FIND GRIT & GRACE IN YOUR CANCER JOURNEY
BY NANCY VOGT Echo Journal
NLakes area support group caters to women fighting cancer
o one truly knows what it’s like to battle breast cancer — or any type of cancer — besides those going through it.
Two area women not only developed a deep friendship during their breast cancer treatment journeys, they’ve reached out to help other women.
Autumn Loge, 29, of Pine River, and Melissa Dooley, 39, of Nisswa, coordinate Lakes Area Grit & Grace, which is explained on the group’s Facebook page as “a nontraditional support group geared toward women battling any type of cancer at any stage while navigating life’s busy schedules.”
The “&” sign in Grit & Grace is a cancer ribbon symbol. The goal is to connect with other women and families who are experiencing similar trials.
Grit & Grace has met three times — July 31 at The Outpost in Pequot Lakes for an ice cream social, Aug. 21 at Main Street Ale House in Nisswa, and Sept. 26 at Timberwood Church in Nisswa for a potluck social.
“I’m just excited to bring women together,” Dooley said. “When you come together, you’re not alone.
“Everyone’s story is different, but we still have the same daily
Everyone’s story is different, but we still have the same daily struggles and the same fear.
MELISSA DOOLEY
struggles and the same fear,” she said.
Loge wants to provide hope to women.
“I know I find hope when I see survivors living normal life again. So if I can provide that hope for somebody who’s newly diagnosed — that there are better days ahead. It might look different, but life will feel good again, and there are things to look forward to,” she said.
“I found hope in my conversations with other women who are farther ahead in their journey than me,” she said. Loge explained how she came up with the idea to create Lakes Area Grit & Grace.
“Here I am today on the other side of things in the world of survivorship and navigating what that looks like,” she said. “My family and friends put together a really awesome benefit. My community came together, and local businesses, and raised a large amount of funds for me. I knew that I wanted to do something more with that to help others and pay it forward.
“So I took a portion of
RobynSchaeferis surroundedbyfamily atananniversary celebration.
that and decided to put Grit & Grace into place. I took that leap of faith,” she said.
Regarding the name Grit & Grace, Loge said: “Cancer’s ugly, and there are really hard days, and we really had to find that inner strength and that grit each and every day to carry on and push through.
“But also, at the same time, there has been a lot of grace in this journey — grace from other people, spiritually. I found Melissa through this.”
Dooley said: “We want other people to find ‘their person.’”
Dooley reached out to Loge after reading Loge’s breast cancer story published last year by the Echo Journal.
Both were diagnosed and received cancer treatments at the same time, and both have two young daughters.
“We just connected,” Loge said. “And it was in that moment that it was so refreshing to have somebody who’s going through it. It was unfortunate that we had to connect over cancer, but (it was) somebody who
knows the daily struggles and can connect over the daily fight.”
That’s where their friendship blossomed.
“I didn’t really realize I needed that until I met her,” Loge said. “That was an area that was lacking in our community, was having a resource of younger women and just women in general connecting and supporting each other. That’s what led me to put Grit & Grace together.”
In her story on the Lakes Area Grit & Grace Facebook page, Dooley says of Loge: “He (God)
also brought Autumn into my life at just the right time. It has been amazing to have someone walk with me and be able to relate with me about everything we feel, face and fear.
“She has been a light in this dark tunnel we have been forced to travel through. She has become ‘my person’ and I am so grateful to have her,” Dooley wrote.
“I pray that through Grit and Grace, others battling and surviving cancer can find ‘their person’ to support each other through it,” she wrote.
“Although cancer is ugly, it can bring out the most beautiful friendships. A battle is never fought alone, it is only fought together, and we want to fight alongside every single one of you.” Loge’s cancer journey started nearly two years ago when she discovered a lump in the breast area. Eventually diagnosed with stage three breast cancer, she endured hormone replacement therapy, chemotherapy, double mastectomy surgery,
Robyn
BeYourAdvocate! Own
WhenIwastoldthatIhadanabnormalmammogram,Iwasterrified. IhadplannedonleavingthenextmorningforFloridaforfourmonths,andtheladyon thephonesaidIshouldhaveitcheckedwhenIreturned.That’swhenIlearnedmyfirstlesson:BeYourOwnAdvocate.Icanceledmytravelplansandscheduledanothermammogram. Aftertwomammograms,twoultrasoundsandsevenbiopsiesthefindingswereconflicting.Isupposedlyhadthree lesions,oneat3o’clock,6o’clockand9o’clock.Itdidn’tmakesensetome.Thesurgeonwasreadytodoalumpectomy ononebreast,butIsaid“No, takethemboth.”AfterthesurgerythedoctorsaidthatwasthesmartestdecisionIcould havemade;onebreastwasfullofcancer.Itisaterrifyingsituation.Askquestionsandresearchthepossibilities. Thedoctorsandnursesdothebesttheycan,buteachsituationisdifferent.Iamveryfortunate,we caughtitearlybeforeitspreadtomylymphnodes.Ihad30sessionsofradiationandnochemo.
IamcancerfreeandthankfulforthemedicalattentionIreceived!
Nancy Vogt / Echo Journal
Autumn Loge, left, of Pine River, and Melissa Dooley, of Nisswa, host a Lakes Area
Grit & Grace potluck Sept. 26, 2024, at Timberwood Church in Nisswa for women battling and recovering from cancer.
GRIT & Grace on B3
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 said. “We always are looking for something to celebrate and a reason to eat food.”
The surgery was indeed a celebration, if not at least for the fact Thomas opted for that route instead of just a lumpectomy. The tumor in her breast was much larger than expected, and they
discovered two more cancerous tumors in the lymph nodes in her armpits. Those latter tumors had not previously shown up on any other scans.
After surgery came five weeks of 25 radiation treatments at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Thomas stayed at the American Cancer Society Hope Lodge during her time there, with family members able to once again be by her side.
“That was amazing, being able to stay there and being with people that may not have the experience with breast cancer, but that are experiencing cancer, and we’re all in the same boat with getting radiation and being away from home,” Thomas said.
With radiation came complications.
Two skin infections threw a wrench in the treatments, as did another, more severe issue.
Thomas woke up one night with the kind of pain and numbness associated with a heart
attack. It wouldn’t be the last time those symptoms reared up during radiation either.
The symptoms ended up pointing to pericarditis, a rare side effect of radiation that sees swelling and irritation of the sac-like tissue surrounding the heart. Symptoms can mimic a heart attack. Thomas was only the second patient her doctor had seen in 12 years to develop that condition after radiation.
Despite all the unforeseen problems and a couple painful nights in the ER, Thomas managed to finish her radiation treatments on time, even though it meant receiving three treatments in a 24-hour period.
“Which I do not recommend,” she said.
Now back at home, Thomas is technically cancer free but undergoing a new chemotherapy treatment and monthly Zoladex shots, which stop the ovaries from
THOMAS
Contributed
Larae Thomas (second from right) poses with her family Aug. 30, 2024, at Mayo Clinic after ringing a bell signifying the end of her five weeks of radiation treatments.
radiation and reconstruction surgery.
Similarly, Dooley’s breast cancer journey started at about the same time. She was diagnosed with grade 3, triple positive invasive ductal carcinoma — a fast-growing cancer. She started chemotherapy 12 days later, and underwent 60 weeks of chemotherapy and HER2 immunotherapy, a double mastectomy, radiation treatment, reconstruction surgery and hormone therapy.
Now she is part of a vaccine research study. The first immunotherapy treatment she had was only five years old, and the second immunotherapy she had with chemotherapy treatments was
producing estrogen.
She’ll continue getting those shots with a giant 16-gauge email either indefinitely, or until she can get a hysterectomy.
Chemo treatments should be done in April, after which Thomas hopes she can then have reconstruction surgery following the mastectomy.
A community of support
Throughout her cancer journey, Thomas has continually had a strong support system of people around her, including her husband, two daughters, sister, parents and countless other family members and friends.
Even though she no longer works at Pillager High School, the staff there decided to organize a fundraiser to help with hospital expenses.
only three years old.
“That’s what prompted me now to try to do this vaccine trial, is that maybe I can help future women,” Dooley said, citing those who helped her by doing trials for the medicines she received.
“The doctor was very specific. They were like, 10 years ago, HER2 was just a death sentence because there wasn’t any sort of treatment for it. So that’s when I signed up for this research study, even though I was ready to start feeling good again,” she said. Both women are thankful for their family and friend support networks. Their first Grit & Grace gathering included families, because the support person doesn’t always receive support. And it’s good for kids to see other
Thomas’ daughter played softball in Pillager, and Thomas always loved going to the games, so they decided on a Strike Out Cancer theme during a night when the varsity softball team played a late game under the lights.
She’s had to learn to humble herself a bit during this time in her life and allow other people to help her out.
“I’ve learned that allowing others to help you is there way of being able to heal, too. And I can’t take that away from them,” she said. “I would rather be the one helping everybody else, so that’s been a challenge for me.”
Sometimes even getting up in the morning is a challenge, too, but Thomas said it’s important to take those little steps each day of getting out of bed, taking a shower and getting dressed, even if she ends up just going
kids have parents fighting cancer.
Even if each support group meeting only helps one woman, Loge and Dooley said it’s worth it.
A big goal would be to turn Lakes Area Grit & Grace into a nonprofit to receive funding to help women financially.
“I think there’s just so many areas that it could grow, but I really think just getting to know the ladies and what their needs are, and tailor our growth toward what the need is,” Loge said.
right back to bed. That’s the advice she has for others struggling with their own cancer journey.
“Allowing yourself to sit there and wallow in your depression isn’t a good plan,” she said.
“You’ve got to get up every morning.”
And keeping up with regular doctor’s visits and mammograms is an important step, too.
Thomas’s cancer was Stage 3, caught early enough to still be treatable, allowing her the time to continue living her life.
“God’s got this,” she said, noting everyone’s cancer story is different, but she hopes those facing the challenge might be able to find a little strength and a little hope from her own story.
THERESA BOURKE may be reached at theresa. bourke@brainerddispatch. com or 218-855-5860.
For more information and to learn when and where the October gathering will be, visit “Lakes Area Grit &
Grace” on Facebook.
Nancy Vogt, PineandLakes Echo Journal editor, may be reached at 218-855-5877 or
nancy.vogt@pineandlakes. com. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter at www.twitter.com/@PEJ_ Nancy.
at www.twitter.com/ DispatchTheresa.
The Loge and Dooley families, wearing their Grit
Grace T-shirts
group gathering July 31, 2024, at The Outpost in Pequot Lakes,
from left: Drey and Autumn Loge, Margo and Ariel Dooley, Nollie and Adley Loge, and Paul and Melissa Dooley. Not pictured is the Dooleys’ son, Gavin.
Contributed Larae Thomas and her husband, Joe, pause for a photo before her first chemotherapy appointment on Feb. 14, 2024.
