March 14, 2008 03:12 pm
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By Mary Thacker
Special to the Herald-Banner
It started in such a small way. Anne had a cyst on her breast. Her primary care physician had reassured her that it was nothing to worry about. Luckily, a friend at church encouraged her to seek another opinion. “Dr. Carol Poole literally saved my life,” said Anne.
“When I called for an appointment, she told me to come in right away. She drained the cyst, sent the fluid into the lab and referred me to a hospital for an ultrasound and mammography. The cyst came back twice, so she was then referred to a breast surgeon.
The next step was a lumpectomy which removed the cyst and the surrounding tissue. That was on a Monday. When the pathology report came back positive for cancer on Wednesday, Anne’s husband, Jeff, took the day off from work to be with her. They drove to White Rock Lake, watched the birds that live around the lake and reassured each other. “We decided that it must not be a big deal. We were feeling pretty good about things.” But when they went into the doctor’s office on Friday, the news was not good. “They told us that the cancer was very invasive, very aggressive. And it was either a Stage 3 or Stage 4.” An appointment was set up with an oncologist. When Anne and Jeff got home, they faced their fears together. “Jeff told me, ‘You can’t leave me,’ Anne recounts. “I told him that I would fight this,” she said. “And if I didn’t make it, I would do whatever I could from the other side.” She and Jeff sat down and made up a list of friends who would help.
Anne’s sister in Oklahoma cared for her three girls during her surgery. Anne was alone in the house on Saturday. Her friends had told her that they would get together and pray for her starting at 1 pm. Anne sat in a quiet spot in her home and prayed. “I was crying and scared. I was worried about how Jeff would cope with three small children.” Holly was in third grade and the twin girls, Marlie and Darcie were in the first grade. Around 2:30 p.m., Anne was suddenly filled with a sense of peace. Her friends’ prayers had worked.
Two of Anne’s friends in Oklahoma volunteered to drive her children home to Rockwall. After she was sure that the children were on the way home, she called her sisters and told them the news. She knew that it would be hard for them to hear, especially since their mother and their grandmother had had breast cancer. She knew that they would be worried about their own risk of developing cancer.
Before her appointment, Anne meditated on Psalm 139:13-16. “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful … All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” When Anne walked into the offices of her breast surgeon, every room she walked into had that scripture in it. “It was on a vase, framed on the wall. It was everywhere!”
The nurse was comforting, too.
“She told me that she was a breast cancer survivor, and that she was grateful to have had it. Before her cancer she was always too busy to enjoy life. Now she pulls her car over on the way home just to watch the sunset,” Anne remembered.
Next on Anne’s treatment plan were bone scans and x-rays, as prescribed by her oncologist, Dr. O’Shaughnessy.
“I don’t even have the words to describe Dr. O’Shaughnessy,” said Anne. “She’s TNT packed into a five-foot frame. It’s like if you popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. No one gave me a prognosis, and I didn’t want one. I had to believe that God would heal me. I didn’t want anything to shake my faith.”
Later Anne found out that the doctor had told her nurse that her patient was very, very sick and might not make it.
It was decided that she would have chemo to shrink the cancer before her breast was removed. She started with a five-hour session of chemotherapy. She would have a total of four treatments every three weeks. Before her mastectomy surgery, Dr. Sally Knox held her hands and prayed that she would serve as God’s healing hand.
Once she had recovered from her surgery, there were another four rounds of chemotherapy. The side effect was overwhelming fatigue.
“I was supposed to read a book in Holly’s classroom. I parked in the handicapped parking and walked to the office. I had to stop and rest before I could make it to the third grade wing,” Anne remembers.
Next was a course of thirty radiation treatments. By the time she was halfway-through, she developed a terrible migraine headache that lasted for days. She was brought into Baylor for an MRI which proved that the cancer had spread to her brain. Her course of treatment was changed to triple-dose radiation to the head, oral chemotheraphy and steroids.
Once she was discharged, she stayed in a recliner in the family room. An allergic reaction to the steroids made her legs swell, so they had to be wrapped in bandages and elevated. Even so, the skin on her legs split down the middle.
“I was not a pretty sight,” she said. “I was bald, my face was swollen, and the steroids caused me to gain 70 pounds.”
By this point her friends and neighbors had stepped in to help with meals, babysitting and driving her girls to and from school. A nurse came daily to assist in her care. A physical therapist came twice a week, and an occupational therapist came three times a week. It was while she was attempting to take a few steps using a walker that she passed out. She was rushed to the hospital. Blood clots had formed in her legs and had traveled to her lungs. A filter had to be surgically implanted into her vena cava to prevent clots from traveling through her body.
It was December when they found that her brain tumors, one in the front of her brain and one in the back, were not responding to treatment. She had developed a sinus infection that could not be cured with antibiotics. Her vision was blurry, and she was experiencing hallucinations. She was afraid to go to sleep, because she was sure that she would die if she did. The doctors sent her home and advised her husband to contact Hospice.
Miraculously, a surgeon was found who would attempt two separate operations, days apart, on her brain tumors. Dr. Sam Finn performed two craniotomies within three days on Anne and removed the tumors. After her recovery, Anne was sent to rehab for six weeks to re-learn how to walk. It was a miserable time for her, but Jeff was a devoted husband. He brought the girls as often as he could and found family projects they could work on together at the hospital. He also brought Anne a laptop computer, so she could watch videos and surf the internet.
Her nurses sat with her to keep her company during the long, lonely weekends. One nurse in particular, Claudette, helped come up with a creative Valentine’s Day gift for her husband, since she was unable to shop.
Anne was finally released from rehab in March and began driving short distances in May. However, during the summer she began experiencing pain in her arm. “I just knew it was bone cancer. I could feel it,” Anne recalled. “I was reaching up to get something out of a cabinet, and the bone just snapped.”
She had two surgeries to repair the bone using titanium implants. Then during a routine MRI, the doctors found five tiny brain tumors. They were successfully treated with Gamma Knife technology, which uses highly-focused rays of radiation to target cancer cells.
Anne has been cancer-free since June of 2005. She participated in the Survivor’s Lap at the Rockwall Relay For Life in 2005. She walked while her husband and children pushed her wheelchair behind her. In 2006, she walked two laps with teenagers from her church giving her High Fives as she crossed the finish line.
She is looking forward to walking again this year. She has fought hard and long against cancer and has definitely earned her victory laps.
Rockwall’s Relay For Life will be held at Cain Middle School May 2-3. To register a team, contact Mary Thacker at 972-722-1215.
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