Christmas disease

WHAT happens when it seems that fate has played a cruel joke and a woman's very life can be in question? What do you do when an intimate part of your body becomes host to an assassin, a foreign element assigned to debilitate, maim or even kill?

You survive and even thrive. That's the testimony of the four people featured in this article: Desiree Rogers, president of Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas in Chicago; BET Foundation Executive Director Darlene Nipper; the Rev. Dr. Claudette Anderson Copeland, pastor of New Creation Christian Fellowship Church in San Antonio; and Marilyn (Francine) Braxton, controller of Chinagraph, a commercial editing/production company in New York City.

For these brave women, breast cancer was not an end, but a platform for better health and for higher career and personal success. The disease didn't stop them. In fact, two of these women were later promoted to top positions in corporate America, one while she was fighting the disease, the other after fighting the disease. The other survivors are at the top of their games in their careers since battling breast cancer.

The stories of these four women, two who nearly died, don't focus on the dying, they focus on surviving. And their inspirational stories of hope and courage will encourage anyone coping with breast cancer in themselves or in a loved one.

DESIREE ROGERS

PRESIDENT, PEOPLES GAS AND NORTH SHORE GAS, CHICAGO.

No one was more surprised than I was with the discovery that I had breast cancer. I thought I had covered my bases.

I had visited the doctor regularly, and there was no history of breast cancer in my family. Like so many women, I learned too late that there is no family indicator for most breast cancer patients.

Although I had annual checkups, I found a lump between mammogram visits in March 2003. I was lucky--my cancer was detected at an early stage. I said then, and continue to state, that it is extremely important for women of all ages to examine their own breasts between annual mammograms. Some women think that nothing bad can happen in a year. But things can go wrong in a week or a month, and we must constantly be on the alert.

As a supporter of the Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, I have found other survivors can provide enormous insight. The organization offers a 24/7 hotline.

There are a number of things I learned from my experience. A critical point, often neglected, is that nutrition is an important element in the prevention and healing process. I counsel women to eat organic fruits and vegetables. It is also a good idea to check the packaging to see if the food is preservative free. Many times we think we are eating healthy, and we're not.

I also emphasize exercise. Exercise keeps the body fit and reduces stress. Black women tend to avoid exercise because we are worried about our appearance. Or we exercise around hair appointments. We must commit ourselves to a regular physical fitness program.

I also now understand how important it is to put you first. Black women tend to take care of everybody else and then take care of themselves--if at all. Cancer reminds you that you need to take care of yourself first. After I became ill, getting well became my priority.

Through this experience, I have become an active participant with the growing number of women who are leading the national movement for a more proactive approach to breast cancer. I tell women that if breast cancer happens, it's not the end of the world. With early detection your ability to bounce back is great, and the options available allow you to get your life back together sooner.

It helps the healing process to have a positive attitude and to get the best possible care. Ask questions, get second opinions and make yourself an informed participant in the process of your own healing. Don't hide. Talk about your problem. Talk to other women. At Y-ME National Breast Cancer Organization, we encourage women who have survived the disease to talk to other women.

It's important, finally, not to be afraid. If you find a lump, get moving. Time is crucial.

I know.

I've been there.

And today, I'm cancer-free and healthier than I was before.

THE REV. DR. CLAUDETTE ANDERSON COPELAND

PASTOR and CO-FOUNDER OF THE NEW CREATION CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP CHURCH, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS

There's a whole group of us out here who have not just survived breast cancer--we have thrived because of breast cancer. For some of us, breast cancer was a gift to our own unconscious living. Certainly we don't believe that it is God's perfect will that sickness and disease ravage us, but for some who have done this dance with cancer, the disease was a way of shaking loose everything that was not absolutely necessary and leaving us with the very best of what it means to be alive.

When I was diagnosed Christmas 1990, as a preacher and particularly a Pentecostal-type preacher whose world was censored and buttoned-down about things concerning the body, I was in an environment where few voices were being honest about anything much that was physical.

So I had to tell my story while I was healing. I had to tell my story out loud so that I could hear myself heal. I had to tell my story to women who had listened to me preach for years, who had a one-dimensional view of how God operates. You know, you pray for healing and you get healed in three easy steps--and it made me enlarge this conversation to talk to churchwomen in particular about our responsibility to partner with doctors, to honor their diagnoses, to listen to what they say to us about our diet and our exercise, our self-breast examination. Women in general, and Black women in particular, often do not touch our bodies, we don't examine our bodies, we don't look at our bodies, we've been told from those old-school mothers to keep your dress down, don't look at it, don't touch it and don't let anybody else touch it! But the cancer crisis caused us to enlarge the conversation in front of women who were refusing to have it.

I was 38 when I was diagnosed, and I think those of us who are young cancer victims have to look again at stress and the ways in which stress has depressed our immune system and made us open to diseases that really are preventable. I wasn't as vigilant as I might have been. My doctor said it was a cyst, I believed him and went home. I would probably be dead if it weren't for a very dear friend who happened to be an oncology nurse who pushed me to go back and make them give me a biopsy and a sonogram, and my mother who is very old-school and believes if anything is growing on you--get it cut off! I ended up having a mastectomy, radiation and chemotherapy.

I tell women everywhere that it is important to have an organizing principle in life that is larger than this life. If my organizing principle, or yours, is materialism, or a relationship with a man, if it is your car or your house, or anything that is going to perish, it will not hold you in the midst of crisis and storm. I had Christ before I had cancer, and it was that core that kept my eyes on the horizon. It was that organizing faith, that belief that God was going to work out everything for my good, one way or the other--whether I lived or whether I died. A woman who is struggling with cancer, and who is going through radiation or chemo, can't afford to keep her eyes in the present. She's got to find a point on the horizon and swim toward it.

Before I was diagnosed I was strictly "no meat" and very careful about my caffeine and sugar intake. After breast cancer I continued to be wise and careful, but there is something about having gone through cancer and chemo and also going into my 40s that made me freer, and I became kinder to myself. I chose to walk away from many of the responsibilities and stresses in my life that were dragging me under water.

So my changes were not so much physical as psychological. Cancer caused me to pare down and strip away everything that was extraneous in my life--whether they were bad relationships, false friendships, working for everybody else except my own vision--it left me naked before God in a very free and almost childlike way to say I'm going to live my life happily for however long I have.

I speak out not only about breast cancer, but also about issues of sexual violence and sexual exploitation of women. As a friend of mine, Dr. Johnnie Youngblood, says, straight talk makes straight understanding. I have been warmly received in almost every audience that I have spoken to, but there are always fractional groups of women who are either shocked or offended by a "preacher" saying these things, because a preacher is supposed to talk about heavenly things only. That is not my way. I tell audiences everywhere that the society that we live in is a graphic, visual society. You see every image of every kind in every area of media and yet you want to come to church and have it sanitized. Not so. I think that the God we serve is real, is experiential, and wants to be in-your-face to bring truth, to bring deliverance and to scour out those fantasies and those illusions that keep us in bondage, that keep us backpedaling about our own healing, health and relationships and in some instances keep us stupid.

My husband of 30 years, Bishop David M. Copeland, was very supportive. One of the things my husband often says is that when one person in the family gets cancer, the whole family, in a sense, gets it. Men also need support while somebody they love is going through cancer treatment. They are often just as confused as to how they can deliver the help. Caregivers also need care so that they don't become invisible in the family.

Women need to know that breast cancer is not a death sentence. People who have had cancer, who have had one or both breasts removed, go on for reconstruction or choose not to, but they will be loved and they will be made love to and they will marry and enjoy wonderful, loving relationships. The door is not closed to any of that. Cancer can be a wake-up call to living your best life, as Oprah says.

MARILYN FRANCINE BRAXTON

CONTROLLER, CHINAGRAPH, INC., NEW YORK CITY

I wasn't gung-ho on mammograms. I did them, but I had a terrible fear of doctors. What brought the whole thing to a head was that I kept noticing that my bras were getting smaller and smaller, and I thought that was strange. The curious thing is that you don't feel sick or anything. One day I noticed a lump, but it went down. The next month, it came back. That's when I went to the doctor. I had a biopsy on October 25, 2001. By November 3, I was in treatment.

I had a mastectomy and chemotheraphy, but within seven months, I started feeling sick again. I was nauseated and fatigued, my legs were swollen, my eyes were yellowing, and I was in great pain.

I was hospitalized for six weeks, and then I had a reoccurrence. It was in my liver, and I almost died. A month later, I was very sick again. I couldn't walk, and I fell into a coma.

I was very, very, very sick. My kidneys shut down, my liver shut down, infection spread throughout my body. It was just unbelievable. My hair ... changed [and] was like a Brillo pad.

What brought me through was my family and my job. I got a lot of support from my colleagues at work; they were unbelievable; so was my family.

One day was so sick and miserable that I wanted to die. I looked at my mother and told her I couldn't take it anymore. But she was crying so hard, and was so heartbroken that it broke my heart. She told me she couldn't imagine living her life without me, and I said I can't leave her like this.

When I told my doctor I wanted to die, my doctor got in my face literally. At one point the doctors discussed with my mother, who is a former nurse, the possibility of "letting me go" because they didn't think it was fair to put my body through what it was going through. And my mother, Vivian Braxton, said, "No, we're going to put her through everything in order to save her." Mother and my doctor formed a bond. They decided that no matter what turned up, they were going to do everything to keep me alive.

The doctors administered, among other things, Herceptin, a therapeutic antibody for HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer and chemotheraphy. Within weeks, the Herceptin started to work, and I started to feel better.

I realized during this period how many people loved me. Since then, my attitude about people has changed. I realize now that you shouldn't be too hard on people. Live your own life and be happy that you have a life.

I focus on the hope that the cancer will not come back. And I believe spiritually. I pray to God every day because I have to thank Him.

I don't go to church every Sunday, but I definitely believe that He helped me get through the hard times. He put a blanket around me, and I don't have the fear anymore.

I remember lying on the radiation table the first time, crying to beat the band. The chemo took my grey hair away, made my skin baby soft, cleared my complexion. It took 10 years off, it changed everything.

After the ordeal, I went to Hawaii with my sisters. It was like heaven. That was my dream, and now I'm at the top of my game again.

DARLENE NIPPER

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BET FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, D.C.

I was 39 when, a year ago, I found a lump in my breast while doing a self-breast exam. Since I had worked as a health care advocate for most of my career with groups like the National Alliance for the Mentally III and the National Mental Health Association, I made an appointment immediately and discovered it actually was cancerous.

The doctor presented several options, but I ended up getting the lumpectomy. I knew that the first thing I had to do was get the lump out.

The cancer had spread to a lymph node. When that happens, doctors typically do the whole chemotherapy regimen. While telling me about my treatment options, my doctor also told me that I was HER2-positive, meaning I had the cancer gene that contributes to a more aggressive and deadly form of breast cancer. She mentioned a clinical trial that was going on for earlier-stage patients using Herceptin.

It is important to understand, I think, that you get a really good level of care in these clinical triads. The Herceptin is great. I mean, it's like drinking a glass of water. But the chemo made me very ill, and I had a pretty visceral reaction to radiation.

It takes a lot of outside support to come through this experience. I was fortunate because I have a really strong family network, including a supportive partner and an adult child.

I also think, for me, as for so many other breast cancer victims, the spiritual connection was strengthened by my illness. I spent more time alone, it was very quiet, and the experience helped me to stay spiritually connected. I had a lot of time to think about my life and what was important and what was unimportant, and the whole experience made me feel stronger.

The most important lesson people can learn from survivors is that breast cancer is not a death sentence and that it doesn't have to be something that stops you from living. In fact, when I was interviewing for this job, I was praying between the interviews that an interview wouldn't fall on a day when I was sick.

I was smack dab in the middle of my 24-week period of chemo, at my sickest, when I was interviewing. My family thought I had completely lost it. They thought I should be resting. So I asked myself, 'Would you do this if you weren't sick?' The answer was yes, go to the interview.

I went to the interview and got the job. And I tell women today: Check yourself out. Be vigilant and act, because the sooner you act, the less difficult the process will be and the more likely you will continue to live a long and healthy life.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group