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Monday, 16 June 2008 |
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 Staff photo/Kay Louth
Cancer survivor Shirley James sits at a table during the Southwestern Auglaize county Relay for Life event Saturday afternoon.
By KAY LOUTH
Staff Writer
NEW BREMEN — A local woman says a family experience with cancer prompted her to monitor her own health.
Diagnosed with cancer in her left breast in 2000, Shirley James underwent a radical mastectomy. As a part of her treatment she also underwent six months of chemotherapy and eventually would have a saline breast implant.
The cancer came back in 2005. This time James underwent radiation therapy and the saline breast implant was removed.
“I can’t have any more surgeries, can’t wear an implant,” James said. “I continue to take tamoxifen, the hormone blocking cancer drug.”
At first the loss of the breast implant took secondary place to beating the cancer. However James said she would come to regret its loss.
“At first I didn’t think so much about it, I just wanted to make sure the cancer was gone,” James said. “But now, having that smaller chest area, I see that every time I get dressed, take a shower, it’s a constant reminder. It’s just a mutation of your body.”
Breast cancer touched James’ life long before she developed the disease. In the 1950s, her grandmother had breast cancer. It was a time when the disease was still largely unknown and perhaps frightened people even more than it does today.
“She had it back when they just took everything and she had cobalt treatment and her poor little chest was like shoe leather,” James said.
The appearance was something James would find only out about when her grandmother was in a nursing home and needed help dressing. She never talked about cancer, James said, adding that back then no one talked about it.
“It was a death threat,” James said. “They thought it was contagious.”
It was her grandmother’s experience that led James to perform regular breast self-exams. It was during one of the self exams when James felt a lump, which turned out to be cancerous.
“I’m pretty diligent about that,” James said.
She was 45 when she got a baseline mammogram, noting that it was, “pretty late.” She and her sister, who was 40 at the time, went for mammograms at the same time.
James sees her oncologist three times a year and her surgeon once a year for checkups and continues to do self exams.
“I have to do it,” James said.
She is currently undergoing more testing and declined to talk any further about the testing. James is a regular participant in Southwestern Auglaize County Relay for Life and was the event’s first chairman after it was split up into a separate event from Wapakoneta’s event. |
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 17 June 2008 )
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