Alaine Stevens: There is a family history but I didn’t think it would happen to me. I was just taking a shower; I just noticed a lump in my left breast, you and just - that’s different, you know.
So I called a friend and told her about it and she said, “Oh you know, most lumps are benign, don’t worry about it but come on and see me”, and she examined me and said, “Let’s just go ahead and send you for a mammogram just to make sure”, and so I went for the mammogram.
And they had me in there for quite a long time and then they wanted to do an ultrasound and at that time I knew pretty much that it was cancer and I did ask the doctor at that time. I said, “Is this cancer?”, and she couldn’t give me an answer but then she said, “I do need to have you come in for needle biopsy”.
So they did that the next day, and then the next day after that which was October 31, I was told by my friend that’s the nurse practitioner, that it was cancer and that it was this ductal carcinoma.
They scheduled me for surgery right away and then when the biopsy came back, that it was for sure cancer and the pathology report showed that they didn’t get clear margins, that it was deeper than what they thought and had spread into my lymph nodes. So I had three positive lymph nodes.
And he said, “Alaine, we are going to have to do a mastectomy and take out the nodes and you are going to have to have chemo and radiation”, and at that point I think I went numb. I just went numb. I remember looking at Danny and saying, “No, I am not going to settle for that”, and I said, “I am going to take this into my own hands”.
I needed someone that was going to take me by the hand and walk me through this fight for my life. I want a second opinion. I do not want to settle for removing my breast, and chemotherapy and radiation. I don’t want to be just treated as I have got cancer. I want to be treated; not just the cancer, and as I was convalescing at home with my mother, we were watching TV and a commercial came on of this hospital in Tulsa that treats cancer. And we listened to it and I was thinking, “Oh there are cancer centers here in Springfield, why should I go somewhere else?”
And we listened to the commercial and I think I got up and went into the kitchen and I came back and sat down, we flipped the channel – there was the commercial again, the same commercial came on again, and we talked about it a little bit and we switched another channel and within a few minutes the same commercial came on again.
And my mother said, “I think someone’s trying to tell you something. How many times have we seen this commercial?” And so I listened to it and I took down the information and I called that day, and I spoke to a Sharon on the phone. Everything she said made sense and it made me feel like she was there just for me, just waiting for my phone call.
It was five days after I spoke with Sharon that we came to Tulsa; we drove the three hours from Springfield and we talked about along the way, it was great because we got to talk about what we were going to expect and what we are going to get and was it going to be as great as what Sharon was saying it was going to be, and we walked through the door and people greeted us right away as ‘Hi, how are you doing?’
I felt like I was starting a new chapter and I felt like ‘okay, here I am. We are going to fight this thing’. I felt welcomed. I felt like it was going to be an adventure.
Alaine’s husband: So we had all these appointments for not just an oncologist; we had a pain doctor, a naturopathic doctor, a nutritionist, a psychologist – I mean I thought we were just going to see a doctor and here we are seeing all these different people because that’s the way they treat the whole person.
Alaine: And we got to see them all in the same day and they received us; they listened to us, they received us. It was like they were the only person there. There was a moment that I knew it was right when we spoke to the oncologist that spent an hour and a half with us. We share with everyone that we can, where I was treated.
There is an atmosphere of hope and there’s an atmosphere of tomorrow. What tomorrow is going to bring for you. There is life after cancer and it’s a full life, it’s a great life.