Breast Cancer Awareness Month stirs emotions, advice

By Emily Hilley-Sierzchula

A diagnosis of breast cancer is shocking and difficult, but survival can lead to profoundly positive changes in a person’s life.

“I don’t want to gloss over it, because women die from breast cancer, but the majority of us survive if it’s found early,” said Susan Bacon, 59, director of the Hill Country Memorial (HCM) Breast Center. Survival rates, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS) range from 93 percent (Stage 1) to 22 percent (Stage 4, meaning the cancer has spread to other organs.)

Bacon said being diagnosed was a shocking experience: “But, because of my position here I never had the ‘why me’ questions we see in many cancer patients. I already knew it could happen to anyone: 75-85 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer have no family history, which I didn’t either.”

Bacon’s co-worker, Emily Ottmers, 36, is also now a breast cancer survivor. The pair have leaned on one another for support.

Bacon was diagnosed in 2010, when she was 55; Ottmers was diagnosed in February, four years before the recommended time to start getting mammograms. Their stories are lessons in the importance of early detection by self-examinations.

Ottmers discovered her cancer when she was applying deodorant one morning and felt a lump in her armpit.

“On paper, I should not have breast cancer—I have no risk factors and no family history,” Ottmers said. “My surgeon said it was a case of really bad luck.”

Ottmers has been a mammography technician for 12 years, yet she admits a lack of vigilance about her own self-examinations. “I live in that world and I wasn’t worried,” she said. “I was not as faithful about self-exams as I should have been. It was just luck that I found it.”

For the full story, see Friday's Highlander.