The call comes to me at my office several times a day. I can detect the fear in the caller\u2019s voice. I know that fear.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s just been diagnosed with breast cancer. She\u2019s found my name on the website for the Johns Hopkins Breast Center, where I\u2019m the director, or she\u2019s heard about us from one of our patients. Now she just needs to talk to someone.<\/p>\n
She dreads treatment or surgery. She doesn\u2019t know if she\u2019ll survive. Her voice chokes up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how you\u2019re feeling,\u201d I eventually say. \u201cI\u2019ve had breast cancer myself. I was afraid too.\u201d<\/p>\n
I can almost feel the relief surging through the phone line. And sometimes I steal a grateful glance across to the great rotunda where a figure towers above the building\u2019s bustling lobby.<\/p>\n
I wanted to be a nurse from the time I was a little girl. My mom loves to show off a black-and-white snapshot of me as a four-year-old in a nurse\u2019s outfit with my doll\u2019s head all bandaged up. It looks like I\u2019ve performed a craniotomy on it.<\/p>\n
When I first came to Johns Hopkins 29 years ago, I actually specialized in such patients. I worked for a neurosurgeon who treated people with malignant brain tumors and ruptured cerebral aneurysms.<\/p>\n
The operations were long and in those days the hospital didn\u2019t have a designated rep to inform the families of what was happening during surgery. I would go back and forth from the OR to the waiting room, reassuring loved ones as best I could.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t pretend it wasn\u2019t stressful. A hospital is a place of both suffering and healing. But I found the perfect way to soothe my frayed nerves.<\/p>\n
In the rotunda at the Broadway entrance was a 10-foot-high marble statue of Jesus, the Divine Healer. I could never walk by it without touching the toes and looking up to the serene face of Christ.<\/p>\n
I asked God to give my patients strength to cope with what lay ahead, and myself the wisdom to help them. Sometimes I\u2019d hum a hymn, one of the beautiful ones my mother sang in our small Methodist church. It always brought calm and reassurance.<\/p>\n
Eventually I moved to administration. Hospitals had entered the era of managed care, and cost containment was imperative. I became the director of performance improvement\u2014quite a title. I was constantly putting out fires.<\/p>\n
\u201cLil, you\u2019re going to burn out yourself before you\u2019re forty,\u201d my husband, Al, would warn me. But I cared about the hospital, even if I missed direct work with the patients.<\/p>\n
One perfectly ordinary morning when I was 38, I felt something unusual in my right breast. I assumed it was just a blocked duct, something I\u2019d had before. It would go away.<\/p>\n
I had a mammogram, which showed it was a cyst that had returned. It was easily aspirated by the radiologist. He decided to do a baseline mammogram of my other breast, the left one, and there he saw something that actually warranted a biopsy.<\/p>\n
Now I was the patient, frightened and unsure.<\/p>\n
I was convinced the biopsy would be negative for cancer. Unfortunately, my doctor would not return from a conference for another few days. Because of my position at the hospital, I knew where to find the pathology report. I logged on to the data bank to see what my report was.<\/p>\n
The words blurred in front of me: \u201cductal carcinoma\u2026multiple foci\u2026carcinoma.\u201d I stared at the computer screen, expecting the grim reaper to rise out of it, then logged off hastily.<\/p>\n
I hurried out of the hospital. I walked faster past the oncology corridor. For the first time I could remember, I didn\u2019t touch the foot of the Divine Healer when I passed. Didn\u2019t pray. Didn\u2019t even look up.<\/p>\n
Al is a truck driver and he was still on the road. I kept trying to think of some joke I could say to him, some way of laughing it off. But the minute he walked through the door, I blurted out, \u201cI have breast cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
His face was a mask of shock. Without a word he hugged me hard, as though he could squeeze the cancer out. \u201cWe\u2019ll fight this together,\u201d he finally said. \u201cWe\u2019ll beat it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
I like to keep things under control and I was firmly convinced that I could control this. I scheduled a surgery date in eight weeks. It would be a full mastectomy of the left breast because there were multiple areas of cancer.<\/p>\n
But first I had to clear off the work on my desk. As the weeks passed, I discovered there was one thing I couldn\u2019t control: my fear.<\/p>\n
Very early on the morning of the surgery, Al drove me to the hospital. I was wearing some old sweatpants. No makeup. In the half-empty lobby, at 5:30 A.M., the first person I saw was our hospital chaplain, Clyde Shallenberger. \u201cWhat are you doing here at this ungodly hour?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing without your work clothes on?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
Clyde was shocked to find out that I was having surgery. \u201cMy network at the hospital has failed me,\u201d he said. Then he added in a softer tone, \u201cThere are no ungodly hours anywhere. God is with us all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Upstairs I shed my sweats and got into my gown. Al kissed me. I was walked into the OR. I looked up at the bright lights. They strapped my arms and legs down. They connected me to an IV and put an oxygen mask over my face.<\/p>\n
My heart was racing. Lord,<\/em> I prayed, there is nothing more I can do but trust you.<\/em><\/p>\n Then, just before I fell unconscious, I heard a voice, a beautiful voice, my mother\u2019s voice singing a hymn I hadn\u2019t heard in years: \u201cToday, on the highway I saw him\/He gazed up and smiled at me\/Today on the highway I found him\/Jesus of Galilee.\u201d The Divine Healer.<\/p>\n The surgery went well and Al was with me every step of the way in the days and weeks that followed. One thing unnerved me. I dreaded him seeing the scar where my left breast had been. I\u2019d made a deal with him beforehand.<\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t show you what I look like until I\u2019m ready,\u201d I said, \u201cand when I do, I want you to show me your smile without your dentures.\u201d In all our years of marriage I had never<\/em> seen Al without his dentures.<\/p>\n The morning of my discharge from the hospital, while my surgeon was changing my dressing, he blithely called Al into my room. I was horrified. \u201cYou look fine,\u201d Al said, hugging me hard again. \u201cWe\u2019ll be fine.\u201d<\/p>\n I still haven\u2019t seen him without his dentures! I keep telling Al he owes me.<\/p>\n Not long after my operation I got a call from one of the hospital\u2019s doctors. \u201cMy secretary has just been diagnosed with breast cancer,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s terrified. Can you talk to her?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOf course,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n I guess you could say that I found my new calling that day. Personal experience as a breast cancer survivor had deepened my understanding of what a patient feels emotionally, physically, even spiritually.<\/p>\n And there were so many little things to do to help patients. For instance, what could be done to shorten the wait on test results? That alone would relieve an enormous amount of apprehension for women and their families.<\/p>\n What could we do to reassure them that their relationships with their spouses would survive, even strengthen? Couldn\u2019t we better prepare them for how they would feel after surgery? Encourage them to give themselves time to heal and rediscover life?<\/p>\n I had to undergo a second mastectomy for breast cancer just two years later and then finally got breast reconstruction a decade after that. All the while, I kept volunteering with breast cancer patients, counseling and comforting them. That led to the wonderful job I have today.<\/p>\n Every time I receive a phone call from someone who has just gotten the scary news, I feel I\u2019m right where I\u2019m supposed to be. I\u2019m in an office with a view across to the rotunda where my favorite statue stands, where there are no ungodly moments ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The call comes to me at my office several times a day. I can detect the fear in the caller\u2019s voice. I know that fear. She\u2019s just been diagnosed with breast cancer. She\u2019s found my name on the website for the Johns Hopkins Breast Center, where I\u2019m the director, or she\u2019s heard about us from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[250,51,204],"ppma_author":[868],"class_list":["post-22500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-healing","tag-breast-cancer","tag-inspirational-stories","tag-survival-stories"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n