"Survival"
by Laura Holden
I am a breast cancer survivor. This is a brief account of my story.
On September 7, 2005, an avalanche of events forever altered the landscape of my life. In the midst of the terror, misery, and pain, I would find depths of love that humbled me. I would find faith renewed and strengthened. I would feel the hand of God and know that he and his angels walk amongst us every day. I found a blessing.
On the morning of the 7, I was brushing my teeth. The pull of the skin of my left breast looked odd, different. After further examination, I discovered there was a knot that I had never noticed. I showed my husband, Neil, and we agreed that I needed to see my doctor.
The previous spring I had started a new job with a law firm. My boss had promised medical and retirement benefits. Two weeks before I noticed the knot, the insurance company had approved the policy, and I had full medical coverage. The blessings and miracles had begun unnoticed by me.
I made an appointment with my internist. I have never been scared to go to the doctor but I was terrified this time. Neil and I showed up at the doctor’s office, and waited our turn. The doctor examined the knot, and she told me she thought it was nothing more that fibroid cystic disease, which is common in women. But just to be on the safe side, she wanted to send me for a mammogram. She assured me that she thought everything would be fine since I did not have a family history of breast cancer or any of the other warning markers to warrant concern.
A few days later, my husband and I waited at the Women’s Center at Harris Regional Hospital. The radiographer called me back and gave me a little cotton shawl to put on. I was taken into a room where the big mammography machine, or breast press, stood and I intently listened to what was to transpire. As she mashed my breast with the cold vise-like clamps, I said a prayer. She took a couple of different x-rays then sent me to the waiting area. I sat with other women in the cold sterile waiting area in the cotton shawl that left little for the imagination. No one talked or made eye contact. It was as if by talking some unimaginable curse would befall everyone there. Anxiety amplified the silence, and I wondered if any of us were breathing. Thirty minutes later, the radiographer returned and informed me that she needed to take some magnified images. I learned that additional tests equates to bad news. After reviewing the additional images, I was then whisked off to the ultrasound department. I will never forget the antiseptic smell or feel of the cold gel that was smeared on my breast. After the ultrasound was completed, the radiologist came in the room and asked me, “Are you a trustworthy person?” I had no idea what this had to do with what had transpired, but I responded “Yes.” He then informed that I needed to make an appointment with a surgeon and soon. He showed me the x-ray and pointed to an area that had him concerned. It all looked like white spider-webs inside the outline of a breast, my breast. As I left the Women’s Center, I realized I had been in there for two hours. I knew Neil had to be worried to death.
A week later, I met with Dr. Simms. He explained that a biopsy needed to be performed. We reviewed the area of concern in the x-rays, and he stated that there was a calcium buildup. Calcium sometimes surrounds a tumor. He believed all to be benign though. On October 4, 2005, a biopsy was performed. The cold of the icy slab seeped into my body as a long needle was inserted into my breast. I tried to keep my body from shaking. I was not sure whether I was trembling from fear or the cold temperature in the room.
Two days later, Dr. Simms explained the results of the test. I heard him say, “You have cancer.” I stopped listening. Images raced through my mind: my children, Christopher and Conner, without a mother, my husband without a wife, and my parents without a daughter. To me, cancer was a death sentence. I fell apart mentally. Thankfully, Dr. Simms wrote all the information down to review later. He believed my cancer to be Ductal Carcinoma in Situ, which meant that it had not spread outside the milk duct. Dr. Simms recommended going to Asheville to meet with a cancer surgeon.
Two days after my thirty-fourth birthday, I made my way to Mission hospital with Neil and my mother, Gail. I remember checking in and feeling how impersonal this whole process was. No one cared that I had came in with all my body parts and would be leaving without one of them. I was a nervous wreck. Our first stop that morning was the radiology department, where they injected the radioactive dye into my breast. I laid there under a large looming machine and started to cry. The radiologist noticed, and she went to retrieve my husband. He stood beside me and held my hand while they were completing the scan.
We found that laughter will come to you during moments of anxiety when you least expect it. As Neil, my mother, and I sat in the surgical waiting room, a nurse appeared, and called my husband back. My mother and I just sat there like nothing out of the ordinary was transpiring. A few minutes later, Neil and the nurse returned and both were laughing. She had taken him back to the prep room, gave him the gown, instructed him to undress, and told him she would bring his family back to be with him in a few minutes. Heart broke and terrified, he tried to understand why they would want him in the operation room while they butchered his wife. In the confusion of a busy hospital, coupled with the early morning hour, the nurse thought they would be operating on him. He quickly backed out of the room and told her she had the wrong person. I know Neil would have taken my place and told me so many, many times. But this was the path that I must travel.
I returned home with a scared and sunken crater where my breast had been. A drain was stitched to the disfigured flap to removed fluid my body pumped into the breast-less void. The drain was to remain in for ten days. I went back to see my surgeon ten days later for the removal of the drain and to get the results from the surgery. I sat in one of his exam rooms and listened to him tell me that it was worse than we originally thought. He had removed the tumor and three lymph nodes and the cancer had spread to one of the lymph nodes. Another surgery would be needed to remove the other lymph nodes. An oncologist would tell me what further steps would need to be taken to save my life.
We met with my oncologist, Dr. Michael Messino, a week before the surgery to remove my lymph nodes. On approximately seven feet of exam table paper, the short, mustached Italian wrote out all of our options. He included diagrams and names of toxins or chemotherapy that I had never even heard of. In the midst of all this information, there was one question that I had to ask: “Will I be able to have another child once everything is finished?” My husband and I had only been married five months, and I dreamed of sharing a child with him. The answer he gave me was one I did not want to hear. He told me if I wanted to have a child that I would need to harvest my eggs. We put it in God’s hands and proceeded with the chemotherapy.
On January 6, 2006, I sat in a blue recliner and prepared for my first treatment. I signed a stack of documents that gave them permission to infuse toxic chemicals into my bloodstream to kill any remaining cancer cells. I was told that the chemotherapy had a cumulative effect and would become harder each time for my body to recover.
The chemo nurse had informed me that by my second treatment, I would lose my hair. The Saturday after my second treatment my hair started falling out in handfuls. I panicked. Neil was so calm. He told me that I could shave his head and then he would shave mine. This was my way of taking control. I would take my hair, not the cancer. My mother cried the first time she saw me without hair.
I celebrated finishing my dose dense chemotherapy regimen by going to a Rascal Flatts concert in Greenville, SC with Neil and my niece, Crystal. Our tickets were on the floor about 30 rows from the stage. We were beside the sound boards. In the middle of their set, cables were lowered from the ceiling, attached to a part of the stage, and then Rascal Flatts was flying over the crowd. The flying stage was docked at the sound board and all the fans surrounded the makeshift stage. Neil and I were pushed to the front by a couple that was sitting behind us. The band continued playing and then they started singing the song “Skin”. “Skin” is about a girl with cancer who has lost all her hair. Gary LeVox, the lead singer, looked over the side of the stage and saw me in my scarf. He made his way down the steps of the stage and took my hand and led me up on the stage. As he sang the song to me, I removed my scarf, allowing my bald head, my badge of courage to shine, and 16,000 fans erupted into applause. Weak in the knees, I asked Gary to get my husband. Taking two steps at a time, my husband, my rock, my constant companion through all the pain and terror, the tears and nausea, wrapped his arms around me and we danced as if no one else was in the room. Miracles happen, and God exists. After the concert, we were stopped numerous times and asked if that had all been staged. Through the tears of joy and humility, we said it was, but not by anyone here on Earth.
I would complete a lighter regimen of chemotherapy and hormone treatment to ensure the cancer did not return. Life began to return to normal. My hair came back, but it was snow white. Thank God for Clairol. You never stop worrying though and one morning, after noticing several days of unusual pain in my one good boob, I expressed my concern to my husband. We cried, prayed, and called the doctors who were now loved like the dearest of family members. “Come in; we just need to check” they said.
The Saturday before I was to go in for a new round of tests, I mentioned to Neil that I had been nauseous for several days. Furrowing his brow, a half smile across his face he asked “Are you pregnant?” Joy, unbelievable joy, could it be possible? Three pregnancy tests later, I was confident that we were going to have a baby.
On September 27, 2008, I gave birth to my miracle baby, William Thomas Holden. He is the egg that I did not freeze, the faith I placed in God.
The vanity plates on my minivan say, “BLSN”. God has bestowed many blessings upon me and my family. During my darkest hour, he was with me and I felt his loving hands on me. I am a Survivor.
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Beauty and the Breast
by Earleen Bennett
By Earleen Bennett
September 2011
“Wow, I can’t believe it looks so real”. These are the words I hear at least 3 times a week as I finish what I call my favorite work. When you work doing something you love, it isn’t really work, at least not in the traditional sense.
I am a permanent makeup artist by trade. By accident I have become someone who helps people, someone who completes a picture, just as a painter would finish a portrait, only I am finishing the work of plastic surgeons. I tattoo areolas and nipples on a woman’s body after a long and difficult journey through breast cancer.
I work with breast reconstruction patients after they undergo mastectomy and reconstruction surgery. Most people, unless they have gone through breast reconstruction, or have been close to someone who has, do not understand the full process.
During reconstruction the entire area of breast tissue, skin, and areola/nipple are removed. What is left is a flat, empty chest where once there was living tissue that meant more than just how a woman looked in a tight sweater. Women’s breasts are a part of their identity. They watch them grow as young girls with fascination. They feed their children after they are born as nourishment and every day of their lives a woman’s breasts are front and center in the mirror as a reminder that they are “A WOMAN”. By no means is this the only thing that defines a woman; but tell that to the woman who just had a surgeon remove them from her body, at the same time she is going the through the fear of what cancer is doing to her, her family, and her friends and caregivers. There are so many terrifying aspects of cancer and surgeries are not only devastating physically, but mentally also.
Purely by accident I became a part of this special group of women. I met Dr Donald Conway, who works in Asheville NC at the Plastic Surgery Center. I met him purely for personal reasons. I had a procedure performed by him in his office and through this I became friends with his staff and coworkers. I began to do permanent makeup procedures for several of the women who worked there. Due to some construction on their building, space was limited and Dr Conway asked me if I would be willing to do some tattooing on his breast reconstruction patients to help out. This is where the love affair with restorative tattooing began. I was amazed at how this simple procedure changed women’s lives. And also mine.
Every week, and sometimes every day, I work with cancer survivors in my clinic at Beauty Through Cancer. They come in happy to be at the finishing line, confused about a procedure they do not understand, and sometimes very frightened of this “Tattoo” process and what is involved. They have heard stories of how much tattoos can hurt, or have seen pictures and read stories on the internet about the procedure, but until you go through it yourself, you do not understand. I attempt to ease their anxiety and we make the procedure as comfortable as possible. It can be a simple process or a more complex one all depending on each individual’s needs, but rarely is a woman in the clinic more than an hour, and usually much less.
The exciting part is seeing their faces as they look in the mirror at the finished results when the procedure is finished. This is sometimes followed by tears of joy and relief that their journey is finally complete, they feel “whole” again. Many hugs are shared, many tears are shed, and the stories never stop. During the tattoo process we talk, I hear stories of their journey, how they found their cancer. Was it a mammogram? Did they feel it on their own? Did their doctor find it during a routine exam? Every woman and every story is different.
I have worked on women as their husbands held their hands, in tears themselves at the relief of this final stage. I have seen women surrounded by their mothers and daughters, each with their own fears, not only of losing a loved one, but of the possibility of “could this be me”?
I have tattooed women that have no history themselves, but their families have been so affected by breast cancer and they themselves have had genetic testing done which puts them at such high risk that they choose to have their breasts removed as a precaution.
The tales are endless, but they are real stories, by real women. They are stories that could be about your mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, friends and coworkers.
I hear stories not only from local women right here in Western North Carolina but also around the country. In the last 2 years I have performed areola restorative tattooing on women from 15 states and Canada. Although 90 percent of the procedures I perform are right here at home, one of my most fulfilling experiences is when I travel to work with women in other states also. This year I will be returning to Tupelo Mississippi at the end of October to work with the staff at Tupelo Plastic Surgery Center. Dr Buckley brings me in each year to work with his reconstruction patients because there is no one in his area providing this service. In 2010 I tattooed 12 women in one day and this year in 2011 I will be doing a marathon two day session providing 21 women with their “finishing touch”. What a great way to end Breast Cancer Awareness month in October.
Most of the stories I hear have happy endings, but not all. There are days when tears are shed by me, alone in my office because I hear the news that someone has not survived her journey, or someone we have helped through a support group or education program at Beauty Through Cancer, the non-profit I founded in 2009 is having a hard time or hears bad news about their treatments. Not every moment is happy, but even the sad moments are special because the women and families I work with are special, they change my life every day. They help me see hope, where once there was no hope.
When I was 17 years old my mothered died from Lymphoma. I was her main home caregiver as a teenager. Every day I saw the love for her family in her eyes, the fear of not being there for us and the fear of what the disease would do to her. She longed to do things her mind was willing, but her body was not able to do. I filled that void. And I learned…I learned to grow up fast and be self sufficient, sometimes to a fault. Our story did not have a happy ending. It was hard, it was long, and it changed me. It made me frightened of cancer. It made me frightened of being alone, of being abandoned by those I loved. I thought cancer just killed people. I feared for myself because my mother was affected. I did not know. But in the years that followed and the life lessons I have experienced I have learned… I know things now for certain…
I know people can change, I know people survive; people thrive. That cancer does not always have to be a death sentence. They go on to watch their children grow up and get married. To watch their grandchildren grow, to fulfill their dreams and to experience love. The unconditional love that is given freely here on this earth every day…and to not to fear what may come next.
I see women and men changed by cancer, through hard struggles and through the support and love that surrounds them by their family, friends, medical teams, community organizations and even people they have never met through prayers and support of teams attempting to end this disease forever.
I have been changed by cancer. It no longer scares me. I admit there are days I am angry, I am saddened, I am frustrated by it all. Long days and hard work may make me weary and stressed at times. But not scared, No, the fear is gone. Now I see the picture clearly, through open eyes and not through eyes blinded by sadness and fear. I see survival; I see it in the faces of the women I help, the women who lie on my table feeling so vulnerable but yet so loved at the same time. I share my love with them, the love I shared with my mother because I know she sees me, she is with me every day guiding me and giving me the strength to keep going. Her love comes through me and touches everyone I touch. I am completing the full circle that has shown me my purpose in life. This is my way of not only honoring my mother’s memory but honoring every person affected by cancer.
Because you never know, one day it may be me, and If it is, I am not alone, and I am not scared. For I am loved, have been loved and share love. It’s what gets us through, faith and love. Hold a hand, share a smile. Give a hug. Faith and love…Have it, truly feel it, and share it. It will help. It has the power to change lives, maybe even yours, as it did mine.
