms.

“And I will be on her for that,” she said.

• Years(CONTINUED FROM PAGE D3)

During that time, her daughters cared for her, lying in bed with her when she was having bad days and getting her water when she need-ed it.

Her mother talked with her and took her to her doctor’s visits. Paterson said she felt bad that all she could do was be a shoulder to lean on.

“It was extremely hard as a mother to see your daughter go through that,” she said. “I was there with her the whole way, but I felt power-less, like there was nothing I could really do.”

Paterson and about a dozen other family members got small pink ribbon tattoos on the insides of their ankles. Carson’s daughters, then 16 and 18, organized the effort.

“I never thought that at the age of 66, I’d be walking around with a tattoo,” Paterson said. “But it’s a permanent way to show your sup-port.”

She and her granddaughters, Allie and Kacey, watched over Carson while she rested after che-motherapy, took her out when she felt up to it and consoled her after she lost her hair.

Two weeks after chemotherapy started, clumps of Caron’s hair came out in the shower. Carson viewed it as a sign that the treatment was working, tied her hair into a ponytail and headed off to work.

A few days later, she invited about 10 people to a hair-cutting party in a friend’s garage. A stylist friend of hers tried out different hair-cuts before shaving Carson bald.

“I wanted to do something joyous,” she said. “Losing my hair showed that the chemothera-

py was purging the can-cer from my body, and that was something to celebrate.”

Refused to hide itEventually, Carson

lost every strand of hair on her body, including eyebrows and eyelashes. She had purchased a wig but wore it only about five times because it was too itchy and uncomfortable.

A nun at her school crocheted caps that she ended up wearing instead.

“It was more comfort-able for me,” she said. “Everyone knows what you’re doing, so there’s no point to try to hide it.”

The chemotherapy ended in January 2008, and Carson then had to go in for surgery within the next three weeks. A surgeon removed both breasts, and then a plastic surgeon performed a reconstruction on the same day.

Her insurance paid for the surgery and most of her treatments. But Carson still ended up spending about $5,000 to $7,000 out of pocket on deductibles and co-pays, largely because her insurance didn’t fully cover the genetic test.

“I’m very fortunate that our family wasn’t financially devastated,” she said. “Fortunately,

I had good insurance. But when you consider that a single chemo-therapy session could cost $9,000, it could have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to save my life. We’re very fortunate that it didn’t cost more out of pocket.”

After the surgery, Carson received radiation treatments that she said were easy com-pared to the chemotherapy she had been through. The hour-long treatments made her tired but mostly were a distraction to her day because she didn’t have the side effects that others experi-ence.

“With the radiation, I did everything I could have done to keep it from coming back,” she said. “That was all I could do after the chemotherapy and the surgery. There was nothing left to do.”

Her life since has gotten most-ly back to normal. The biggest long-term health implications are numbness and the effect that the chemotherapy had on her memo-ry.

The fog has worn off, but she still has trouble recalling names.

But overall, Carson feels good and optimistic that she won’t have a recurrence. She was see-ing her oncologist every three months but now only has to go every six months for checkups.

“I feel like I’ve done everything I can do and that it’s in God’s hands,” she said. “I’m a sur-vivor. I’m strong. I’m a mother. I’m a caregiv-er. I’ve always been strong.”

• History(CONTINUED FROM PAGE D6)

monetary donations to help with pay-ments not covered by insurance.

One friend took it upon herself to walk the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, a 60-mile trek. A slumber party pal, Chandy Wilcoxon of Nineveh, has trained for the event since January and has raised more than $2,000 to participate at the end of the month.

“How awesome for her to do that. It just brings chills. She had so many blis-ters on her feet last time. Chandy’s there for everybody. She doesn’t let anyone slide,” Butrum said.

Before cancer, when friends would call and ask her to go shopping or out for din-ner, she would find strength to go even when tired. Now, she just doesn’t have the energy. Butrum has found that some-times saying no is OK and even good for her.

“I’m a do-er, I’m a go-er. But not any-more, not like that,” she said.

The fatigue hasn’t stopped her from trying to take care of herself or her hus-band, David, and their children. She’s learned to live a healthier lifestyle, be more active and eat better.

Her daily routine includes walking one mile and eating nutritious meals — a healthier regimen than she followed before having cancer.

“I’m still here, still fighting, still cook-ing and cleaning, yelling at my kids,” she said.

• Twice(CONTINUED FROM PAGE D8)

When you consider that a single che-motherapy ses-sion could cost $9,000, it could have cost hun-dreds of thou-sands of dollars to save my life. We’re very for-tunate that it didn’t cost more out of pocket.

Terese CarsonGreenwood

“

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‘Sick Mommy’Shepard couldn’t figure out

why she was so intrigued by what Byerly was talking about that day at the soccer game. She worked and had two young children. She simply didn’t have time to think about her-self, let alone what this woman was talking about.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Within days, she found a lump. Her doctor said it was prob-ably a cyst, and a mammogram was scheduled.

The lump wasn’t fluid filled, and the biopsy results came back as invasive cancer. The lump was about 2 centimeters in size.

Her mind raced. She did not want to be a sick mommy to then-3-year-old John and 6-year-old Samantha. She didn’t want to raise her chil-dren as an ill, bedridden woman.

“My biggest fear was being that burden, that sick person,” Shepard said. “I didn’t want that.”

Shepard found her lump shortly after she turned 38, two years before she would have started hav-ing routine mammograms.

“At that point it would have been in my lymph nodes, and I would have been sick Mommy,” she said.

Shepard was supposed to find her lump. She was supposed to pay attention to it and get treatment, her best friend, Jennifer Bentley of Louisville, said. They both were vaccine sales representatives and found themselves away from theirfamilies for a six-week training about six years ago.

“Well, I guess we’re going to know each other forever,” Shepard had told Bentley on that trip. The two quickly became friends. Then best friends.

When Shepard was diagnosed, the two weren’t overly intimidated by what she was facing. They worked in health care and believed in what doctors and medicine could accom-plish.

“The profound effect that we have shared is the spiritual connection of how she came about her diagno-sis and then running into Stacey,” Bentley said.

She calls it a divine intervention that should solidify that someone else is in control, she said.

She likens it to someone smacking Shepard in the head. Thankfully, she was listening, Bentley said.

‘I don’t regret it a bit’Shepard went to Dr. Cara Hahs at

Community Breast Care. She told her to take her time in deciding her course of treatment because the borderline Stage 2 cancer was not moving too fast.

Hahs told her she had to deal with her cancer, but she didn’t have to decide how immediately. It likely had been growing in her right breast for 10 to 11 years.

Before the surgery, Shepard received what she called four shots of what felt like fire racing through her. The shots would show the surgeon which of her lymph nodes were primary and show the drain-age path. Hahs removed the lump, put in a port for chemotherapy, checked the nodes and removed six. The nodes were cancer free.

Hahs told Shepard it was hard to get a clear margin around the lump during surgery because the cancer was close to the muscle wall. They wanted to operate again to make sure the cancer was gone.

Shepard talked to women who did a minimal course of treatment, and the cancer came back.

She wasn’t afraid to deal with her cancer.

“But I didn’t want to deal with it

again in 10 years,” she said.This time, she chose a double

mastectomy and reconstruction.“I don’t regret it a bit,” Shepard

said.“I just had a feeling there was

probably more in there than what they originally saw.”

She started chemotherapy just before Thanksgiving 2008, and the worst was yet to come.

Part of the treatment involves taking steroids, which are meant to help the rest of the medicine work and keep cancer patients from becoming so ill.

That part worked. Shepard never threw up. She did itch and suffer from dehydration.

But while the cancer was under attack, so were Shepard’s emo-tions. The steroids made her crazy. Angry. Sad. Moody.

“You didn’t want to be with yourself, let alone anybody else,” she said.

She begged to go off the steroids. Her fingers were swollen. She gained 30 pounds. Her face had taken on a square shape. She was bald.

No, the doctors said. She’d be worse without them.

Accountability friendsBentley’s way of helping was to

let Shepard talk about it. “It consumed her more than

she probably realizes. She’d say, ‘Tomorrow, we’re not talking about it,’” Bentley said. “But of course we would.”

Listening to her doesn’t mean placating her best friend. Bentley wouldn’t tell her everything would be OK.

“If it was going to be horrible, I would tell her that,” Bentley said.

Their friendship had been like that all along.

Shepard and Bentley were accountability friends. They use each other as a mirror. They have similar core beliefs and were raised similarly. They never enabled each other to behave badly.

“We are the mirror of what the other person wants to hear that is true, that is right,” Bentley said. “That’s a hard concept sometimes.”

Shepard took a leave from her job. She took her children to kinder-garten and preschool, went home, set an alarm and went back to bed. That was the only way she’d have the energy to spend time with her children in the evening.

She and her husband, Brian, had told the children that Mom had to take icky medicines. She’d be tired, and her hair would fall out, and she’d look like Dad. But her hair would grow back.

Bentley feared for what her friend and her family were going through.

“How are we going to pick up the slack for this extraordinary female who does all of these things for all of these people that no one knows about?” Bentley remembers won-dering.

‘Find the fight’At a doctor’s appointment one

day, a perky young woman came in and wanted to give Shepard a big pep talk and include her in the young survivors organization. She gave Shepard a water bottle, and 7-year-old Samantha started insist-ing on taking that water bottle to school.

Finally, Shepard flung the bottle. She didn’t want anyone to ever see

the bottle again. It was a club she never wanted to be a part of. And she could laugh about the bottle.

Finally, some comedic relief.“She had to find the fight from

within first,” said Brian Shepard, a former Marine. “Once that was found, then I most definitely stepped in. But it most definitely had to come from her and within her before I could put my hand in to help.”

Around her fourth or fifth che-motherapy treatment near Valentine’s Day, she went bowl-ing with her son. The next morning, she had a fever and headache. She couldn’t swallow very well. She couldn’t get up.

But no one came to check on her.

Shepard called her sister-in-law and asked her to tell Brian Shepard to come help her. She was taken to the emergency room and had a mas-sive case of strep throat.

That was it. Brian Shepard

quarantined her. She was grounded, he told her. They had come too far. They were too close to being done with breast cancer.

“We only have two more left, girl, two more,” he told her, referring to her chemotherapy treatments.

“He grounded me out of love. Because he knew I wouldn’t stop. That was another marker that it wasn’t me going through this, it was us,” she said.

Cancer didn’t transform Shepard’s relationship with her husband. The disease didn’t save her marriage. Her illness didn’t destroy the relationship either. Instead, their bond matured.

“He loved me when I was bald and swollen,” Shepard said. “He never wavered. He was himself.”

Sometimes she wondered why he didn’t coddle her. “Why? Because I don’t like to be coddled,” she real-ized. “He knew that.”

‘My world doesn’t stop’After chemotherapy, surgeons

removed both her breasts and took out the chemotherapy port. They put in a flat implant for her reconstruction. Doctors fill the expanders, which as first look like deflated balloons, with saline over time to prepare skin for a breast implant.

Twenty days later, she walked in the Race for the Cure.

She had summer with her chil-dren. And a year to the day after her diagnosis, doctors removed the expanders and gave her silicone breast implants.

She wanted a quick recovery.“My world doesn’t stop when I’m

sick,” Shepard said. She’d gone back to work part

time, and in another town one day she went to a walk-in salon with-out her wig on. Her hair was just starting to grow back in and was very short but had no style. Her still-swollen fingers were too big for her wedding band. Everyone stared at her.

Shepard described it as one of her worst days with cancer. She was trying to get back to feeling good about how she looked.

Her children knew when she had reached the point where she would survive, and it was all about the hair.

During her illness, whenever they’d leave the house, they’d have

to find the keys, the cell phone and Mom’s hair.

When her hair came back, the kids wrote Mom off as just fine.

And surprise: Her straight hair grew back curly.

‘You’re going to be OK’Byerly, a part-time teacher in

Indianapolis, thought it was impor-tant for Shepard to get out of the house and stay as active as possi-ble. When a woman has black eyes, is bald, looks sick and feels sick due to the toll of breast cancer and chemotherapy, it is key to do some-thing to make yourself feel good. Enter Byerly’s belief in the natural endorphins of exercise.

The women would walk, talk and lift weights. Byerly had Shepard make a scheduled commitment to exercise with her.

“I think it’s a good affirmation that you’re going to be OK,” Byerly said.

Shepard said it was important for her body and her mind to get out of the house when she was able. She and Byerly did lots of walking and talking. And their sons, who are about the same age and very ener-getic, got to be close friends.

When chemotherapy was over, Shepard wanted to work out to get back into shape and lose some of the weight the treatment had caused her to gain. She immedi-ately faced intense lower back and hip pain and discovered that che-motherapy had really hit her entire body. Her core muscles, which hold her frame together, were weak. Her pelvis was out of alignment, the muscles too weak to hold it where it should have been.

Physical therapy and Jazzercise helped. She’s lost half the weight and walked the mini-marathon this year.

Little miraclesEarly in her diagnosis, Shepard

took her daughter to Rascals Fun Zone and saw a woman whose daughter had taken ballet with Samantha. She remembered think-ing the woman was looking at her and wondered if it was apparent already that she was sick.

The next week, that woman was the nurse at her breast cancer sur-geon’s office.

“I was waiting on you,” the nurse later told her.

Shepard calls that experience and her bond with Byerly her little miracles that provided the take-me-by-the-hand-and-lead-me during her entire treatment. God brought people into her life for a reason, she said.

If Byerly hadn’t talked about can-cer that day, Shepard still wouldn’t have had her first mammogram, she said.

“Mine was very, very survivable because I found it when I did,” Shepard said.

She has tried to pay it forward.Two women in the area have

had early mammograms because of Shepard. They both have a fam-ily history of breast cancer but were timid about getting an early screening. They are both OK but now have a baseline for future mammograms.

Her best friend, who lives in Louisville, the one who told her the day of her diagnosis to cry for five minutes and then they’d figure out how to fix it, told another woman Shepard’s story. She had a mammo-gram and was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer.

She doesn’t want women who think they feel a lump to ignore it. Don’t accept that it is a cyst that can be checked in a few years. Demand more tests.

Coming backShepard already had her pri-

orities straight before she had

cancer. She was living life pretty well before, Bentley said. Her chil-dren and family were always mostimportant.

But since her recovery from breast cancer, a slower evolution has started. Shepard has slowed down. This time, she has done the grounding. Since earlier this year, she has been a full-time mom without working outside the home.

She’s also realized all of the areas she is of value in and what she contributes on a daily basis to so many people. She learned to accept help from people, that hav-ing someone else make dinner is a great thing and that a card coming in the mail can make your day bet-ter, Bentley said.

“What’s so insidious about breast cancer is that it’s our mothers and daughters, the people who hold everything together,” Bentley said.

Shepard relishes every minute of the day. She’s quieted down.

Brian Shepard still is trying to get the appreciation for little things in life that his wife has.

“Unless you’ve gone through it, even being the spouse, it is hard to understand and truly appreci-ate what has gone on with her,” he said.

“The small things don’t bother us anymore. The things we did care about, the job, the money, the mate-rials, are no longer what is impor-tant in our life.”

Shepard knows the warning signs that cancer is back. Since both her breasts are removed, if the cancer returns, it will be elsewhere in her body, such as her brain, her bones, her lungs, her liver. Her doctor asks during annual checkups if she has any chronic pain in her torso, vision changes, back spasms, headaches, weight loss or weight gain.

“If it goes somewhere, we find out once it gets there,” Shepard said.

The thoughts of it occasionally creep into her mind, not every day, about once a week she thinks about it showing up somewhere else. She knows she did everything she could to make sure that never happens.

‘It never goes away’Byerly, too, faces the possibil-

ity that cancer could come back. While her diagnosis was two years behind her when she met Shepard, it wasn’t really over.

“I think she needed me as much as I needed her,” Shepard said.

Byerly had gone through che-motherapy while raising young children. When Shepard was sick, Byerly was able to watch someone else go through it.

“It helped her make peace with what she went through,” Shepard said.

Byerly needed someone to talk to about the disease and treatments and what it feels like when icy med-icine races through your body. They swapped experiences like mothers sharing birth stories.

“It doesn’t go away once you’re done with treatment,” Byerly said. “It never goes away.”

Before her first surgery, she went for a walk and cried. But she found three pennies and took it as a sign. Now when Byerly faces a doctor’s appointment, she searches for her lucky pennies.

Before her most recent mammo-gram, she called Shepard and said she was scared because she hadn’t found her pennies yet.

“She just talks me through it in a really sensible way,” Byerly said.

While Shepard has the fear of her cancer recurring, she knows the chance is small. If Byerly’s cancer reoccurs, she will catch it early but will go through it all again, Shepard said.

“So who knows, maybe I would look for lucky pennies, too,” Shepard said.

• Help(CONTINUED FROM PAGE D1)

What’s so insidious about breast cancer is that it’s our mothers and daughters, the people who hold everything together.

Jennifer BentleyKentucky resident and friend of cancer patient Janna Shepard

“

IN,e +

J f j w

-elk, -to ....................................

TO OUR FRIEND

Leisa BeattyYou were fi rst our friend and then our patient. The day we diagnosed you

was one of the most diffi cult days of our career; however, God knew what he was doing that day! You’ve been an

inspiration to many...including us! Two and a half years later, we consider ourselves blessed to call our friend a SURVIVOR!

We love you!

Amanda & Heather

TO OUR MOM

Marie MillerTo the most amazing Mom ever! Congrats

on being a three time survivor.Love, Your Kids

Cindy MattoxYou are the

strongest personI know! I love you!

Lisa

Ruthie LawsonYou are an inspiration to us all! We love you! Fight like a girl!

Love, Stacy, Terry,Austin & Justin

Barbara BrownfieldTo someone who showed

great courage & faith in the Lord. You’re loved very much.

Denny & Kids

Michelle CoeYou are so strong and brave. We love you!

Aunt Barb, Uncle Dave and Dawn

Tammy EtterOur very brave, courageous

& thankfully nowhealthy friend!

Love, Cecil & Beth

Ruth LawsonFight Like A Girl!

Love, Sharon, Bruce,Brady & Peyton

TRIBUTE TO

Breast CancerSURVIVORS & ANGELSSURVIVORS & ANGELS

TO MY DAUGHTER

Stephanie StewartLive, love, laugh, sing

and dance line no one’s watching.“9 Years Out!”

Love, Mom

TO MY DAUGHTER

HollyBrave enough to stand up

For what you believe,And a WARRIOR to follow it

throughI guess Heaven was

needing a HERO like you.

Mom and Mike

TO OUR MOM

Holly HarlowMom, you are our Hero and forever in our hearts! We love you with all

our hearts and miss you every day! We have a beautiful angel watching over us in all we do and will always remember everything you did and

will do for us. We love you Mom, forever and always.

Kailee and Jarrett

Carol HillYou were so brave to go

through this surgery. I don’t think I could of handled it

the way you did. God bless you. I love you.

Gloria

TO MY SISTER

Susan Reed “Nunnie”You have been an inspiration, mentor, Sister,

and most of all a good friend. You have gone through so much this past year and with all the prayers, we are all very glad to

have you in our lives today. We look forward to being with you today, tomorrow, and in

the many years to come.Love, Jim & Pam

TO OUR GIRLFRIEND

Ellen Paris“Life is a journey” & we are so

proud to be a part of it with you! You are such an inspiration to us

all. Way to kick cancer’s butt!

Love, Peggy, Kim, Barb,Kris, Sharon, Mickey,

Debbie & Gale Iva Hall2 Year survivor with many

more to come!Robin, Karen, Megan

and Madison

Carmen CochranYou won thebattle twice!

Luv ya, Herlin


respected in the community, local people and organizations asked Harlow to speak about her experience with breast cancer.

She spoke at the Veterans of Foreign Wars and on the phone to

strangers who were newly diagnosed with breast cancer.

“She just made it a way of life and dealt with it. She didn’t have a choice.”

Gough said Harlow’s optimism is what allowed her to live 11 years with cancer.

“I’ve had doctors tell me she should have died five years before she did, but it was her attitude that kept her going,” Gough said.

Even when she was ill, Harlow and Gough attended stockcar races. They would be decked out in as much garb as they could find, ready to cheer like crazy.

Three weeks before her death, Gough experienced an unforgettable night with her sister.

Through the Never Too Late orga-nization (a group that helps termi-nally ill adults fulfill their wishes),

Harlow had the opportunity to go back-stage and meet one of her favorite singers, Keith Urban.

“She hugged him and he said, ‘God bless you.’ She loved Keith Urban,” Gough said.

A photo of the sisters meeting Urban was featured in the Oct. 4 edition of Country Weekly. Gough couldn’t believe that her sister’s memory is being carried on three

years after Harlow’s death.Gough relives these memories

daily to keep her sister’s spirit alive. Her wish for her niece and nephew, Kailee and Jarrett, is that they carry on Harlow’s optimistic outlook whenever they encounter a trying experience.

“(Kailee and Jarrett) didn’t know life without breast cancer. I hope they have her strong attitude in life.”

aunt and Kailee.“They have been so supportive. I

couldn’t have done any of this without my family and friends,” Gough said.

Fans at cheer stations along the route offered encouragement. They

lined the sidewalks, offering a mist of water, candy, popsicles, ice or just a simple thank-you.

Other walkers kept her going, too, she said.

At camp one night, a woman told the story of her daughter, who was 29, and 24 weeks pregnant, when diagnosed with breast cancer. She immediately underwent chemothera-py and delivered her son five weeks

early. Two months later, in June of this year, the woman’s daughter passed away.

Hearing stories like that made her push through any discomfort, Gough said.

A saying pinned on a walker’s T-shirt kept her motivated. It read, “‘Blisters don’t need chemo.”

“Quitting (was) not an option because it never was for (Harlow).

You just shove your feet back in those shoes and go again,” Gough said.

Gough, her friends and family slept in little pink tents provided by race coordinators.

The final day consisted of a route a little more than 17 miles. The final seven miles were rough, with greater inclines, rain and wind.

Gough laughed about the final day. “The good note on this was that after

we finished, it got really, really sunny, hot and humid. So, we all agreed we would have rather had the steady rain instead,” she said.

A closing ceremony at Soldier Field brought together the more than 1,600 walkers.

“As crazy as it sounds, I know that I will definitely do this again,” she said. “My feet say no, but my heart says yes.”

• Holly(CONTINUED FROM PAGE D4)

• Good(CONTINUED FROM PAGE D4)

With tears in her eyes, Wilcoxon remembered when her daughter, the last walker, finished day one of the race three years ago. Emotions ran high as everyone gathered together, feeling an enormous sense of accomplishment after walking about 22 miles.

“While she was lowering the flag for the end of day one, people were coming up and thanking her — these little tiny women with bald heads, wearing their pink T-shirts — it was wonderful. I’m so glad we did it,” she said.

The physical nature of the three-day walk makes her donation to the cause more tangible.

“People’s donations are there whether I do 60 miles or not. But I just feel in my heart that I want to complete those 60 miles, or at least do what I can.”

She did it once, and she’s ready to do it again in two weeks. She will continue walking until breast cancer is no longer a threat.

“I do it because I can, and I just have to,” she said.

• Walking(CONTINUED FROM PAGE D5)

60-mile walk requires months of work

Getting ready for a 60-mile walk con-sumes much of Chandy Wilcoxon’s spare time.

For the second time, Wilcoxon is pre-paring for a breast cancer fundraising walk, training and raising funds for

the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure.Wilcoxon has been inspired by loved ones to do

what she can to find a cure for breast cancer. What she can do is simply walk.

A cousin, Paulette Hocker of Michigan, passed away of the disease; a high school friend, Tammy Butrum, is dealing with her second diagnosis and breast reconstruction; and other friends and fellow church members are battling the cancer.

Wilcoxon, 52, feels blessed she has not been affect-ed, so she wants to help those who have. She has been training since February for the event at the end of the October.

Painful, blistered feet caused her to stop a few miles short in 2007; so Wilcoxon is training to walk farther.

“I came close (in 2007) but didn’t quite finish. I had so many blisters and the heat just got to me,” she said.

She is training harder than last time, hoping to cross the finish line on each of the three days.

Her weekly regimen includes 40 to 50 miles of easy, moderate or intense walking. A personal trainer also works with Wilcoxon two or three times each week on weightlifting to improve her endurance. Strength training has helped her walk farther.

“When I used to walk seven miles on a Saturday

and seven miles again on Sunday, it would just wipe me out. I’d be done for the weekend. I go do it now, and it doesn’t bother me at all,” she said.

Wilcoxon, of Nineveh, awakes before work at 4 or 5 a.m. to train anyplace she can in the county. She walks the sidewalks of Franklin College on beautiful days, in rain or intense heat.

The heat index reached 103 degrees during the 2007 event, so Wilcoxon trains in shoes that are slightly big.

“When your feet sweat, they expand,” she said. Spare socks and shoes will be packed in her suitcase for race weekend.

When spending time with her two granddaughters on weekends, Wilcoxon trains while they ride their bicycles along sidewalks. If they want to play on a playground, she seeks out the nearest school parking lot and walks back and forth.

To stay on track, Wilcoxon sticks closely to the training schedule race coordinators e-mail her each week.

For one of the final weekends she has left to train, the schedule recommended walking 15 miles on Saturday and 18 on Sunday.

But training to walk is only half the commitment. Participants also must raise $2,300, which goes to research, screening, education and treatment

through the Susan G. Komen Foundation.In 2009, participants from 15 cities raised about $91

million.Walkers have until 30 days after the event to raise the

funds; or their credit card will be charged the balance.That’s what happened to Wilcoxon’s daughter,

Melissa Hannebaum. She had a tough time gathering enough donations in 2007. When she didn’t reach her goal, $900 was charged to her credit card.

At the first race, she and Hannebaum gathered tips from other walkers on how to raise funds. They learned that businesses typically are more willing to donate than individuals because they can give more and write off the amount on their taxes.

So she’s had to get creative.Wilcoxon sent out a letter requesting donations

to family members, friends and businesses. She has baked cookies to sell at festivals.

“We had a couple of garage sales at home and put signs out, saying that all money will go to a three-day breast cancer walk.” She still needs donations to meet her goal.

By Oct. 1, she had raised $1,485, or 65 percent of her goal.

“It’s hard to ask for money,” she said.Wilcoxon spends money out of her own pocket, as

well, including $90 on a registration fee, plus the cost of airfare, a hotel, rental car and food.

It will all be worth it, she said, once she arrives and is surrounded by cheering onlookers and the weak, balding women she’ll be walking for.

“It’s a huge commitment,” she said, and she plans to keep walking until there is a cure for breast can-cer.

How to helpLog on to the3day.org. Click on donate to participant and select Chandy Wilcoxon’s name. Eighty-four cents of every dollar spent by Susan G. Komen for the Cure sup-ports mission programs and services.


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DAILY JOURNAL, JOHNSON COUNTY, IND. BRAVE HEARTS FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2010 E1

Don’t give uphope

Franklin resident writes book about cancer experience

AFranklin mother dreaded having to tell her 15-year-old son that she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.

Terri Petersen was close with her only child. She knew it would be hard for him to digest.

Petersen spent hours brooding at the kitchen table over just how to break the news. She decided she wanted to say something funny.

When her son, Erik, returned home from school that day, she asked him to sit down at the kitchen table and told him she had good news and bad news.

He asked for the good news, and she told him she had breast cancer and asked him if he wanted to hear the bad news before he had time to react. She then told him she would get a curly black wig if she lost her hair because of chemo-therapy.

Petersen said she tried to keep the jokes coming and a smile on her face after she was diagnosed with a disease she knew little about. Since surgeons removed the lump, she’s tried to use humor to educate other women about breast cancer.

She wants other women to better informed than she was, so she wrote a book about her experience and talks about the importance of regular mammograms to women she meets.

One of the main points she stresses is women should maintain hope and the conviction that they’ll recover. During her own struggle with cancer, Petersen tried to stay lighthearted to deal with her fear of the unknown, her discom-fort with disrobing before rooms of medical interns and her worries about her family.

She wanted her son and her husband, Garry, to know that she didn’t think of the diag-nosis as a death sentence. She wanted them to share her conviction that cancer was something they could get through.

“When you can laugh about it, I think that made it so much easier for my family and that was my point,” she said. “I wanted to make it easier for everybody. I think that’s women and mothers in general, that we want to make it easier for people around us, not more difficult.”

Petersen continued to e-mail her son jokes every day, tell funny stories and try to find humor as she was shuffled from one hospital room to the next. After a chest X-ray, she told him she was happy to announce that she did, in fact, have a heart.

When she was told that she wouldn’t have needed an EKG if her surgery had been two months later, after her 50th birthday, she quipped that she thought life was supposed to be better after 50.

‘Going to move on’She’s always tried to take a light-hearted approach to life, espe-

cially after losing her vision in 1987. She frequently is asked how she copes with being legally blind and always responds that it has good points, such as that everyone looks great to her.

But at first, she had trouble coming up with anything funny to say about breast cancer. She was so shocked that she didn’t know what to think and spent much of her time researching the dis-ease online with the help of her talking laptop.

Petersen never expected to develop breast cancer because she had no family history of it, although she had been getting mam-mograms every year since turning 40 at her doctor’s advice.

But she had a bad feeling when her doctor asked her to come back for a second mammogram four years ago, even though it wasn’t the first time she’d been called back.

The second mammogram did not find anything significant, but Petersen wanted to be sure and so arranged for an ultrasound. When the ultrasound found a small mass, she arranged for a biopsy.

Her radiologist told her he was fairly certain that a mass that turned up in the ultrasound was cancerous, and she was so stunned that she couldn’t speak above a whisper, Petersen said.

She became depressed after starting to research breast cancer online while waiting for confirmation from her biopsy. She was

stunned to learn how prevalent breast cancer was.

“But I felt sorry for myself for about five minutes,” she said. “Then I said I was OK, I’m going to move on.”

Her husband immediately arranged to take off from work to accompany her on appoint-ments to a surgeon at the Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis, where they would decide on a course of treatment.

Petersen picked her surgeon after asking her doctor whom she would recommend if one of her family members had been diagnosed.

‘I feared the worst’Garry and Terri Petersen both said they

felt confident going to the IU Medical Center because of its reputation and because residents and interns check and double-check all the work at a teaching hospital.

“I feared the worst,” Garry Petersen said. “But I got a little more comfortable knowing we would be in capable hands.”

Within 10 days of the diagnosis, she had scheduled a sentinel node biopsy at her sur-geon’s advice. The surgery would remove the lump and a lymph node that would be tested to see if the cancer had spread.

Petersen relied mostly on her husband and son for support in the days as she prepared for surgery. She sent mass e-mails to update friends, acquaintances and extended family about her condition because she didn’t want to keep having the same conversations over and over.

Her husband sat with her in waiting rooms while she got an MRI, an EKG and a chest X-ray in the days leading up to the surgery. He held a vomit pan for her when she dry-heaved while fading in and out of consciousness after the surgeons had cut out tissue.

Her son took off school to accompany her to her surgery. He rubbed her shoulders to lessen

her back pain before the surgery and fetched warm blankets when the old ones got cold.

The procedure went well, and the surgeons didn’t have to remove any other lymph nodes because there were no signs that the cancer had spread. They confirmed that the cancer was in fact Stage 1.

Her oncologist advised her she wouldn’t need chemotherapy since the tumor had been caught early. But she would need six weeks of radiation treatment.

During that period, she felt tired and weak but wasn’t sure whether that was from the treatments or the daily trips to the hospital. She went for the brief procedure every weekday either with her husband or a college student they hired to take care of her.

‘Let’s save them all’She kept her hair and said the treatment wasn’t painful,

although she often wondered if the intense heat meant that she’d be able to fry an egg on the side of her breast.

While getting daily radiation treatments, she tried to keep doctors and nurses entertained and asked every time for pink beads, like those thrown during Mardi Gras. She also talked with everyone she met in the waiting room, whether children, chronic smokers who weren’t giving up their habits or other women who also had had cancerous lumps removed from their breasts.

Terri PetersenAge54

ResidenceFranklin

DiagnosedJanuary 2006 with Stage 1 mass during an ultrasound that Petersen asked for after being called back for a redo mammogram

TreatmentReceived a sentinel lymph node biopsy, then six weeks of radiation

What cancer taught meCancer is a diagnosis, not a death sentence. Some people say, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” but it’s just a diagnosis, and you can recover.

How cancer changed meWell, it inspired me to write a book, and now I’m writing a second book. I probably wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t feel that I needed to tell other people about it.

What I would tell someone who was just diagnosed with cancerThat it’s OK. Someone said something to me that helped me a lot. A nurse told me that everything’s going to be OK, and that meant a lot. You have to know that everything is going to be OK. To hear that helps. You get a little hope from them and can add it to your own hope.

When you can laugh about it, I think that made it so much easier for my family and that was my point. I wanted to make it easier for everybody. I think that’s women and mothers in general, that we want to make it easier for people around us, not more difficult.

Terri PetersenFranklin

“

Pictured: Terri Petersen discovered she had breast cancer four years ago during her annual mammogram. She has since written a book about her experience.

STORY BY JOSEPH S. PETE


(SEE HOPE, PAGE E7)

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Getting well,feeling sick

Franklin resident struggles through chemotherapy

Ruth Adams laughed at the absurdity. The other option was crying.

In early August, she couldn’t open one of her pill bottles, as the skin on her hands was peeling and disintegrating.

The culprit was the chemotherapy she had been endur-ing for breast cancer, although she didn’t

know that immediately — and wouldn’t know it for a week, until she finally called her doctor.

“I didn’t know the chemo had anything to do with it,” Adams said. “I guess it can have all kinds of side effects.”

Adams, a 60-year-old Franklin resident, was diagnosed with breast cancer in May after finding a lump while taking a shower. Within weeks of the diagnosis, her mother died. Seven months earlier, in October 2009, her daughter died at age 38 of an accidental overdose. Not long before that, her husband’s brother died.

She had cried more than enough, and then came a breast cancer diagnosis in an underemployed, uninsured and grieving household.

“We thought we were pretty much going to be wiped out, with me losing my job and no insurance and every-thing,” said Larry Adams, Ruth’s husband, who was let go two years ago from a company he had worked for 32 years.

Then came a breakthrough that, while perhaps not stopping the tears which come with the initial shock of breast cancer, helped them subside significantly. The Little Red Door Cancer Agency was going to help the Adams family.

One of the largest independent cancer agencies in central Indiana, the Indianapolis-based Little Red Door helps those who must battle cancer but don’t have the money or insurance to pay the medical bills.

“There’s a missing niche in the working poor, oftentimes they may have some kind of income, but not that extra income to have screening services and more costly diagnostic services,” said Tanya Parrish, direc-tor of programs and services at Little Red Door.

In Adams’ case, Little Red Door, which she learned about from her sister, set her up with a mammogram the day she called and scheduled a biopsy. Within two weeks their counselors helped her set up on a Medicaid account for women with breast cancer.

“That took a big relief off our minds. You wouldn’t imagine it, if you stopped to think about the money,” Larry Adams said. “If you want to give anybody praise, it’s the Little Red Door. They sure take a burden off of people.”

With the financial questions answered, Adams could focus on battling the cancer and reassuring loved ones.

She never told her ill mother about the diagnosis. “I figured that would just be worse on her,” Adams said.

There was no avoiding long talks with 12-year-old Ciera, however. Ciera, a granddaughter whom the couple adopted and have raised (they have five other grown children from previous marriages), passed out at the hospital when she saw her adopted mother after the first lymph node surgery.

Today, mother and daughter are having an easier time. Ciera advises her mother on bandannas to wear, excited at the prospect of what Ruth hears — that her hair should come back thicker and more curly than before.

Adams may have more surgery this month and radiation into next year, but her type of cancer has a higher survival rate.

Then, there will be happy tears.

I didn’t know the chemo had anything to do with it. I guess it can have all kinds of side effects.

Ruth AdamsFranklin

“Ruth AdamsAge60

ResidenceFranklin

When diagnosedMay with Stage 2 breast cancer

TreatmentChemotherapy and radiation

How cancer changed meI can handle anything. I would do this all over if I could have my daughter back.

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancerBe brave.

Pictured: Franklin resident Ruth Adams was diagnosed with breast cancer in May and is undergoing chemotherapy.

STORY BY JOHN SCHWARB


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‘That’s all I heard’Surgeons fi nd cancer had spread

One day she was a luscious brunette, the next a fiery redhead, depending on her mood.

The glossy wigs, with dramatic names like Desdemona, were a way to cover the evidence of Diana Bartnick-Schmidt’s chemotherapy treatment and also guarantee

a laugh. Bartnick-Schmidt remembered to smile

each day of her treatment, eliciting a giggle every time she whacked a red rubber ball with a wooden paddle with the word “can-cer” written on it after a draining radiation session.

The retired Franklin College education professor also took advantage of her bald head, leaning against her husband’s office door with a Kojak-like quip of, “Who loves ya, baby?”

But Bartnick-Schmidt, 67, didn’t let her goofy sense of humor overshadow the seri-ousness of her disease.

The rural Franklin resident chose an aggressive therapy of removing the lump in her breast, followed by six months of chemotherapy and 30 radiation sessions. Within two weeks of her diagnosis, she was in surgery.

She chronicled her progress with a journal, which she still reads six years after her diagnosis as a way to remind her of the fragility of life.

Bartnick-Schmidt was enjoying her retirement in the sum-mer of 2004 when she went in for her routine mammogram. She received a call from her doctor a few days later, which wasn’t unusual. But the message delivered was.

The doctor told her that they found a spot on her mammo-gram and that it likely was cancerous. Bartnick-Schmidt had to hand the phone to her husband, Nolan.

“That’s all I heard, that it was cancer,” she said. “I went into shock. I couldn’t hear anything.”

After further tests, doctors found a tumor 2 centimeters wide in her left breast and recommended surgery to remove it as soon as possible.

During the operation, surgeons found that the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and removed them, too. It wasn’t until after her whirlwind surgery that Bartnick-Schmidt began thinking about how cancer would impact her life.

“You think the natural, ‘Why me?’ But then you think, ‘Why not me?’” she said. “Look at the statistics.”

Bartnick-Schmidt armed herself with information gleaned from medical Web sites that explained options for treatment and lasting side effects.

She welcomed intense chemotherapy ses-sions because she knew from her research that they were the best way to kill the can-cer. She also endured daily radiation treat-ment after chemotherapy, which left her

nauseous and loopy. During each visit, Bartnick-Schmidt visualized the can-

cer, which she referred to as the terrorist, being blasted away. She’s been cancer free since the end of her treat-ment.

“I couldn’t wait for chemo,” she said. “It was like a weight had been lifted because the terrorist was gone.”

You think the natural, “Why me?” But then you think, “Why not me?” Look at the sta-tistics.

Diana Bartnick-SchmidtRural Franklin

“

Diana Bartnick-SchmidtAge67


DiagnosedJuly 2004 when a routine mammogram revealed a spot on her left breast. Additional tests showed the 2-centimeter lump was cancerous and would need to be removed.

TreatmentSurgery, chemotherapy and radiation

What cancer taught meThat I am not invincible. That I am not a Superwoman. I also learned to be more patient with myself.

How cancer changed meI am more aware of my personal health and my fami-ly’s health. I gently nag my family to eat better and exercise. I’ve learned to be my own advocate and track my own cholesterol and glycerides. Pay more attention to your body and don’t dismiss a lump or bump.

What I would tell someone just diagnosed with cancerThat I would be there for them and help them through the treatment. Don’t tell them about your aunt who just died of cancer. Keep them in your prayers and tell them not to be afraid.

Pictured: Rural Franklin resident Diana Bartnick-Schmidt was diagnosed with cancer in July 2004.



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She didn’t feel the lump her-self and didn’t know that her genetics predisposed her to get breast cancer.

Cyndi Hutslar, 40, found out about the cancer in her

right breast only after a mammo-gram showed a tiny clump of poison-ous cells.

Because of the annual test, Hutslar was diagnosed with cancer while it was at the least-aggressive stage and before the tumor could grow and spread.

“I tell everyone, ‘Get your mammo-gram, and get it early,’” Hutslar said. “The only reason mine was caught was because of that mammogram.”

If Hutslar followed new guidelines released last year by a federal health panel, her cancer wouldn’t have been diagnosed and the moth-er of two isn’t sure she would be around today.

The guidelines recommend women wait until age 50 to get an annual mammogram because getting the test any earlier can cause false posi-tives, over-diagnosis and unnecessary early treatment.

But local doctors have discredited the panel’s findings and still recom-mend all women get mammograms starting at age 40, or even earlier depending on their family history.

The only benefit to delaying mam-mograms is that patients won’t have to pay for the test, Johnson Memorial Hospital breast center director David Wippermann said.

As part of the new health care reform, mammograms for women 40 and over must be covered by insur-ance companies, but that doesn’t mean women have to start getting them at that age.

Wippermann doesn’t know any doc-tors who tell patients to wait for mammograms until they’re 50, when many patients are diagnosed in their 30s and 40s.

“Most practicing physicians think that’s unacceptable,” he said. “We’re saving money, but we’re not saving lives.”

And women who wait could be allowing their cancer to develop and grow, which will be harder to treat and more costly in the end, he said.

The federal health panel also rec-ommended that older women wait two years between mammograms, which Bargersville resident Judy Allen said could have cost her life.

In the span of a few months, what showed up as a grain of sand on her mammogram grew into two thumb-sized tumors. Allen felt the lumps in the shower and made an appointment with her doctor, even though her last

mammogram was only a few months earlier.

If Allen had waited two years between mammograms, her cancer could have spread into her lymph nodes, she said.

“Two years can be the difference between saving and losing someone,” Allen said.

The federal report was released in November 2009 by the U.S. Preven-tative Services Task Force, a panel of health experts who specialize in

Get a mammogram?

Surgery comes with options

Despite federal guidelines, doctors say test saves lives

Digital testing eliminates need to wait on X-rays

STORY BY SARAH MICHALOS About the guidelinesHere’s a look at the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommenda-tion on screening for breast cancer, released in November 2009.

Screening mammographyAges 40 to 49: The task force rec-ommends against routine screening mammography.Ages 50 to 74: Screening every two years is recommended.Ages 75 and older: Insufficient evi-dence to determine additional bene-fits and harms of clinical breast examination.The task force found that screening for breast cancer between the ages of 50 and 60 produced a projected 17 percent reduction in mortality. Starting at age 40 added 3 percent-age points to that number.

Self-examinationThe task force recommends against clinicians teaching women how to perform breast self-examination because evidence shows those exams don’t reduce breast cancer mortality.

Harms of detection and early interventionHarms include psychological trauma, unnecessary imaging tests and biop-sies in women without cancer, and inconvenience due to false-positive screening. Because of false-positive test results, over-diagnosis and unnecessary earlier treatments are problems for all age groups. They are more common for women 40 to 49.

Other agency recommendationsAmerican Cancer Society, American Medical Association and National Comprehensive Cancer Network: Recommends annual mammography beginning at age 40American College of Physicians: Recommends that mammography for women 40 to 49 be based on individualized risk assessment, with physicians informing patients of the possible benefits and harms of screening.American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Women 40 to 49 should have mammograms every one or two years. Women 50 and older should have the tests annually.

Johnson Memorial Hospital in Franklin recently upgraded its mammogram equipment to make it digital.

Radiologists at a Franklin hospital no longer have to use magnifying glasses to see irregular spots on a woman’s mammogram X-ray.

Johnson Memorial Hospital’s Breast Center has two new digital mammogram machines that allow workers to zoom in on a computer screen for a closer look and

also detect and flag problem spots using special software. Most other Indianapolis-area hospitals already have been using

the digital machines for up to five years. The machines capture a digital image that allows radiologists to

more easily pinpoint a calcification or tumor, Johnson Memorial Hospital mammography technologist Stacy Winget said. Radiologists also can adjust the brightness or contrast to make certain areas easier to see.

Previously, radiologists took an X-ray printout to a darkroom and scrutinized it against a lighted screen to find abnormalities.

Digital mammography is more accurate in finding cancer in women younger than 50 years old and women who have dense breast tissue, according to a study conducted by The National Cancer Institute.

The new machines also will allow more patients to be seen the same day because radiologists don’t have to wait for the X-rays to print, Winget said.

STORY BY SARAH MICHALOS PHOTO BY SCOTT ROBERSON

The choices are plentiful, and making the right one is difficult.

That’s why breast sur-geons need to explain in detail the choices for

reconstructive surgery, including the risks and length of recovery, American Health Network surgeon Ovidiu Cristea said.

Women need to understand how getting implants will look and feel, or how their body will slowly heal after surgeons take a part of their abdo-men to create new breasts, he said.

Cristea travels to hospitals around Indianapolis to perform cosmetic and reconstruction surgery, special-izing in building new breasts for women with cancer or who have gotten preventive mastectomies.

He explains the three ways thatbreasts can be rebuilt — using implants, using a person’s own tis-sue or a combination of the two.

Getting implantsAbout 90 percent of local women

Cristea has operated on chose to have implants, which is the least invasive surgery, he said.

Most women getting implants can’t have reconstructive surgery done the same day they get one or both breasts removed.

Instead, the body needs time to accommodate the implants, Cristea said. The woman comes back a few months later for surgery to insert expanders that will stretch her skin gradually and leave a pocket.

Each time the woman comes to the doctor, liquid is added to the expander to help make room for

the implant. Doctors use special technology called magnetic port detection to find the opening of the expander so they can fill it, Cristea said.

A magnet is waved in front of the breasts to find the port, which also has a magnet. Doctors stick the needle through the skin and into the port, Cristea said.

After a few months, the expander is swapped out for a permanent silicone or saline implant in another surgery.

Many women also choose to have their nipples tattooed by a medial tattoo artist. In nearly all surgeries, the nipples are removed because they also could be cancerous, Cristea said.

Using own tissueA smaller percentage of women

choose to use their own tissue to create new breasts, which can be a complicated process, he said.

The most common method is the wordy transverse rectus abdominus myocutaneous tissue flap, which means that doctors take the muscle, skin and fat from a woman’s belly button down to her pubic bone and use it to make new breasts, Cristea said. Women get both a tummy tuck and new breasts during the same surgery.

In any case of using your own tis-sue, a major challenge is connecting the new breasts to the blood supply. Surgeons work carefully to save the muscle behind the breasts when they’re doing a mastectomy, so the new breasts can feed off its blood supply, Cristea said.


(SEE TEST, PAGE E7)

(SEE SURGERY, PAGE E7)

When it works, it’s fantastic, and there are no downsides. But it’s very laborious; you have to move vessels and connect ves-sels to the chest. You need at least two surgeons.

Ovidiu CristeaSurgeon on a breast reconstruction pro-cedure

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A family affairChildren help woman through fi ght

Have you been drinking your water?

Did you exercise today?Do you need me to get you anything from the

store?These were the questions Cindy Mattox heard

from her children during her struggle with breast cancer. Her battle with the disease was a struggle, but her family supported her. They sat with her through chemotherapy, motivated her to keep eating, drinking water and exercising, and organized a hat party for encouragement.

Mattox knew she had cancer as soon as she felt the lump in her breast about three years ago; she didn’t need to wait for test results to be certain, she said.

The doctor couldn’t feel the lump initially, but it showed up on her mammogram results, she said.

“My immediate emotion was, I wanted to get this out of me,” she said.

And she was worried about the effects chemo-therapy and radiation would have on her body. When her mother had cancer she was always on the couch sick.

“I was really dreading that the same thing would happen to me,” she said.

Her children took the news even more seriously than she did, she said.

“My daughter was just a basket case,” she said. “She kept hugging me and saying, ‘I love you, I love you so much.’ I told her, ‘Honey, I’m going to be OK. It’s going to be fine.’”

Her son, a high school student at the time, was quiet when she told him, she said. He gave her a hug and told her everything would be fine. A friend of the family later told her that her son would go to church and cry and pray.

“It affected him,” she said. “He went to college at Ball State, and he didn’t do too well at first because he was so worried and all the other stresses of being a freshman.”

At the start of her treatment, Mattox had four rounds of che-motherapy, and each round was about three hours a day, once a

week, every three or four weeks. Typically, she’d feel fine after her chemo treatments, until about the fourth day afterward. Then, she’d get weak and tired.

Daughter Becky Macy helped Mattox during her treatments. Macy had the time to spare because her husband was in the

Army and serving in Iraq, Mattox said. Her daughter’s company kept her mind

off the cancer. Her daughter kept her mind off her husband by staying busy with her mother. They’d talk during chemo ses-sions, and Macy would take trips to White Castle to get her mother food, because for some reason, White Castle was the only food she didn’t lose an appetite for, she said. “We were able to help each other and be there for each other,” she said.

Mattox wrote in a journal about her struggle with the disease, both the good and the bad, which helped her cope emo-tionally, she said. Just getting the thoughts out of her mind and onto paper was a relief, she said.

After chemo, she had 33 rounds of radia-tion, and the treatment was exhausting.

At the start of her battle, she’d exercise every morning. She’d use a treadmill or exercise to 10 to 15 minute workout videos she found on her cable channels.

But eventually, she was too tired and sick to move much, she said.

Still, she wanted to exercise. Her family encouraged her: just walk to the pole at the corner and walk back. The pole was practically close enough to be in her front yard, but because of her sickness, it may

as well have been a mile away. “Honestly, I didn’t know how I was going to do it,” she said. They helped her, and every day, she’d walk a little farther. “In a week’s time, I was walking around the whole neighbor-

hood,” she said. “My family, they always tried to stay positive, tried to think positive, and they encouraged me.”

My daughter was just a bas-ket case. She kept hugging me and saying, “I love you, I love you so much.” I told her, “Honey, I’m going to be OK. It’s going to be fine.”

Cindy MattoxCenter Grove area

“

Cindy MattoxAge53

ResidenceCenter Grove area

When diagnosedMarch 2007

TreatmentFour rounds of chemotherapy, followed by 33 rounds of radiation.

What has cancer taught youThat life is very short, and you have to live your life the best you can.

How has cancer changed you“It’s made me more health conscious.” She’s cut down on fast food and continues to exercise. She’ll walk around her neigh-borhood or on the treadmill, and she’ll do 10 to 15 minute workouts to exercise vid-eos on her cable channels.

What would you tell someone recently diagnosed with cancerIt’s not the end of the world. It’s not a death sentence.

Pictured: Center Grove area resident Cindy Mattox was diagnosed in 2007 with breast cancer and was treated with chemotherapy and radiation.

STORY BY JASON MICHAEL WHITE


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On the offensiveWoman chooses preventive course

Her diagnosis was good, better than most women who are told they have breast cancer.

Cyndi Hutslar’s cancer was caught so early that it hadn’t even developed into the lowest classification used to diag-nose the disease.

Doctors told Hutslar, 41, that she probably would be OK if she had the 4-millimeter lump in her right breast removed and followed up with radiation treatment.

Probably wasn’t enough for the Greenwood resident.

Less than a month after her diagnosis in spring of 2009, Hutslar was wheeled into an operating room where a surgeon removed both of her breasts.

She didn’t make her decision based solely on the lump in her breast; Hutslar also tested positive for a gene mutation that puts her at a higher risk for devel-oping breast cancer.

She feared that she eventually would develop can-cer if she didn’t have a mastectomy. Hutslar also consulted doctors and nurses at Johnson Memorial

Hospital’s radiology department, where she has worked as a reception-ist for 16 years.

They told her it was her decision and that she had to do what she thought was best.

Hutslar looked to her husband, Jim, and children Courtney and Christian. She knew the decision she had to make.

“I have two young kids, and I wanted to see them grow up,” said Hutslar, 41. “Being aggressive was what I thought I needed to do.”

Life after the mastectomy was an adjustment. At first, Hutslar avoided the mirror and looked away whennurses cleaned her wounds and drained the fluids in the hospital.

She didn’t look at herself until a couple of weeks after the surgery,

when she had to remove her own bandages for the first time.

Her breasts were gone, but Hutslar was surprised to see only a few already-fading pink scars left behind.

“You go in thinking, ‘I’m going to be cut up from one side to another,’” Hutslar said. “But I still felt like a whole being.”

I have two young kids, and I wanted to see them grow up.Beingaggressive was what I thought I needed to do.

Cyndi HutslarGreenwood

“Cyndi HutslarAge41

ResidenceGreenwood

DiagnosedMay 2009. A routine mammo-gram revealed a calcification in Hutslar’s right breast. Further tests showed the lump was cancerous and also that Hutslar carries a gene mutation that puts her at a higher risk for breast cancer.

TreatmentUnderwent a double mastecto-my in June 2009 instead of having the lump removed and getting radiation treatment. Hutslar also had reconstructive surgery after recovering from the mastectomy.

What cancer taught meTo enjoy life a little more and to take it one day at a time. When I was first diagnosed, I looked to the future and worried. Now I live in the present. My faith has grown, and I have learned to trust in God because he has a plan for my life.

How cancer changed meI have a greater understanding for people who are sick, wheth-er they have cancer or another disease. I have greater empathy for those people after what I went through.

What I would tell some-one just diagnosed with cancerBe really positive. There’s a lot that can be done. Take a deep breath, collect your thoughts, gather information and make the best decision you can.

Pictured: Cyndi Hutslar was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. She had a double mastectomy.

STORY BY SARAH MICHALOS PHOTO BY SCOTT ROBERSON

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Petersen told them to expect to become worn down while reassur-ing them the treatments were pain-less. She tried to offer guidance to everyone she could before the day came when she rang a cow bell that signaled her last treatment.

She was done, and her oncologist assured her that she had a 95 per-cent chance that the cancer would never return if she continued to take an anti-hormone drug for the next five years. That drug gave her hot flashes, but doctors since have switched her over to a hormone therapy that she said has no signifi-cant side effects.

The cancer hasn’t had any long-term health implications, but Petersen said she’s trying to make sure she’s taking enough antioxi-dants and exercising more.

Now, Petersen just has to take the hormone pills and go in for annual mammograms. She’s confident she’s beaten the cancer.

She feels fortunate that tests caught the lump early and believes

that early detection can be the dif-ference between life and death. She’s become a vocal advocate for regular mammograms.

She urged friends and family members on her e-mail list to get mammograms while updating them on her condition.

She started wearing a T-shirt that read “Big or small, let’s save them all,” to strike up conversations about getting regular mammograms with women she meets while shop-ping for groceries or clothes.

‘Spread the word’While vacationing in Tennessee,

a woman she met at a gas station commented on her shirt, then told Petersen that her story convinced her to schedule a mammogram, which she had been neglecting. Petersen said she never felt more like she’d made a difference in someone’s life.

“I believe that God gave me breast cancer for a reason,” she said. “I believe it’s my mission to spread the word about how impor-tant early detection is.”

Her experience inspired her to write a book, “How to Survive Breast Cancer With a Smile!”

“She took a difficult experience and transformed it into something that could help people going through the same thing,” Erik Petersen said. “That’s really positive.”

Terri Petersen hopes the book will persuade at least one woman to get tested.

She felt compelled to write about her battle because she knew little about breast cancer before she was diagnosed and felt it would be help-ful if women had a guide of what to expect.

Her aspiration is that the book will inform, inspire and give hope to women who went through what she did.

Petersen has been donating all of the proceeds from the self-published book to breast cancer research and the St. Thomas Clinic in Whiteland. She hopes to raise enough money so the clinic will be able to offer four breast screening clinics a year instead of one.

“If I can help one woman get an early diagnosis, then my breast cancer journey was worth it,” she said. “You have got to get mammo-grams. And if you have any ques-tions at all, you’ve got to get an ultrasound.”

• Hope(CONTINUED FROM PAGE E1)

preventive and primary care. They recommend against annual

mammograms for women under 50 because of the low chance of diag-nosis for women in that age group. The panel also suggests that the psychological harm that comes from tests, such as anxiety and distress

from false positives, outweighs the chances of catching cancer early.

Waiting for your mammogram results or hearing that they’re abnormal is stressful, but it’s noth-ing compared to having cancer grow inside you without knowing or treat-ing it, Hutslar said.

She chose the most aggressive approach when she was diagnosed with cancer in May 2009. Hutslar had both breasts removed and reconstructed instead of removing

the lump in her right breast. Women who wait to get mammo-

grams could end up with fewer treatment options than women diag-nosed early, like Hutslar, American Health Network surgeon Ovidiu Cristea said.

A mastectomy following chemo-therapy or radiation often is the best choice for women with advanced cancer, but those who catch it early could choose to have the lump removed and leave the

breast intact. Many of the women who end up

on Cristea’s operating table are younger than 50 and wouldn’t even know they had breast cancer with-out the results from their annual mammogram, he said.

If they had waited to get a mam-mogram, they would have given their tumors a chance to grow even larger.

“I don’t see the rationale (in the guidelines),” Cristea said.

A second option allows surgeons to keep the abdominal muscles in place but involves carefully moving both an artery and a vein from the abdominal area to the new breast.

The results are better with the second option, called the deep infe-rior epigastric perforator tissue

flap, but the surgery is more com-plex and there’s more that could go wrong, Cristea said.

Patients who get this surgery have a lower risk of getting a hernia because their abdominal muscles stay intact, and their recovery also is quicker than with the first choice.

But the surgery can take eight to 10 hours, and there’s a chance the entire tissue flap could be rejected by the body and have to be removed, Cristea said.

“When it works, it’s fantastic, and there are no downsides,” he said. “But it’s very laborious; you have to move vessels and connect vessels to the chest. You need at least two surgeons.”

Rare types of surgery Women also have two other

options for using their tissue, although these type of surgeries are rare and typically done only if the first option fails.

Surgeons can take fat and tis-sue from a woman’s buttocks and create new breasts, which is typi-cally done if the surgery to move the abdominal tissue fails, Cristea said.

He’s also heard of another sur-gery where the muscle from a wom-an’s back is brought around to the front, but usually there isn’t enough to create full breasts. Women typi-cally will get implants put in behind the new muscle, Cristea said.

Breast cancer support groupsBREAST CANCER SUPPORT GROUP, 6 to 7 p.m. second Thursday of each month, the Atrium at St. Francis Hospital Indianapolis, 8111 S. Emerson Ave., enter through Women and Children’s Services, free, registration recommended, Mindi Matthews, 782-7794, 782-4422, stfrancishospitals.org/cancer

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT GROUP, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. sec-ond Thursday of the month, St. Francis Carson Square Offices, 3145 E. Thompson Road, Indianapolis, 782-6704

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT GROUP, 7 to 8 p.m. first Monday each month, St. Francis Hospital-Mooresville, OB Classroom, 1201 Hadley Road, registration required, 782-4422, stfrancishospitals.org/cancer

BREAST CANCER SUPPORT GROUP, 6 to 10 p.m. Oct. 21, Nov. 4, Dec. 2, Jan. 13, Jan. 27, Feb. 10, March 10, March 24, April 7, May 19, Community Breast Care at the Center for Women’s Health, 533 E. County Line Road, Greenwood, pitch-in, special event or topic and informal group sessions

MAMMOGRAPHYASSISTANCE PROGRAM, free mammograms, assistance with clinical breast exams, screening and diagnostic mam-mograms, ultrasounds, biop-sies to those who qualify based on residency, household size, household income, insurance coverage, Little Red Door Cancer Agency, 1801 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis, 925-5595

• Surgery(CONTINUED FROM PAGE E4)

• Test(CONTINUED FROM PAGE E4)

If I can help one woman get an early diag-nosis, then my breast cancer journey was worth it. You have got to get mammograms.And if you have any questions at all, you’ve got to get an ultrasound.

Terri PetersenFranklin

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& A S S O C I A T E S , I N C .RAYMOND JAMES"

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1300 US 31 South • Greenwood2 miles south of the Greenwood Park Mall

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