After the shock of being diagnosed with breast cancer and hearing the options for treating or curing the disease, the journey was just beginning for four local women who faced spiritual, emotional and physical trials in undergoing treatment for a disease that strikes fear in the heart of most every female on Earth.
In this edition of The Ardmoreite’s “Living Pink” series, in recognition of October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Kim Turner, Barbara Thompson, Carolyn Owen and Becky Summers take readers on their own personal journeys.
Becky Summers, cont.
By Marsha Miller
marsha.miller@ardmoreite.com
“I was asked to be part of a clinical (treatment) trial for two reasons. One, was my age. I was younger than most patients. And two, the rarity of my tumor. I felt God placed me in that trial,” Becky Summers said, talking about the breast cancer treatment she was to undergo.
As she prepared to face the unknown chemo, radiation and drug therapy, she received one of the special “gifts” she said God sent her throughout her breast cancer journey. “My friend, Brenda Rickard (also a cancer patient) told me, ‘You can do this. What’s the worse that can happen? You die and get to go to heaven?’”
Uplifted by Rickard’s words and courage, Becky had a stalwart approach to her first chemo treatment. But two days later she experienced what she described as, “The darkest day of my journey. I really questioned if I could do it. I couldn’t lift my head from my pillow, even my dreams were dark and scary.”
It was as she struggled to overcome her distress that day that yet another gift arrived.
“I got a call from a friend who had recently been through treatment. She said, ‘Becky turn on the television and watch the shows go by. Each time a show ends know that time is passing and tomorrow when you wake up this day will be over.’ I knew God predetermined that call, because I was scared. Scared I was falling into darkness and my friend brought me to the light,” she said.
Becky’s father, Roy Papajohn, who remained her constant companion and caregiver, also continued to be an ongoing and steady source of strength. She calls his care a “beautiful presence.”
Becky’s chemo treatment began in July and after that one “dark” day treatment proceeded smoothly — until two months later. On Labor Day Sunday one of the things she dreaded most became reality. Her pride — her long, thick, curly, dark hair started coming out in “hunks.”
“I cried — hard. And then God sent me a message. It was just one word — metamorphosis, not a word that was part of my vocabulary,” she said. “I went on to church and the pastor put that same word — metamorphosis, up on the screen. He gave the analogy of a butterfly and I knew God was making me a promise that this (cancer) was all about transformation.”
Becky received many other “gifts” during her treatment. She said, “It was a really beautiful time, a spiritual time that gave me peace and comfort through the very act of being still and receiving care. That was really different for me, letting someone care for me, and I found joy and pleasure in that,” she said.
Her chemo over, she began radiation in early January 2008. It was at a radiation appointment she and her father learned he was in the advanced stages of liver, lung and bone cancer. The end for her father, Becky said, was inevitable.
“For me, hearing my daddy’s diagnosis was harder than discovering my own cancer,” Becky said. “You don’t want to let go. But my daddy was so beautiful spiritually and without any doubt. I knew, and he knew, where he was going.”
Becky struggled to overcome the fatigue she was experiencing from treatment in order to care for her father as he had cared for her. And her siblings arrived at her Ardmore home to share in final precious family moments.
“We only had seven days, but we lived a lifetime with him in those seven days. There was a happiness and joy in him and we were all at peace. It was an incredible gift,” she said.
Following her father’s death, Becky continued her radiation. She had 37 treatments in all. She continues with drug therapy. Today she is cancer free.
Carolyn Owen, cont.
By Jennifer Lindsey
jennifer.lindsey@ardmoreite.com
Carolyn Owen’s main concerns before her mastectomy were her two pugs and cat.
“I’d hate to put them in a kennel,” she said, noting that one dog was very old and the other blind.
Luckily, her oldest son, Mike Owen, who lives in Dallas, came to Ardmore to watch her pets and her daughter Lisa’s dogs.
Carolyn’s husband, Billy and her daughters, Lisa Wilkinson and Michelle Billingsley went with her to Fort Worth, Texas, for the surgery.
Her youngest son, David Owen, came in from Florida after the surgery.
During the surgery, her right breast was removed, including 11 lymph nodes. Two lymph nodes were found to be positive with cancer.
She spent two nights in the hospital.
“I guess they had me on something. There was not a whole lot of pain,” she said.
No bed was available for her first night, so she spent it in recovery.
“I remember very little about the recovery room. Guess I slept the whole time,” Carolyn said.
The next day, she received her own room, and her sister and nieces came to visit.
Then she got to go home to Ardmore. Her family reclined the car seat as far as it would go for Carolyn to lie down on during the trip.
“I was excited to be going home and getting out of the hospital,” she said.
At first, there were weekly visits to the doctor. Two weeks after the surgery, her tubes came out.
All in all, Carolyn felt she recovered quickly.
“I don’t recall a lot of pain or discomfort, but I have a high pain tolerance. I just couldn’t sleep on that side,” Carolyn said.
The doctor told her to do whatever she felt up to doing.
“I rested more than normal,” Carolyn said.
Her doctor also gave her resistance exercises to do.
“I had to be careful with my right arm and not do anything that hurt,” she said.
Her family was both helpful and worried.
“They were just very helpful and constantly saying I was doing too much — all the things you normally hear,” she said.
A few weeks after her surgery, Carolyn returned to her water aerobics class.
She also returned to her job at Arbuckle Life Solutions.
“I may have milked that a little longer,” Carolyn joked.
Co-workers also expressed their concern when Carolyn first returned.
“They didn’t let me lift anything or pull out drawers. They were real cute,” she said.
It was after she recovered from her surgery that she met with an oncologist. She selected Dr. James Bordelon in Fort Worth.
“I trusted my surgeon for the name of a good oncologist. It was much easier,” Carolyn said.
Before her first oncology appointment, Carolyn had to have several X-rays and tests done.
She also made a decision about chemotherapy.
“I’d rather have quality of life for whatever time I have. I don’t think many have quality of life when they’re on chemo,” she said, adding she was very adamant about the decision to not have chemo. “I had told my family that I did not want chemo. I had seen so many side effects.”
But Carolyn’s family was not as quick to dismiss the possibility of chemotherapy.
“They kept saying let’s wait and see what the oncologist recommends. I think they wanted me to be open to chemo, but I wasn’t,” Carolyn said.
Her husband and daughters accompanied her to the oncologist’s office. The matter of chemo became a moot point after that appointment.
“He more or less left it up to me,” Carolyn said.
She had a choice between chemo and medication.
“It was my decision and they were comfortable with that since the doctor didn’t insist that I needed chemo above all else,” she said.
The prescription, Arimidex, is a new pill that is supposed to have fewer side effects than Tamoxifen. It can only be taken by women who have been through menopause. Carolyn was selected to receive Arimidex through a special trial that compared the two drugs.
Just like her surgery, Carolyn’s side effects were barely noticeable.
“Sometimes I would get anxious, which isn’t like me, but that is one of the side effects,” she said.
She also has occasional trouble sleeping.
“The fact that I had always been healthy certainly helped,” Carolyn said.
She will continue her drug therapy every day for five years. Then, Carolyn will undergo tests to see if additional medication is needed.
In addition to the prescription, she takes vitamins.
“I’ve always been a big vitamin taker,” she said.
Carolyn lives with no regrets about the treatment plans she chose.
“I’m comfortable with the decision I made,” Carolyn said.
Kim Turner, cont.
By Leah J. Simmons
leah.simmons@ardmoreite.com
On March 4, the day before Kim Turner’s 49th birthday, she went in for marking for the radiation. For her radiation treatment, the first step was to get her very first tattoos.
“They do markings where they line up where they want to radiate,” she said. “They put little tattoo dots to line up the machine. It took a long time to do that. My mom and my husband went with me to my first big appointment where they took blood and everything.”
Three weeks into her treatment, Kim was told the list of side effects that might occur. One week before that, they had already begun.
“Two weeks in, I had the side effects and metallic taste and I was sick,” she said.
Kim underwent seven weeks of radiation, Monday through Friday in Ardmore. Some days it was a 10-minute process. Other days it took 45 minutes, she said.
“Two weeks into the treatment I got sick. I wanted to go back to work. I wanted everything to be as normal as possible. But the sickness was just gut-wrenching,” Kim said.
“I threw up every two weeks for the seven weeks of radiation. It was always on a Wednesday. It’s like my body had endured all it could up to that point and just had to expel everything.
“My worst enemy was fatigue,” Kim said.
Kim said the treatment made her exhausted because of her depleted immune system. She also suffered “great pain from the surgery and the radiation.”
“Close to the end, I was almost through — I had eight treatments left — and I got shingles on my face,” Kim said. “It was excruciating. It was there about two weeks. And I got the sores in my mouth.”
Despite the misery the cancer and its treatment brought to her, Kim found a way to keep a positive attitude and maintain hope throughout the ordeal.
“I had this little ‘safe’ place. We have a deck with a waterfall and I’d sit out there,” she said. “I couldn’t garden, but it made me feel better being close to it.”
Kim said her husband’s support throughout her ordeal was “remarkable. There are no words to describe it.”
Two surgeries and 34 radiation treatments later, Kim is cancer free. But the journey has been an emotional ride not only for her, but her family and friends, as well.
“You never think of yourself as being ‘one’ of the one in eight women who will be diagnosed with breast cancer,” she said. “But when ‘one’ becomes a reality, you learn everything and anything possible to help you cope.”
Kim said in a Citizen’s Viewpoint column she wrote for The Ardmoreite’s opinion page that she will never forget the first and last days of her radiation treatments.
“By treatment No. 34, all modesty had been lost ... ,” she wrote. “But as I walked out of the Cancer Center, I wanted to run! I wanted to scream! I thanked God for all the wonderful doctors and staff that cared for me. I thanked God for my family and my friends who supported me through thick and thin. I thanked God for my life and my health.”
Barbara Thompson, cont.
By Leah J. Simmons
leah.simmons@ardmoreite.com
For Barbara Thompson, her cancer treatment only involved taking the drug Tamoxifen after her mastectomy. Twenty-two years ago, a lumpectomy wasn’t an option even though she only had a 2-centimeter mass. Her type of cancer did not require her to undergo either chemotherapy or radiation.
“It was very scary because we just didn’t know that much about it,” Barbara said. “I felt like any drugs could have side effects and today I believe — I’m not a detail person — the less I knew about it the better I liked it. I’ve always feared medical science more than I’ve feared death.”
Because the drug was a hormone blocker, it caused Barbara to have side effects similar to pregnancy.
“It made me really sick at my stomach for about three months like pregnancy. After that, I had very little (sickness),” she said. “I took the Tamoxifen once a day for seven years.”
Just taking a pill was enough for Barbara, who didn’t want a big fuss made over her cancer, although she did admit that if she was rediagnosed today, she would opt for more aggressive treatment like radiation or chemotherapy. But, at the time, she was perfectly happy with her doctor’s recommendation.
“If it was today, I would have chemo, no doubt about it. I didn’t want it at that time and Dr. Wilfred Gauthier didn’t recommend it,” Barbara said. “There was never an option for me. I didn’t want anything else. It was just decided and I got started immediately. I make my mind up very quickly.
Barbara admits that the most challenging problems she dealt with during the treatment process were emotional rather than physical. She had lows and highs, but the support of her family and friends made the experience more bearable.
In fact, having cancer gave her an opportunity to focus on others rather than herself.
“What gave me so much comfort beyond words were the phone calls,” she said. “It gave me a purpose. The phone started to ring and I was asked to give my testimony and I got the chance to sing at several different churches and other places.”
One thing Barbara discovered was that there are so many other women out there going through the same experiences she has had in dealing with cancer. Many of them, she said, were worse off than she was.
“These women, I’d go thinking I’d help them, but I’d get so much back from them,” Barbara said. “I’d sing songs like ‘In the valley He rests my soul’ and ‘God on the Mountain.’
“I’m a very emotional woman and that was a very emotional first year and I just went through a lot,” she said. “I went out speaking and singing for about four years, then the phone stopped ringing and I knew that was part of God’s plan for me.”
But sometimes, Barbara took the reins in her own hands and made her own decisions, like deciding to stop taking the Tamoxifen after seven years. She discussed it with the doctor, who neither agreed nor disagreed, but allowed her to make the decision she believed was best for her life.
“I just felt like it was time to quit. I talked to the doctor that day. He wouldn’t tell me which way to go,” Barbara said. “At that time, I just felt like I’d had enough. I was two years past the five-year survival deadline and I believed I was fine.”
Even though the experience has been emotional and painful and difficult, Barbara said it has been an unforgettable one, and not necessarily a negative one.
“I was worried a lot in the beginning. There was no guarantee that the cancer wouldn’t come back and I couldn’t let that thought out of my mind,” she said. “As time went on, it started leaving my mind and I made my peace with it. Then I became very grateful for the whole journey.”
