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FacebookWoman marks birthday, another year with Stage IV cancer
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Not everyone is thrilled about turning 65, but to Linda Spencer it is a cause for serious celebration.
The Middletown resident marked her birthday Oct. 21, just a year after she was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer.
It still amazes her that the disease spread so fast. A mammogram, then an exam with her OB/GYN six months before showed nothing, but in August 2008 — as she brushed some crumbs off her chest — she felt a distinct lump. A few days later, it got even worse.
Not only were there tumors in her breasts, but also in 21 lymph nodes — 19 of which were cancerous — and in her liver. Three months of chemotherapy followed by radiation and surgery came before the discovery of more cancer throughout the lymph nodes in her abdomen.
“We are no longer talking of a cure, we are talking about control,” she said.
Sometimes she tries to forget she’s sick, but the cancer always gets in the way. It plagues her with chemo reminders like diarrhea after eating anything but ice chips and “dishwater hands” — numbness that prevents her from gripping objects.
Small goals like driving to the hair salon and going to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family in Alabama make her larger one — living another year — seem more attainable.
“You have to work at it, people say you really have to fight cancer and you do. But being positive doesn’t always help because you are just scared, wondering where it will go next,” she said.
So each day, Spencer covers herself in signs of hope — like pink clothing and special jewelry made especially for breast cancer awareness. They act as little reminders that she is still in the fight.
This does not help some of her family face her illness. Her husband, Charles, waits on her faithfully but takes it hard when Spencer says she will not be here next year. Her grandchildren avoid her and only one of her adult sons, Douglas, calls to see how she is doing. The other two “don’t call or talk to me, they try to pretend it is not happening and I don’t know why that is.”
But what bothers Spencer most is that she might have caught the cancer sooner had she been doing self-examinations. She berates herself with “if only” for not having taken the time, believing until that fateful day in August that she would not get breast cancer.
“It was never going to happen to me, someone else was going to get it but not me,” she said. “That is something I want every woman to know: do the monthly exams. Do it. If I had, I could have already been a cancer survivor instead of someone taking treatment.”
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2843 or jheffner@coxohio.com.
The Pink Paper
Join the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk on Saturday, Oct. 15 at Fifth Third Field. > Find out how to participate
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