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Testimony for breast self-exams: 3 survivors
© St. Petersburg Times Ursula Schmidt was so upset at what the man quoted in the newspaper said that she tracked him down and wrote him a letter. Mrs. Schmidt is a two-time breast cancer survivor. She found the first lump herself. The man in the newspaper was a doctor in Seattle who had done a study that concluded it doesn't matter whether women examine their breasts or not. Those who do, the study reported, die as often from breast cancer as those who don't. "I was just hurt, angry and disappointed that a doctor would do this," Mrs. Schmidt said. "I said (in the letter) that this a very personal and individual thing. I may be the one in the million who was saved, but I really, really feel that a report like this, just put out like this, can really damage the other one-in-a-million woman who would be saved by breast self-exams." Mrs. Schmidt is not a one-in-a-million case. Elizabeth Floyd is two-in-a-million. Virginia Wood makes it three-in-a-million. I wrote a column about the breast exam study last week. The three local women called later to share their survivors' tales. Each story began the same: I found my cancer myself. Virginia Wood, 77 and from St. Petersburg, remembered the moment with the clarity of a photograph. She was 60 then. "It was cold that night, and my hands were cold. I had them up around my neck. I brought my hands down. One came over my breast. I found a lump. I walked over to my husband and said, 'Feel this.' And he said, 'You've got a lump.' It was about the size of a walnut." She had one breast removed and then, as a precaution against recurrence, the other. She continued even so to do self-exams, regularly checking the lymph nodes under her arms and neck. She once found a lump -- it turned out not to be cancer -- in the space on her chest between where her breasts had been. "The frightening part is there is so much scar tissue underneath you don't know what you're finding," she said. There was no lump for Elizabeth Floyd to feel, just a tiny indentation in her breast that scared her and turned out to be cancerous. She was 45 then. Now she is 79, living in Inverness. The release of the breast exam study had the effect on Mrs. Floyd of a swift punch. Over the years, she had begun to feel immune from cancer. She'd stopped doing self-exams. "It's odd," she said, "you'd think you'd feel more vulnerable. Not less." Now she's going back for a mammogram. One day this week she attended a breast cancer survivor's support group. And she's checking her breasts again. You can understand, though, why Mrs. Floyd became complacent. She has lived 34 years without cancer. A number like that shouts hope. Ursula Schmidt has lived 11 years cancer free. For Mrs. Wood, it's been 17 years. Maybe there is no link between their finding their tumors and their surviving. Only a fool -- like the one in the doctor's coat -- would try to persuade them. Doing the self-exam asks a woman to be courageous. She has to not be afraid of what she might find. Who knows how many women don't do the exams because they're scared? Living with breast cancer requires a deeper strength. You must make peace with the sense of loss, and mutilation, that you develop about your body. You must change your attitude from fear to faith. You must, as Ursula Schmidt told me, live in the moment, and just simply be. You must realize there is no answering the question of why some live, some die. And you must be vigilant, very vigilant, on your terms, in your way. No matter what some doctor in Seattle says. -- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3402.
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Times columns today Tampa Uncuffed Mary Jo Melone From the Times Metro desk |
