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FEATURE |
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Breast Cancer awareness month...
by Joni McKinney, feature editor
Breast cancer is a difficult battle to fight, but Gayla Dew will not be defeated; she has fought the battle twice and won.
At
the age of 34, she was diagnosed for the first time, But she had been
expecting the diagnosis. She is the 12th of 15 women in her family to have
been diagnosed with breast cancer and, one of six to have survived the
battle so far. She had Invasive Lobular Carcinoma (ICL), which is particularly dangerous because it is open to the rest of the woman’s body and the cancer cells can easily travel to the other parts of her body. ICL occurs when the lobules (the broccoli-shaped glands that produce milk) in a woman’s breast become infected with cancer cells.
Since
so many women in her family have been affected by breast cancer, her family
was tested to see if they carried a common breast cancer gene. But so far,
the doctors have yet to find one. This makes Dew’s family particularly
unique because they do not carry the common gene, yet so many of them have
had breast cancer. When Dew was diagnosed with breast cancer, her family and friends all chipped in to help her with her daily duties, getting her to and from her chemotherapy treatments and doctor visits. Her family developed an attitude to buckle down and do what ever could be done for her in order to help her beat the cancer. |
Chemotherapy can be a very difficult experience for a cancer patient. It can
make the patient tired and weak. It attacks cancer cells and white cells
like a poison. White cells are the cells that attack a virus when it comes
into your body, so if your white count is down you are more susceptible to
illness and weakness. “You
can’t be around people that are sick,” Dew said. “You have to watch every
little thing that you do because a little infection when you are taking
chemo can turn into something really bad.” Dew
stayed confined to her home for an entire month while she was on chemo
because her white count was so low. Her count was 1.2, and the average
person has a white count of 7. At 36, she was diagnosed with breast cancer a second time. This time she had Lobular Carcinoma again, but she also had Intraductal Carcinoma. Intraductal Carcinoma is abnormal breast cells that involve only the lining of a milk duct. These cells have not spread outside the duct into normal surrounding breast tissue. She had gone to her doctor for a regular physical and the mammogram showed a few minor complications. But since the radiologist did not see reason for concern the year before, there did not seem to be much reason for concern then. Dew, however, was not so easily convinced. She called her doctor, and her doctor had the radiologist send her Dew’s mammograms. She then decided it would be best to perform a biopsy, which turned out to be malignant. The doctor that performed the mastectomy was not planning on taking out the lymph nodes, because if the cancer is intraductal it is contained with in the ducts. But something told him he should go ahead and take out a few lymph nodes, so he did. He sent some of the breast tissue to pathology, which showed that a very aggressive lobular carcinoma was present that had not been, detected anywhere else.
“It
was a God thing,” Dew said They originally had thought that chemo would not be necessary, but due to the discovery of the lobular Carcinoma, chemo became a must. |
The
second round of breast cancer was a complete shock to Dew and her family
because they thought that she was safe. She questioned why this had to
happen to her again and it took her longer to find her defeating attitude
towards the cancer. In
her second round of breast cancer treatment she was given a different kind
of Chemo that did not make her lose her hair. But it did present
complications with breathing. Dew became involved with the Susan G. Komen Foundation after her first round of breast cancer when she began participating in the annual Race for the Cure. Every year since Dew joined the race her team,
The
Pink Flamingoes (named after a Caribbean party that brought about a lot of
pink flamingoes), has had anywhere from 10-42 people. The Komen foundation was founded in 1982 by Susan G. Komen. It has 112 affiliates nation wide, as well as in Germany, Italy and Puerto Rico. The Races for the Cure have raised $600 million since 1982. Eighty percent of funds raised go to missions such as paying for treatments for breast cancer patients. For more information on breast cancer visit www.komen.org or www.breastcancer.org
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Billy Close/Plainsman Press