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Ryan Stone
Left to right: Beth Garst, Missy Dye and Diedre Perry
Beth Garst, Missy Dye and Diedre Perry have more than having had breast cancer in common: Each has also been frank, realistic, informed and strong in her response to disease.
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Ryan Stone
Missy Dye
The further I’ve gotten out from the diagnosis, I don’t feel like cancer is my identity. It’s not at the front of my mind.
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Ryan Stone
Beth Garst
The thing I discovered about the breast cancer system is it’s like being on a conveyor belt fast-tracking through the steps.
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Ryan Stone
Diedre Perry
I would tell a woman with breast cancer to be careful who you let into your experience because some people say the stupidest things . . . Decide what you want to do within yourself.
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Ryan Stone
Left to right: Beth Garst, Missy Dye and Diedre Perry
Beth Garst, Missy Dye and Diedre Perry have more than having had breast cancer in common: Each has also been frank, realistic, informed and strong in her response to disease.
Every breast cancer case is different, so there is no one-fits-all treatment. Women who have had breast cancer, however, universally agree on one thing: a woman needs to gather as much information as possible to help her make many decisions.
Beth Garst: Like being put on a ‘conveyor belt’
When Beth Garst found “a strange place…an indentation” in her left breast, she chalked it up to aging. “I was getting older, and the boobs were changing,” she says.
Garst, 53, who owns Howl ‘n Dog Designs, a website-creation and hosting business in Boones Mill with her husband Barry Briggs, put off seeing a doctor for more than two months.
Finally, she saw her physician, who sent her for a mammogram and then a biopsy that confirmed she had cancer.
“The thing I discovered about the breast cancer system is it’s like being on a conveyor belt fast-tracking through the steps,” she recalls.
Those steps included meeting with a surgeon to discuss her options in removing the cancerous tissue, with the plastic surgeon to talk about breast reconstruction techniques. Her options – which are available to most women with breast cancer – were to have chemotherapy, then a lumpectomy and more chemotherapy. Or, she could have a lumpectomy, then radiation and chemo. Or, if she chose a mastectomy, she could avoid radiation, but might still need chemotherapy.
Deciding which option was best was difficult.
“I got to the point where there were decisions to be made that I was not qualified to make,” she says. “But, I really liked my doctors.”
Garst used the internet to do research, but narrowed her search to sites she most trusted, cancer.org, breastcancer.org and the Mayo Clinic.
“I avoided the forums. I didn’t want to hear what other women had been through. Their decisions wouldn’t influence me.”
Garst also wanted to avoid radiation because she had family members who had encountered side effects from radiation treatments of cancers.
The affected area of her breast was large, which meant the best way to avoid radiation was to have a mastectomy. She also would need reduction surgery on her other breast so they would be symmetrical.
She had the mastectomy in October 2010, spending one day in the hospital. The surgeon also removed some lymph nodes; cancer was found in only one.
In December, she had the reduction surgery. “I started exercising after each surgery as soon as I could lift something,” says Garst, who lives on a farm and enjoys outdoor activities.
Because she was pre-menopausal and her cancer was hormone-sensitive, her oncologist recommended that for the next five years, she take tamoxifen, which blocks the effects of estrogen.
Garst says she tried to address her cancer like it was any other illness.
“I did not want to tell people I had breast cancer because it gets treated like a martyrdom disease, and I didn’t want to be lumped into that. Why is it different from a heart attack? I have mixed feelings about the whole hype around it.”
She has participated in one cancer walk, but doubts she will do any more.
“I do see a need to donate money to the American Cancer Society,” she says.
Missy Dye: Cancer found during fertility treatment
What could have been one of the happiest times in Missy Dye’s life became an extremely challenging one.
For two and a half years, she and her husband Brad had tried to have a baby. She had taken several rounds of clomid to stimulate her ovaries to produce eggs. They went through three rounds of artificial insemination unsuccessfully and then decided on in vitro fertilization. To prepare for that, Missy Dye took high doses of hormones.
In April 2011, two embryos were implanted in her womb. A few days later, she discovered a lump in her right breast. A mammogram and an ultrasound test confirmed she needed a biopsy of two suspicious areas in the breast.
The biopsy was done on a Friday, and on Monday, Dye learned she had Grade 3, ductal carcinoma. The cancer had spread to lymph nodes under her arm.
“Hormones caused the cancer to grow really fast. They made the cancer evident,”
Dye who is an administrative assistant to the CEO at LewisGale Medical Center, consulted Dr. Bob Williams, a breast surgeon who practices at LewisGale. He pointed out she needed to learn if she was pregnant or not before treatment could be planned.
“We went from praying that we were pregnant to praying that we weren’t,” Dye says.
She was not pregnant. Her treatment began with six rounds of chemotherapy followed by a bilateral mastectomy and breast reconstruction.
“I could have had a lumpectomy, but having both breasts removed gave me more peace of mind,” Dye says. “And, afterwards, both breasts would look the same.” The surgery was followed by six and a half weeks of radiation.
Her breast reconstruction involved using a muscle from her back to create the new breasts, the procedure is called a latissimus dorsi flap. The first reconstruction was in March, the second in July.
Missy, now 35, and Brad have had to give up the possibility of a pregnancy.
“That ship has pretty much sailed for me,” she says “Because my breast cancer was hormone-sensitive, I will be on tamoxifen for 10 years.”
Dye took six weeks off when she had the first reconstruction, but otherwise she has kept a normal routine, which she considers important.
“The further I’ve gotten out from the diagnosis, I don’t feel like cancer is my identity. It’s not at the front of my mind.”
Dye, who says she likes to talk and talks fast, has used her experience to increase awareness of breast cancer. “I’m very open. I will talk to anybody who wants me to.”
While the experience of cancer can bring a family closer, Dye says it is helpful to talk with other people going through a similar battle.
Deidre Perry: 10 years of routine exams; then cancer
Roanoke insurance executive Deirdre Perry had no anxiety when she went for her regular ob-gyn checkup and mammogram at age 50. After all, she had a decade of “no problem” reports from similar screenings.
“I went through the mammogram and regular exam, and the doctor said he said he felt something in one breast and then he also felt something in the other breast,” Perry says. She still did not worry when she went for an ultrasound exam two days later. Her mind was elsewhere. She was so pleased her doctor had finally agreed that a hysterectomy would be the appropriate relief from the uterine fibroid tumors that had caused her so much discomfort.
“Then it got scary when they called me and wanted to do a biopsy,” Perry says.
From the biopsy, she learned she had cancer in both breasts. She then was asked if she had a surgeon to which she recalls she replied: “I have no clue. You just gave me this news. I don’t have a surgeon. I don’t know anything about breast cancer.”
Her sister and her daughter first took her to a bookstore to look for information. “Everything there about breast cancer was pink. I said ‘I can’t do that,’ ” Perry recalls. She did get literature from her doctors and she also was inspired by a book, “Thanks for the Mammogram,” which looks at the cancer experience with humor.
She was bolstered, too, by comments from a male friend who had gone through breast cancer with his wife. He told her: “This is not a death sentence. You have to stay positive, keep strong because attitude can affect health.”
“But, there were mornings I woke up and thought, ‘I can’t believe I have cancer,’ but you have to decide to deal with it,” says Perry.
She also liked the advice “to take a friend with you to the doctor and have the friend write down information. You need a partner; my sister went to every doctor’s appointment.”
Perry also dreaded telling people about her diagnosis. Her daughter was married with a child and her son was in college. “I didn’t want him to lose his focus. They surprised me. They were so supportive.
“One thing I would tell a woman with breast cancer, however, is to be careful who you let into your experience because some people can say the stupidest things. Decide what you want to do within yourself. Do the education.”
On Sept. 1, 2010, Perry underwent a double mastectomy, the course of action recommended by her doctor. Her breast cancers were different types; one was considered sensitive to hormones, the other “environmental,” meaning its cause was unknown, Perry says. Because her maternal grandmother and another female relative had breast cancer, Perry also had a blood test to determine if she had the BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene mutation that could indicate a higher risk for breast cancer. The results would be valuable for her daughter. She did not have the mutations, which are associated with only 5 to 10 percent of breast cancers.
Following surgery, she had six chemotherapy treatments. She also underwent the hysterectomy. She did not opt for reconstructive surgery, although that remains an option for her.
Perry had been told she need not rush her decision for breast reconstruction, that she might be tired of “white coats” and want to take a break. It turned out to be good advice, since adjustment to the immediate menopause resulting from the hysterectomy was the most difficult event for her.
Before the hysterectomy, she had to take tamoxifen, which blocks the effects of hormones; after the hysterectomy, she was prescribed raloxifene. Perry also was eligible for a clinical trial testing calcium and Vitamin D for treatment in early stage breast cancer. She gets an injection every three months.
The breast cancer experience has not changed Perry’s desire to remain a private person, but she has participated in the Relay for Life American Cancer Society event the past two years and this year attended a retreat Carilion Clinic sponsored. She also spoke to a women’s revival meeting.
“I don’t go to a lot of other things,” Perry says.
She was persuaded by friends to pose for the Red Devil Warriors 2012 calendar, which was sold by the Roanoke Valley non-profit Red Warriors to raise money to battle breast cancer. Perry’s hair was just beginning to grow back after chemotherapy when she was Miss February. I