BREAST CANCER
Awareness Month
It started as a small lump on her collar bone two years ago.
Since then Brenda Zahn has had chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and radiation but now she is focusing on the positives of what she has been through and is looking optimistically at the future.
That little lump on her collarbone grew rapidly and a biopsy in October 2015 revealed secondary cancer. It would take a range of diagnostic tests to determine she had aggressive stage three breast cancer.
“It was like someone hit me in the gut. I was like it can’t be me, it must be another Brenda,” said Zahn.
She’d just gone through major life changing experiences anyway. Two months before her marriage had ended abruptly and she had moved into another house on her own. Now she was not able to work and that would hit her financially. She wondered how she could possibly stand anymore loss.
As she shared the diagnosis with family and friends the diagnosis seemed real but she still could not even say the word “cancer” for anther six months. She referred to it as “my illness” or “my disease”.
“Nothing makes it more real than having chemotherapy,” said Zahn.
She needed seven chemotherapy treatments, to slow things down, even before a double mastectomy. After each chemotherapy she would be desperately ill for seven to 10 days. The process took from January to July 2016. Instead of focusing on how long the process was taking she would celebrate after each treatment was over, counting down the number left.
It was during this period she discovered true friendship and the value of family.
“I won the lottery when it comes to friends,” she says describing the home cooked meals they brought over, the house cleaning they did and all the gardening.
Some days she felt so weak she could not even answer the phone at times so others stepped in to update everyone on how she was doing. They made a roster of what she needed to have done and people filled in the slots to help.
The blessing of friends who went above and beyond to support her through this process meant she had to be willing to accept the help people were offering.
Exactly a year a go the double mastectomy was done in Calgary and her best friend moved into her house to help for the first two weeks.
She needed physiotherapy to be able to raise her arms sufficiently to undergo radiation therapy. The five weeks of radiation would also be in Calgary and she moved in with a friend in Cochrane for the duration. It made her extremely tired and she developed second degree burns on her chest.
The need for radiation dictated that breast reconstruction could not take place when the mastectomy was done. She is now waiting for the skin to heal from the burns before scheduling reconstruction.
In the meantime breast prosthetics are also too heavy and uncomfortable but she is in awe about knitted “knockers” supplied by a group of women who volunteer to knit them in Calgary. She describes them as a “labour of love” that looks good and feels good.
With no family history of breast cancer Zahn found herself unprepared for the diagnosis and for some of the life changing decisions she would need to make. Sometimes she did not even know what questions to ask, she says.
She was at a restaurant having lunch with her daughter when she did what most women do regularly and ran her fingers through her hair. This time a large clump of hair remained in her hand. The physical changes to her body were a huge blow to her self-confidence. Through the Look Good Feel Good program by the local chapter of the Canadian Cancer Society she learned how to make the most of her looks even when her eyelashes and eyebrows had fallen out and the hair on her head was gone. She discovered that an expert styling of a wig can make all the difference.
She looked at the whole experience as something that she could learn from. She found herself creating a new identity and will shortly be returning to work on a part-time basis.