STRIKING OUT CANCER:

Pillager Woman Keeps High Spirits Amid Breast Cancer Diagnosis

BY THERESA BOURKE Brainerd Dispatch

Everyone has their struggles. Larae Thomas’s just happens to be breast cancer.

“This is just a chapter in my life. It’s not my life story,” the Pillager woman said during an interview Wednesday, Sept. 25, at Christmas Point in Baxter.

The story started last November, when Thomas, 49, finally decided to get a lump in her breast checked out. It was time for her yearly physical and mammogram anyway. After a mammogram in December, she was called back for an ultrasound and then a biopsy.

“I’ve always kind of had that feeling in the back of my mind that I would end up with cancer at some point in my life because we have so much cancer on both sides of my family,” she said. “So I just had that feeling.” It turns out, her feeling was right.

The results came back the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Thomas received the call when she was at work but wasn’t as distraught as might be expected.

“You cry because it’s life-changing and you know everything’s going to be different, but I had that peace, too, of it’s going to be OK. We’re going to handle it,” she said. That’s the mindset Thomas has strived to keep up over the past months, as she’s undergone chemotherapy, radiation, surgery and a host of complications.

Thomas’ cancer is triple positive, meaning it’s fueled by both the estrogen and progesterone hormones and the HER2 protein. Only about 10% of breast cancer cases fall into that category, which comes with both positives and negatives. On the downside, the cancer is aggressive and can spread quickly. On the upside, though, Thomas said there are more treatment options. At the advice of her daughter, who is a nurse, Thomas opted for a second opinion at the Mayo Clinic and is grateful for the world-class care she received both there and back home in Brainerd.

Doctors found more lumps after the initial ultrasound and biopsy, along with an enlarged mammary gland. Thus started the whirlwind of appointments, treatments and a new way of life.

Thomas underwent 12 weeks of chemotherapy and received two hormone blockers before opting for a double mastectomy to remove the cancer. She exhibited some of the lesser seen symptoms from chemotherapy, like mouth sores and peeling fingernails, having to keep Band-aids on her fingers a lot of the time to keep the nails from coming apart completely. She also had to face her fear of losing her hair, which might have affected her more than the actual cancer diagnosis. She checked into a cold cap, which could help prevent hair loss during chemo, but the expense turned out to be too much, and the odds of it working were only 50/50. While Thomas didn’t lose all of her hair, the change was still noticeable, after having colored her hair for years and watching it grow back with gray.

“I knew I was gray, and that’s why I colored my hair all the time,” she said. “But this is hard, looking at it. I get compliments all the time, but it’s not me.

“I remember looking in the mirror that day that I had been diagnosed and thinking, ‘Larae, you are never going to look the same again. You are going to look old.’ And that was really hard.”

Having previously worked as a school secretary in Pillager and continuing to work in the nursery at her church, Thomas worried kids would be scared about her changing appearance. But it was another instance where she turned to God and knew he would help work through it.

Thomas had a support squad of 10 family members come down to the Mayo Clinic with her for her surgery, and they rented a house to stay at together while eating ice cream and celebrating the next step in Thomas’s journey.

“That’s my family,” she

RobynSchaeferis surroundedbyfamily atananniversary celebration.