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Lean on me, sister

By WAVENEY ANN MOORE
Published October 1, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - African-American women have talked about it only in euphemisms and hushed tones, rarely mentioning the dreaded words: breast cancer.

That's changing. Once a month, on a Tuesday evening, a group of women meet in a church nursery to discuss the disease. They talk about the debilitating effects of chemotherapy, of mastectomies and breast reconstruction surgeries, crying spells and yes, sex. They uncover their bald heads. They hug and laugh. They pray.

This months-old sisterhood of government workers, teachers, retirees, pastors' wives, mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers is unabashedly rooted in faith - and action. Trust in God, they say, but help him by doing what needs to be done to get better.

"I always say, God gives you five senses plus common sense. All that technology is out there. He's given us those tools to use," says Jackie Brown, the woman behind the group of women from St. Petersburg mainly, but also Tampa, Clearwater and even Lakeland.

They call themselves Sistahs Surviving Breast Cancer. They share their anxieties and keep one another's confidences.

This particular evening, Lena Miller has good news. Her CAT scan results are good.

Later, though, she asks, "How about the crying spells? Have you gone through that?" Almost as one, everyone responds, "Yes, we have."

That's understandable, Brown, 48, says: "You're sad. You're hurt, you're saying, 'Why me?' "

"You get hit by a bus when they tell you 'You have breast cancer,"' she said during an interview over hot chocolate one rainy afternoon.

A paralegal in the Pinellas County attorney's office, she said it's important that black women know they can survive breast cancer. TV commercials rarely show women of color as survivors, said Brown, who is appearing in a commercial for Gulfcoast Oncology Associates.

"We associate cancer with death and it doesn't have to be that way," said Brown, a survivor of 2¹/₂ years.

Dr. Patricia Spencer, cancer program manager at the Pinellas County Health Department, said minority women often have lower survival rates "because they don't access the health care system in the early stage."

Often, she said, that's because of lack of education or insurance.

"There is no prevention for breast cancer, but there are ways to do an early diagnosis, starting your mammograms at 40 years old and then after 50, every year," she said.

Filomena "Mina" Murphy lost a sister to breast cancer. Another had a mastectomy and survived. She discovered her own cancer in 2004, said Murphy, who is American Samoan. "I found a lump at the end of August," she said, adding that a mammogram earlier that year had shown nothing.

As she waited for test results, Murphy, 46, a teacher in the on-campus intervention program at John Hopkins Middle School, called her cancer survivor sister in Germany for support. Later she would also turn to the new group closer to home. Her faith and support from her church helped as well, Murphy said.

"After my first chemo treatment, I was ready to quit. I told my husband I wasn't going back," she said.

Her husband, the Rev. Louis Murphy, had other ideas. He turned to a nurse in his congregation, Mount Zion Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, to persuade his wife to continue her treatment. The breast cancer support group his wife now attends meets at his church.

Her illness was "pretty tough" for him, the pastor said. "Probably for the most part, I had to turn to my faith and try to learn as much as I could about it and be supportive, to be there. I still don't think that I did an adequate job," he said.

Addie Wells is a preacher's widow. She and her husband battled cancer at the same time.

"He was a praying man and we're a praying people and we said we were going to beat this," said Wells, 73, a glamorous woman who owns more than 100 hats and almost as many pairs of shoes.

Her husband died in 2002, but she followed through with their plans to move from New Jersey to Florida. She found the support group when she started worshiping at Mount Zion.

"It's God's grace that brought me through this," she said.

On a recent Sunday, Wells, resplendent in pink hat and shimmering pink suit, joined the support group at 20th Street Church of Christ as part of a plan to worship at each member's church. This was Lena Miller's church.

"He's my rock, my sword and shield," the women sang. "I know he'll never let me down. I love to praise his name."

Here in the predominantly African-American congregation, the group of pink-clad women - the color of breast cancer awareness - an announcement acknowledged their presence.

A few days earlier, Miller, 59, an unemployment compensation tax auditor for the Florida Department of Revenue, was going through her regular Thursday treatment at Gastroenterology and Oncology Associates in St. Petersburg. Nurse Susie Turner hugged Miller before inserting the tube that would feed the medicine, Herceptin, through a port in her chest. Gritting her teeth, she closed her eyes and winced as the tube was inserted.

"I was scheduled to have 12 months of chemotherapy and a year of radiation," she said, but a CAT scan showed she didn't need the prolonged treatment. "I was still going through the phase of losing my hair, losing my breasts. I was relieved and I give it all to God and I know it was he who did it," said Miller, who is raising two grandchildren, Khemradj, 8, and Jacquarion, 7, with her husband, Larry. "You've got to be around positive people and you've got to feel positive about yourself" to fight cancer, she said.

That's part of the mission of the support group. Brown also has begun giving talks at churches about self-exams and early detection.

Jane Morse-Swett, patient advocate at Gulfcoast Oncology Associates, where Brown was treated, praised her efforts.

"Jackie, she is a beautiful, dynamic young woman ... She can get people motivated. She gets the ball rolling," she said.

Brown, who has two children in college, was diagnosed in 2004 and has had a mastectomy and reconstruction surgery. She just wants "to be a vessel for the other sisters who come behind me" and to empower them "with the knowledge and understanding so if they're ever faced with this battle, they can survive. You don't have to hide, to be ashamed."

[Last modified September 30, 2006, 22:26:31]