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Saluting the fighters, caregivers and survivors in the battle against cancer
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Lisa Shaner Age 52 Spouse Steve Shaner Cancer Breast cancer
‘THIS DOESN’T OWN YOU’ Survivor celebrates 5 more years of life
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his month brings a significant milestone for Lisa Shaner. After five years, her cancer will officially be in remission. She considers herself fortunate. Her cancer was caught by a mammogram before it had spread to surrounding tissue, considered Stage 0. “Sometimes I feel I have nothing; I shouldn’t be talking about it, because there’s so many other people who’ve had such worse situations,” she said. Yet, she also understands the importance of sharing her story. She credits the annual checkup where her cancer was discovered with finding it so early
(SEE OWN, PAGE C3)
Brown County Democrat OCTOBER 2016
Steve and Lisa Shaner at their home in Brown County.
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Brown County resident Danna Moore survived a bout with breast cancer in the 1990s.
‘THE COURSE OF MY LIFE CHANGED’ Diagnosis helped woman focus on own needs
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Danna Moore Age 62 Spouse Stephen Moore Cancer Breast cancer
t work in Maryland in the ’90s, Danna Moore was known as “the Bulldog.” “If they had a problem they couldn’t fix, they’d bring it to me,” she said. “I’d take a hold of it, and I’d shake it until it got fixed.” She thrived on being the go-to person. Yet, that came at a personal cost: She never stopped to ask what she should be doing for herself. Cancer threw Moore from that track. “I, for the first time in 45 years, discovered myself, what was really important to me,” she said. “I no longer needed to be a high-powered executive or the go-to person in the entire company nationwide. “It was a reawakening that there was a Danna Fisher Moore, human,” she said. Though her breast cancer was discovered while still in Stage I, the taxing experience of chemo and radiation did permanent damage. She lost 18 lymph nodes, her veins are smaller and difficult to locate, she has regular massages of her left arm to prevent fluid buildup, and she struggles with her memory. Yet, the experience gave her something as well. “The course of my life changed as a result of it,” she said. “It gave me permission not to break the glass ceiling. “Consciously or unconsciously, that’s all I’d wanted all my life: to be better, be better, be better, and this experience gave me permission — in my own head, of course — it gave me permission to let go.”
CHANGE Moore had never felt competent in her self-exams. Human tissue is not uniform, and she never knew if she would know what breast cancer felt like. “One of the takeaways for me, when you’re doing a self-exam, you’re not an expert,” she said. “It’s not, ‘Am I diagnosing cancer?’ We’re all experts in our own bodies. You’re looking for a change.” The change she found was subtle, a slight thickening, like the difference between the heel and other skin on a foot, she said. Her gynecologist had difficulty finding it, and when Moore was sent for an ultrasound, she had to insist they keep looking when they found nothing at first. Moore had a biopsy on a Wednesday, and asked her doctor not to make her wait the weekend, she said. At 9 p.m. Friday, she got the call. “My reaction was not of shock, nor of — it just was — I wasn’t upset, I wasn’t disappointed. It just was a fact,” she said. The tumor was 1.2 cm., but it was near her shoulder, and might never have been discovered by a mammogram until it was much more advanced, Moore said. On June 4, 1999, Moore went in for surgery. The first real emotional hit she took was after it. Moore had researched all she could on the internet, and she learned she may not need radiation or chemotherapy. Her oncologist said she would have to have both. “Well, I lost it,” she said. “I don’t know why, because, I mean, they’re just
words, but I cried. And my husband didn’t comfort me, nor did the doctor comfort me. “And that was the beginning of realizing that I was on my own for my emotional needs.”
LASTING EFFECTS In 1999, a sentinel node biopsy — the removal of a single lymph node to test whether cancer has spread — was a new technique, Moore said. The doctor pioneering the procedure was in Annapolis, where Moore was being treated. She was unable to receive the new procedure, though. Instead, doctors removed 18 lymph nodes, leaving a large hole in her armpit. She immediately had complications, and was unable to lift her arm over her shoulder without extreme pain a week after the procedure, she said. Her doctor was incredulous, she said. “He thought I was being a wimp — I proved to him I wasn’t being a wimp,” she said. At physical therapy, it was discovered she had “cording,” or axillary web syndrome. It is common to women who have undergone removal of lymph nodes associated with breast cancer surgery, according to breastcancer.org. The result is incredible pain and restriction of movement. Moore still has to go through the physical therapy exercises she began around 17 years ago to prevent the cording from recurring. She also gets regular massages to
(SEE COURSE, PAGE C3)
‘I WAS NOT GOING TO BE THE MAJORITY’ Jessica Mueller poses for a photo with her son Max, who was around 1 year old at the time, during the middle of her treatment. “Max came to all my treatments and doctors’ appointments. The whole medical staff loved seeing him and has watched him grow up,” Jessica said. She was diagnosed with Stage IV melanoma cancer in October 2013 after giving birth to Max. She had surgery to remove a tumor on her spinal cord four weeks after he was born.
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New mother pledged to stay alive for her son
essica and Chris Mueller’s lives had begun to fall in place. They had just welcomed a little boy named Max. Jessica had accepted her dream job in California. The couple was preparing for a big move in two months to the West Coast. “Our lives were finally what we planned it to be,” she said. In October 2013, three weeks after Max was born, Jessica was diagnosed with Stage IV melanoma cancer. The recovery rate was 10 to 15 percent. “The cancer hit and totally threw
us off track,” she said. Before her diagnosis and while she was pregnant, Jessica experienced severe back pains, so severe she couldn’t stand to walk for more than a minute at a time. “The doctor said, ‘You’re pregnant. That’s normal.’ At the end it was debilitating,” she said. Jessica gave birth to her son via cesarean section in Cincinnati. The couple had planned to live with Jessica’s parents for two months before moving to California.
(SEE MAJORITY, PAGE C3)
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Jessica Howe Mueller Age 33 Family Son Max, 3 Cancer Stage IV melanoma
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‘I WILL BEAT THIS’
MAJORITY CONTINUED FROM PAGE C2 But after Max was born the back pain was so severe Jessica ended up in the emergency room. That is when doctors found a 2-inch tumor on her spinal cord. A biopsy revealed the tumor was melanoma. “For me, the biggest thing was I was worried I would not be able to see my little boy grow up,” she said. “I didn’t even know if I was going to make it to Christmas or see his first steps.” A week later she had spinal surgery to remove the tumor. “I also had more places that had metastasized all throughout my skeletal system. Luckily, it wasn’t in any organs or anything like that, but it was all throughout my bones and my spine,” she said. The tumor had burst Jessica’s T5 vertebra, in the central section of her spine, so doctors removed it and replaced it with cement and titanium rods. “My spinal surgeon said he was shocked I could even walk and was not paralyzed because the tumor crushed my vertebra and was pushing into my spinal cord,” she said. “My back had hurt so bad for so long I was actually looking forward to the surgery like, ‘Get this out of me. I want this gone.’” Jessica went through radiation for two weeks after surgery. It drained her energy. With a newborn baby boy at home, she had to rely on her husband, family and friends to help. “My support system was absolutely amazing. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them. After my back surgery I couldn’t even lift more than five pounds for about a month. I wasn’t able
OWN CONTINUED FROM PAGE C1 and encourages other women to have such checkups. For Lisa, the treatment was not the hardest part, but the aftermath — particularly the effects of the drug Tamoxifen, which she has taken for five years to inhibit estrogen receptors. The drug is a common hormone therapy given for breast cancer, due to the link between breast cancer and estrogen, according to the American Cancer Society. Blocking estrogen receptors can have similar effects to menopause, such as hot flashes and nausea. “I dress for summer in the wintertime a lot,” she said.
ATTITUDE When she learned she had cancer, Lisa was alone at a routine checkup. She was shocked, but not shaken. “I didn’t get sad. I probably became more of a fighter,” she said.
COURSE CONTINUED FROM PAGE C2 control lymphedema, a swelling of her arm due to the lack of lymph nodes on that side of her body. Moore also regrets not having psychometric testing to establish her baseline mental capabilities before her treatment. “When I did finally go back to work — and even notice today — the ability to juggle 42,000 things at once doesn’t exist anymore,” she said. “My ability to function in my job was dramatically different; the ability to juggle stressful situations, dramatically different.” Moore was shifted to a different job after her 18-month leave for treatment, she said. She didn’t enjoy what she was doing anymore, and she negotiated an exit package. With her husband, Stephen, she bought a horse farm near Annapolis, and later went into real estate. After the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Moore and her husband decided they wanted to get away from major metropolitan
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She said she owes her recovery to her son. “What I just decided is I wanted to see him grow up and I was not going to be the majority,” she said. “I wanted to be the 10 to 15 percent that survive. Every time I would start to get scared or upset, I would just hold my little boy until the fear passed. I would just hold him and say, ‘I will beat this, I will beat this, I will beat this.’ He was my main drive to get better.” Jessica also found herself seeking out success stories as a way to cope with her diagnosis and illness. “Unfortunately, people don’t really think, and they’ll tell you, ‘Oh, I knew somebody who had cancer, but they passed away.’ They think they have good intentions,” she said. “When somebody would tell me, ‘Oh, yeah, we know somebody SUBMITTED PHOTO and they’ve been alive for 15 Jessica Mueller and her son, Max, visit California in July. Jessica was diagnosed years after.’ I would go out of my with Stage IV melanoma cancer in October 2013 after giving birth to Max. She way to look for a success story.” had surgery to remove a tumor on her spinal cord four weeks after he was born. One story that comes to mind is that of a woman who was diagnosed with Stage IV mela“The whole medical staff to hold him on my own. I would noma in the 1970s, when there loved seeing him and has have to have somebody put him wasn’t any treatment, who had watched him grow up,” she in my arms while I was sitting,” survived. said. she said. “I needed a lot of help “Just to hear one person who Her mother and Chris would and I got it, so that’s good.” also had it and that was still After radiation, Jessica began take turns driving her to her appointments when she couldn’t alive today, 30 years later, was immunotherapy for six months, huge for me,” she said. a treatment which uses parts of — which at one point was 44 After living with Jessica’s a person’s own immune system appointments in one week. parents for a year in Cincinto fight diseases like cancer, acJessica received her last infunati, the Muellers moved to cording to the American Cancer sion treatment this February. Indianapolis. Jessica was still She will have back pain for the Society. rest of her life and she is still get- receiving treatments, but was Then, doctors moved her to doing much better, she said. ting her energy back, she said. maintenance treatment where Jessica, whose last name She has had no evidence she received infusions once every was Howe when she worked three weeks. After four doses, she of disease for two years now. Melanoma doctors won’t put in Brown County, worked was moved to an infusion once patients in remission for at as an adult case manager every three months. least 10 years because the at Centerstone in Nashville She never went alone. recurrence rate is 87 percent. “I from 2008-10. Prior to that she Max often went with her to don’t plan to be in that perworked at Brown County High doctor appointments and her centage,” Jessica said. School as a special education treatments. “She kind of likes to try things on her own,” husband Steve Shaner said. “She’s very headstrong in determination, and it takes a little coaxing to say, ‘Let somebody help you.’” She continued to work through her surgery and radiation treatment, and remembers her hesitation over telling the three men she worked with what was happening. “It was really hard telling a stranger,” she said. “One of the guys, really touching, said, ‘Let’s go pray about it,’” she said. “It struck me as just a huge outpouring of somebody trying to help in the way that they knew how to help.” “People don’t know what to say to you,” she said. “Just asking people how they’re feeling and if there’s something you can do is really huge.” Though she said she kept a positive attitude throughout, four small words from her health coach still had a big impact: “This doesn’t own you.” “I think that’s important, that your life doesn’t change,” she said. “It’s not over. You don’t just sit and worry about it. You
areas. He had grown up in Carmel and attended Indiana University, so they settled on Brown County, and moved a to log cabin near Story in 2005. She opened a store in Nashville in 2012, Brown County Clocks and Collectibles. Stephen was going to do clock repair and she would run the store. A month after they opened, Stephen was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Now, Danna and Stephen both live in Bloomington, though she commutes to work in Nashville. “What I’ve learned through all of this — breast cancer and treatment and everything — is, if you’re not havin’ fun doin’ it, don’t do it. Life is too short,” she said.
LIFE Moore recalled showing up at a Master Gardeners meeting without a wig after her hair first started to grow back. None of the other members had seen her without a wig before, though they were aware of her treatment.
have to keep moving forward.” Lisa learned to slow down and take better care of herself. “I’ve always been very workcentric,” she said. She started paying more attention to what she ate and how it made her feel. She notices when she isn’t feeling well and whether stress or something like caffeine could be contributing. While she downplays much of her experience, she does bear the permanent reminders of her treatments, such as radiation burns and tattoos used to help aim the radiation. “I didn’t know what to expect with radiation,” she said. “It sounded very harmless when they talked about it.” She remembers two times that she broke down. The first was when she went in for an MRI, which was looking for any signs the cancer had spread. “It suddenly hit me that I had something I was going to have to go through,” she said. She became physically ill and went to the car to talk with her husband on the phone.
“It was a reveal: ‘Here I am, world,’” she said, “like a phoenix out of the ashes.” The baldness was freeing. “I think that’s when I truly let go,” she said. She bought a 1986 Porsche 911 and drove it to her first chemotherapy treatment. “It was really cool to drive down the street in my 911, bald,” she said, “kind of a ‘Thelma and Louise’ moment.” She learned to roll with the punches. She learned she didn’t have to be in control. “I realized that I could no longer be superwoman, and that’s OK,” she said. “It was a humbling experience for me.” “I got in touch with who I really am. I started listening to what my heart, my head, my body was saying.” Moore said she tries to reach out to people along the way, but she’s learned she doesn’t have to be the one doing all the work. The best way to do something for someone who is dealing with cancer and cancer treatment is to just do anything, she said. “So many women
“I just kind of stood back and bided my time and waited until the opportunity was right to let her know that I’m here and supporting and whatever I can,” Steve said. As a spouse, the one thing Steve said he would like to see from doctors and treatment providers is more inclusion of the family, taking time to sit down and explain what a cancer patient is going through. “There really wasn’t anybody to come talk to me, or to anybody in the family, about what was going on, what the process was,” he said. “I kind of had to figure that all out on my own.”
IMPACT Walking as a survivor during her first American Cancer Society Relay for Life was also a significant experience, Lisa said. “That was probably the second time that got me a bit, because I never considered myself a survivor of cancer,” she said. “I had it, it’s done, it’s over with.” Walking the Brown County High School track, Lisa was
won’t ask for help, and I was one of them,” she said. “There was never a person to ask for help for myself. I was always
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paraprofessional one semester and a math teacher the second. Chris taught in the moderate to severe needs special education room for about two years. Prior to that, he was a student teacher in the high school. Jessica’s friend and former Brown County resident Paula Roberts staged a fundraiser in Brown County and raised $800 to help pay Jessica’s medical bills. Now, Jessica lives in Lawrenceburg where she works in real estate. Max will turn 3 this month. For the first year of his life, he had to have CT scans to make sure the melanoma didn’t transfer to him while he was in the womb. Melanoma is one of two cancers that can transfer to an unborn baby. “It’s rare. It does not happen often, but it has happened before, so we wanted to be extra careful. But luckily, he handled all of the CT scans well and there was no evidence of disease anywhere,” Jessica said. She recently joined a support group on Facebook. She also volunteers with a local melanoma group in Cincinnati. When asked what she would share with someone who is battling cancer, Jessica shares her rule of thumb: “I needed to remain positive 90 percent. The other 10 percent of the time I could throw things, get angry, yell, do whatever I needed to do to, mourn and grieve and be mad. “But the remaining 90 percent of the time I needed to remain positive, and I truly 100 percent believe that that makes a big difference in getting through it,” she said. “My spinal surgeon sat me down with my whole family and said, ‘This is very serious. If you do not remain positive, you are already dead.’ It was very blunt, but it was exactly what I needed to hear.”
struck by how many people she knew who had also survived cancer, yet she had never known about it before that day. Relay gave her a connection to other survivors and their stories, which is something she would like to see more of in Brown County. She has nothing but praise for her nurses and doctors. She appreciates the support of family and friends, and how her husband’s fellow firefighters at the Brown County (Nashville) Volunteer Fire Department “treated me like a baby kitten” when she insisted on helping with their fish fry the weekend after her surgery. Yet, there was a kind of void once her treatments were through, she said. “What do you do once things are done? How should I feel?” Lisa said she would like to see some kind of local support group for cancer survivors. “And I would love to participate in something like that,” she said. “If I can share something that helps someone else going through it, that would make me happy.”
helping everybody else. “If you know somebody who’s going through this, don’t ask them what you can do for them,” she
said. “Just do something for them. Come clean their house, bring them food, sit with them, just be there.”
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