 Both my mother and her mother have had breast cancer.
My mom had a lumpectomy at age 82, and is scheduled to have her five-year check-up on June 23. All of her check-ups have been clean to date, and we've got our fingers crossed for a good report in June.
She's a retired RN and is in the breast cancer cohort of the Harvard Nurses Study. We hope her participation in the study will help others.
We both expected that she would do well. Her mother had a radical mastectomy in 1969, at age 69, and had follow-up cobalt treatments. She lived another 31 years, and passed away a few months after my grandfather, at age 90+.
I stayed with her several evenings a week while she was undergoing cobalt. My favorite memory is of coming home from work one day and finding her hard at work at her sewing machine, with staight pins sticking out of the left side of her dress. She had just gotten a temporary foam rubber prosthesis -- and decided it made a handy pin cushion. Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade!
She didn't let breast cancer slow her down one little bit. When my mom was diagnosed and had her surgery and radiation, we talked about my grandmother often. Her spirit continued to lift us up.
I'm now 63 years old and counting. I'm careful about regular checks and mammograms and so far everything has been fine. I'm hoping that if/when the cancer gene catches up with me, we'll be that much farther along towards finding a cure. At the very least, I'll have the inspiration of two very special women to help me through.
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