hope Voices of

THE BALD AND THE BEAUTIFUL Brenda Bowers

Brenda Bowers flips carefully through her small pocket planner. The months fly by at her fingertips, but in reality, the days have been anything but fleeting. Most of her planner holds muddled memos reminding her of doctor appointments, chemotherapy treatments and tons of blood work.

“This has been my life for months,” she says with each turn of the page.

Then she stops on April 14. There’s no reminder, just a simple yet haunting note:

“I have stage 2 breast cancer …”

Most people, upon hearing “You have cancer,” would feel hopeless, fearful, even angry.

Not Brenda. She’s held steadfast to her faith and the belief that one day she’ll take her life back from the devastating disease.

“Worrying about it won’t make it go away,” she says. “I may not know why this happened to me, but I put it all in God’s hands. In life, I’ve always tried to have a positive atti- tude and cancer isn’t going to change that.”

A Fighting Spirit

Brenda rocks her “baldie” unapologetically, but she doesn’t do it to be bold or courageous.

“I do it because it’s more comfortable to just be bald,” she says, and laughs. “Have you ever tried wearing a wig in the summertime? It feels like I’m wearing a wool hat.”

Dressed in a flirty pinkand-green summer dress and matching drop earrings, she flounces through the halls at Florida Hospital Waterman’s Cancer Institute. Her enthusiasm is infectious. People stop for a quick hello, a hug or just a passing smile.

She’s a survivor, in every sense of the word.

At 52, Brenda’s been through her fair share of trials. It started at 3 months old when her father passed away from kidney failure, leaving her to be raised by her mother, who suffered from bipolar disorder. Still, most of Brenda’s hardships arose in adulthood.

After moving from New Jersey to Florida 25 years ago, she began working as a school bus driver for the Orange County School District. For her, it was a dream job.

“I loved those children,” she explains. “They respected me and in return, I respected them.”

But in 2001, Brenda shattered a disc in her back while washing the car. She underwent six surgeries that left her unable to return to bus driving. She lost her job and applied for disability. Five years later, she and her husband Patrick divorced.

Wanting to start fresh in a new place, Brenda relocated to a small apartment complex in Eustis and met Jeff. The two middle-aged divorcees hit it off.

“I know it sounds silly,” Brenda recalls, “but it was love at fi rst sight.”

They married March 31, 2012. Two days later, Brenda tripped and broke her ankle. It took her four months to recover.

Simultaneously, Jeff was struggling to find work as an electrician. Financial troubles left them in an endless state of catch-up. Nevertheless, even with their own problems, Brenda and her new husband found it in their hearts to help others, including Brenda’s ex-husband, who was going blind and was nearly homeless.

“I didn’t want to see him on the street,” she says, “so he ended up staying with me and Jeff last year for six months.”

As 2013 rolled by, Patrick eventually found a place of his own. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s came and went with little fanfare. Yet, by February, Brenda started to feel very fatigued. She had canceled her regularly scheduled mammogram in October because in the past, her results had always come back negative. She didn’t think it would hurt to wait a year.

Now, she was thinking that was a mistake.

“Something just told me it was cancer,” she says.

On April 14, an hour before she was to learn the results of her MRI-guided biopsy, her cell phone rang. The voice on the other end wanted to set up her first radiation appointment.

“I remember saying, ‘Radiation for what?’” Brenda says. “Then he said, ‘For your cancer.’”

FINDING THE ‘CAN’ IN CANCER

One week after her diagnosis, Brenda would receive another life-changing phone call. This time it was about her ex-husband Patrick.

“I remember it was 10 o’clock at night and his landlord called to tell me he had passed away,” she says. “It was very hard for my children because they were still trying to deal with the news of my cancer.

“So, for a while I tried to keep them in the dark about my stuff because I wanted to protect them.”

In addition to undergoing a lumpectomy to have a tumor and six lymph nodes removed, Brenda also received four rounds of chemotherapy. The day before Patrick’s funeral, she chopped her long, beautiful blond hair into a much shorter style; her hair had already started falling out in handfuls from the chemo.

“Losing my hair was really the only thing that upset me because I had fi nally gotten my hair so healthy,” she says. “But I knew it was coming, so the day after the funeral, I went ahead and shaved the rest of it off.”

Hair loss wasn’t the only adverse effect Brenda experienced from the chemo. Shortly after her first treatment, she landed in the hospital.

“I had a bad reaction that caused my heart to skip beats,” Brenda says. “I was in the hospital for five days and had to lower my chemo medication by 15 percent. When I had my second round, it was much better.”

The third and fourth rounds weren’t as tolerable.

“The medication burned my right forearm and the bottom of my feet from the inside out,” she says. “I got sores in my mouth, on my tongue, down my throat and in my stomach. It hurt to eat. Then after my fourth and final round, I received burns on my left forearm, and my hands swelled up like balloons. It was like getting a bad sunburn.”

Not to mention the chronic fatigue and the achiness that lingered just long enough that it was time for her next treatment.

“I would sleep for two days and three nights straight. I never threw up, but it felt like I was always fighting the flu. By the third week after my treatments I would start to feel better only to know it was time for my next round,” she says.

With chemotherapy behind her, Brenda has started radiation. Once complete, she will be considered cancer-free. But she will still have to take oral chemotherapy pills for five years, and since her specific type of cancer feeds off hormones, she has a 7 percent risk of recurrence.

Still, Brenda refuses to give in to the “what-ifs.”

When she began her cancer battle, she told her doctor she would do whatever it took to fight back, and whatever she couldn’t do, she would put it in God’s hands.

“I’ve had a tough life, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” she says. “You just have to take the bad events with the good and pray for the best.”

Looking ahead, Brenda’s excited about her much-needed vacation time with her husband this month.

“We never had a honeymoon, so for us, going camping in St. Augustine is a big deal,” she says.

She’s also looking forward to the day she’ll be able to use her experience as a survivor to give back.

“Because cancer has given me so much,” she says. “I realize I’m stronger than I thought I was. And my faith in God is stronger than ever. I just have total faith in him, and if you don’t have faith and hope, you have nothing.”

FULFILLING A GREATER PURPOSE Margaret Beeching

As a mammography coordinator at Leesburg Regional Medical Center, Margaret Beeching remembers the pain — but most of all the hope — she saw in the eyes of breast cancer patients.

And as a breast cancer survivor of nearly 20 years, she could relate.

“Women are resilient,” she says. “It’s one of the many reasons I put off retirement for as long as I did. We’re truly a tough breed.”

But after working for more than 30 years as a mammography specialist, Margaret finally decided to retire in January at age 73. Walking away was one of the hardest decisions she ever made, but she holds on to the memories — good and bad — that remind her of her calling to counsel and teach others about cancer.

“I feel God isn’t done with me,” she says. “He wants me to use my experiences as a patient to help other women. I can offer more than information — I can offer hope …”

Shortly after appearing in Healthy Living in 2008 to tell her story, Margaret created a breast cancer support group at LRMC as a way to help women and their families cope. While education was a key component of each meeting, a little tender, loving care went a long way with those still coming to grips with their diagnosis.

Margaret remembers one woman in particular who showed up to her first meeting alone and very depressed.

“Her PET/CT scan showed she had an aggressive tumor and she hadn’t told her family. She was actually talking about suicide,” Margaret recalls. “That day we loved on her and encouraged her to tell someone.

“When I saw her at the next meeting, I asked how she was doing and she said, ‘I’m fabulous.’ And that’s what we called her from that day on. She was amazing. She finally told her family and she went from feeling despair to feeling fabulous.”

There were also dark moments at the meetings; moments when hugs and reassuring words couldn’t stop the inevitable.

“We lost one,” Margaret says. She briefly pauses as she chokes back tears. “She worked at the laundromat where we took the robes patients change into for their mammograms. I came in one day and she asked me if I could look at her breasts because she felt something was wrong. We went in the back and I could tell just by looking at them her cancer was advanced, but an ultrasound and biopsy confirmed it.”

Until the woman took her last breath, Dr. Maen Hussein with the Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute cared for her.

“But boy did she fight,” Margaret says and smiles.

This year, Margaret’s neighbor, Linda, discovered a very large tumor in one of her breasts.

“She came over to me and said, ‘Margaret, come here. I have something to tell you, but don’t be mad,’” Margaret says. “I always got on her about getting a mammogram and she kept putting it off.”

Despite the heartache that sometimes accompanies cancer, Margaret always stays hopeful and motivated. Just recently, an email from Linda again made her calling clear:

Early start. I have tons of work to get done before I go for chemo. It’s a strange thing psyching yourself up to sit and watch toxins being dripped into your veins. But God is with me. 3 of the 5 months of chemo I required are behind me. Looking forward to the day that I wake up and just feel good. It will happen. God is providing the miracles.

“People like my neighbor are the exact reason why I kept working,” Margaret says. “She has two more months of chemo before she can even have surgery, yet her outlook is so positive.

“Most survivors will tell you their cancer was a blessing and how we just take it one day at a time. Fortunately cancer doesn’t have to be a death sentence anymore.”

After taking a year to spend time with her husband, Margaret hopes to volunteer at the Community Medical Care Center in Leesburg, founded as a partnership between Central Florida Health Alliance and First Baptist Church Leesburg. She was involved with the clinic when she worked for LRMC and she wants to continue educating women about their breast health and the importance of mammograms.

“Mammograms save lives,” she says. “Women still say, ‘No, no, no, I don’t need a mammogram.’ Or they think if they are over the age of 70 they don’t need to have one done anymore. There’s so much misinformation out there and women have to educate themselves.”

A RESOURCE OF COMFORT Micki Blackburn

Micki Blackburn’s been cancer-free for 15 years, but the lessons she learned from her diagnosis and treatment have since stuck with her.

“One of the biggest things I learned was the importance of mammograms,” she says.

“That’s how my cancer was found. If it can be caught early, you have a chance. You don’t want to wait until it’s too late.”

Over the years, Micki has spent countless hours studying and promoting breast cancer awareness in the Lake-Sumter community. For example, her company, Micki Blackburn Realty, was a staunch supporter of raising funds to provide free mammograms to women at South Lake Hospital in Clermont. And through her research, when Micki learned black women died at a higher rate from breast cancer than women of other races, she took her message of awareness to several predomi-

HEALING THROUGH HUMOR Tori Brunold

Tori Brunold knew there was always a chance her breast cancer could return. But she hadn’t anticipated it coming back only three months after fi nishing chemotherapy.

“They used my own body fat to build my breasts,” Tori explains. “It was the best option for me because they didn’t want to use any silicone or saline implants due to the aggressive nature of my cancer.” nantly black churches in the area, hoping she could inspire at least one woman to be proactive about her breast health.

“In the past, talking about breast cancer used to be so taboo,” she says. “It was whispered in the shadows as if it was something to be ashamed of. Now, people are much more outspoken about it. We survivors shouldn’t be ashamed to share our stories.”

When Micki was fighting her battle, the emotional support she received from other survivors, as well as family, friends and the community helped pull her through.

“It was so amazing to hear from people I hadn’t heard from in years, and to receive all their prayers and kind words really helped mold me into a more thoughtful person,” she says. “I pulled a lot of strength from a dear friend who was a survivor. That’s why now, when I hear someone has been diagnosed, I call them up, whether I know them or not, and talk to them.”

When Micki was featured in Healthy Living in 2008, she shared a series of tips for current and future breast cancer survivors. Most, she says, she learned from her oncologist at the Mayo Clinic. Six years later, her tips are still the same:

• Sleep: “Get a good night’s rest. I sleep a minimum of eight hours every night. Sleep is the only time when your body can heal itself.”

• Zinc: “I take zinc because it helps build your immune system. Maintaining a strong immune system is important for everyone’s health.”

• Food: “I eat tomatoes in some form every day. I also eat blueberries. They are both full of great antioxidants.”

• Read: “Every woman should read Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book. I read it cover to cover and that educated me a lot and made me feel better.

• Stress: “Avoid stress. My doctor said about 50 percent of her patients experienced a stressful event before their diagnosis. Therefore, if something is bothering you, ask yourself, ‘Is this worth getting cancer over?’”

“I did the interview with Healthy Living in August 2008 and by September, I learned my cancer had returned,” she says. “By the time the magazine came out in October, I was preparing to have a double mastectomy. I had a 50 percent chance the chemo would work, but for some reason, in my case, it didn’t.”

In Round 2 of Tori’s fight against cancer, she and her oncologist, Dr. Rambabu Tummala, settled on the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville as their new battleground. Armed with a new chemotherapy plan, Tori underwent five months of chemotherapy starting in January 2009. Then, she waited another two years before undergoing reconstructive surgery.

“My doctor wanted to make sure the cancer was all gone before having such a rigorous operation,” she says.

Not wanting to introduce any foreign objects into Tori’s body, her surgeon opted to perform DIEP (deep inferior epigastric perforator) flap breast reconstruction.

Tori speaks with genuine optimism to describe her fight against cancer. Despite all she’s lost, she’s gained strength she never knew existed.

Still, there are brief moments when she can’t shake the anxiety that came in September as she celebrated her five-year cancer-free anniversary. She had reached this milestone once before, after her brush with melanoma in 2001. Five years later, she learned she had breast cancer.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit nervous because I know in the back of my mind that it could return,” she says. “Even to this day when I go for my PET scan, my doctor says he’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Nevertheless, fear doesn’t hold Tori back. It only pushes her to be more outspoken about her journey. In addition to speaking engagements and being an active supporter of this shirt was made for me by my kids when I was the cross-country coach at Eustis High School,” she says. “They would wear their shirts before each meet. I even have a former student who still wears his before races. He recently posted a picture on Facebook of him wearing it before competing in a Spartan Trifecta race.”

The second shirt declares, playfully, “Fight like a girl.”

“Everyone in my family had one of these made,” she says with a smile.

However, the shirt wasn’t the only show of solidarity from her family. Each family member, including Tori, got a tattoo of a pink ribbon with

THE ROCKY ROAD TO RECOVERY Vicky McGhee

There’s no doubt a diagnosis of breast cancer invokes feelings of fear and uncertainty. Still, Vicky McGhee managed to bring cheerfulness to a serious situation.

Despite losing her hair during chemotherapy and having both breasts surgically removed, Vicky made it a point to laugh through it.

“When I was bald, I would come to work and say, ‘I’m having a real bad hair day!’ And whenever I took off my bandanna and a male co-worker walked into my office, I’d say, ‘Oh my gosh, you caught me naked!’”

Thanks to her keen sense of humor, Vicky, diagnosed in 2009, claims the proud title of cancer survivor. But she also discovered that achieving a normal life after cancer can be challenging and filled with many dark days.

“Just because treatment ends doesn’t mean your life will immediately return to the way it was,” she says. “There are struggles, and you don’t always feel like laughing.”

Life Goes On

On March 29 of this year, more than 40 friends, neighbors and family members gathered at Vicky’s home in Altoona for what she affectionately calls her “555 Party.” the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life, Tori has become a pink fashionista. From cotton candy pink shirts bejeweled in flashy rhinestones to the oversized pink ribbon decal fi xed to the driver’s side of her convertible, she uses every opportunity to advocate on behalf of present, past and future survivors.

Not only was she celebrating her 55th birthday, she was also marking five years being cancer-free.

“I’m very vocal,” she boasts. “Everywhere I go I share something breast cancer-related.”

On this day, she tows two T-shirts with special significance. Slightly worn, the fi rst reads, “We run cross country for Coach B.” On the back: “I am Coach B and I will survive.”

“After being rediagnosed, the same saying.

“Except for my daughters,” she adds. “Theirs say, ‘Fight like Mom.’”

Tori admits she got the tattoo despite her doctor’s disapproval, and while an allergic reaction to the pink ink left it a little flawed, all she could do was laugh about it.

“I know this may sound weird but my family and I had fun with my cancer,” she says. “I believe my faith helped carry me through this, but so did my great sense of humor. I learned to be resilient and positive because it’s the only way you can beat it. When you’re fighting cancer, you can either choose to laugh or cry.

“I chose to laugh.”

“It was a way to celebrate a fight I’m winning,” she says. “The people who attended are very special to me because they were my support system throughout my fight.”

Since Vicky last spoke with Healthy Living in October 2010, life has been going well. The biannual blood tests she’s undergone for five years reveal no traces of cancer. She maintains a healthy diet and exercises religiously. And she is gainfully employed as a senior staff assistant with the Eustis Parks and Recreation Department.

Her sense of humor remains unbroken, but she isn’t joking when she says breast cancer changed her life.

“It opened an entire new world for me,” says Vicky. “Every day I wake up is a beautiful and blessed day. I take nothing for granted.”

Few people would take things for granted after traveling the difficult road Vicky did to reclaim her life. Having both breasts removed took a devastating toll on her self-esteem. She felt a loss of femininity.

“My cancer was gone but so was my self-image,” she says. “Through all the treatments and surgeries, my body had changed considerably. Society constantly emphasizes the importance of women looking beautiful and being desirable. I did not like how I looked on the outside.”

So, 2½ years ago, Vicky underwent reconstruction surgery. And while it helped her feel whole again, life still seemed bleak. At the time, she was taking tamoxifen, an anti-cancer medication that sometimes causes depression. She became sedentary and gained 60 pounds.

“I simply didn’t have a desire to live my life.”

Waging A New Battle

With time, Vicky came to realize if she could successfully conquer cancer, she could also conquer depression and obesity.

She began exercising. She also made significant changes to her diet, which included eating only grilled or smoked meats and incorporating peas, green beans or okra with almost every meal. She also eliminated bread.

Because of those lifestyle changes, Vicky dropped 60 pounds in eight months.

“I realized that I have to keep fighting,” she says. “Even though I’ve been in remission for five years, I’ve had to fight to get my life back. And while I have numerous scars from my mastectomies, I am no longer ashamed of them. They are my battle scars. They remind me to live every day with courage.”

Vicky is training to serve as a volunteer for the American Cancer Society’s Reach to Recovery program. Once training is complete, she’ll be paired with a local breast cancer patient to provide support, hope and guidance.

“I look forward to encouraging women who are newly diagnosed,” she says. “We’ll be able to email, talk on the telephone and even meet for lunch. I’m excited to pass down my knowledge, but most importantly, I want to keep their spirits up.”

And with her wit and valuable insight, she’s sure to do just that.

TAKE CHARGE OF YOUR HEALTH Mary Pieper

Mary Pieper refers to her breast cancer diagnosis as her Y2K bug.

“It was May 2000 and something provoked me to reach my hand up to my breast,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting to find anything, because I had just had a mammogram that came back negative, but I strongly believe it was God who guided my hand to find that lump.”

After negative mammogram results and an unsuccessful needle aspiration, Mary and her gynecologist opted for a core needle biopsy. The wait for the results became the most agonizing five weeks of her life.

“You know something is in your body,” Mary says, “but you’re praying it’s benign. Nothing really prepares you to hear that you have breast cancer.”

As the reality set in, all she could fathom was it was possibly the beginning of the end of her life.

“I just remember driving home and realizing I was driving normally in a normal car and normal people were walking down the street,” she says. “Yet the world was still spinning, but it felt like mine had stopped. I kept thinking how this could be my last summer on Earth, so why wasn’t everyone stopping and dealing with this with me.”

On the advice of Dr. Kurt Wagner, Mary underwent sentinel lymph node mapping that resulted in the removal of two lymph nodes. She also endured two lumpectomies, four rounds of chemotherapy and 35 radiation treatments.

This year, she celebrated 14 years cancer-free. And though she is technically considered cured, Mary still sees her oncologist and receives a mammogram once a year.

Since she was last featured in Healthy Living in 2008, Mary has become a patient-care tech in the emergency room at Leesburg Regional Medical Center. She feels being a breast cancer survivor helps her be a more compassionate caregiver.

Being in the medical field, Mary also sees too many instances of people ignoring their own health.

“I once meet a lady who was 62 and said she had never had a mammogram,” she says. “So many people think just because you don’t have a family history of breast cancer you don’t need a mammogram. Well, I was 41, had no family history of cancer of any kind and I was the first in my family to receive a cancer diagnosis.

“You have to deal with your health. If you feel a lump, get

AUTHOR’S NOTE: In memory of Phyllis High

It never occurred to me, as I searched for the five inspirational women we featured six years ago in our magazine, that one might no longer be with us.

After days of searching for a phone number to contact Phyllis High, I stumbled upon her obituary. She had passed, and it made my heart sink.

I searched for clues as to what happened to her. She was 58 when she died in 2010; it felt as though she it checked. Be proactive, be educated and don’t ignore symptoms.”

If a person does get a breast cancer diagnosis, Mary wants him or her to know it’s not the end of the world. A doctor once told her it’s a calendar disease: You just mark off the days of the calendar from the beginning to the end of your treatment.

“It’s not going to be forever,” she says. “When the days are done, you’re done and that helped make it easier to deal with.”

You’ll also come out a lot stronger and learn not to sweat was too young to have passed away from natural causes. And while she left behind many family members, each lead I gained for information turned cold.

Though I can’t say for certain breast cancer contributed to her death, I can say it contributed to her life. In 2008, she told Healthy Living how having cancer didn’t make her less than the person she was before.

“I’m now a stronger person spiritually and emotionally,” she said then. “I’m also more compassionate the small stuff.

“I was certain if I ever learned I had cancer I would crawl into a corner and die,” Mary says. “But I actually learned I was a hell of a lot stronger than I thought. I handled losing my hair; I handled being bald in the winter; I handled watching bags of red poison being pumped into my body.

“Now, if my bathtub has a hot-water leak or someone cuts me off in traffic, I just deal with it. After cancer, you learn the things that used to stress you out really aren’t that important anymore.” toward others who are ill. I consider myself a cancer conqueror rather than a cancer survivor. I’m not going to live in survivor mode and in fear. You don’t have to live in fear. We are bigger and better than cancer.”

I’m certain Phyllis’ story touched many lives in our community, and I hope the memory of her strength and faith continues to be a comfort to the family and friends she left behind.

May she rest in peace.