SOUTHERN LIVING MAGAZINE
Cancer Sisters
Six young breast cancer survivors fought through painful memories to author Just a Lump in the Road and to help new patients fighting the disease.
By Richard Banks
September 2008
They laugh and joke with each other, talk about family, friends, work, and feelings. They impart a wisdom coming from hard-earned experience, while giving of themselves and sharing hugs or the holding of a hand.
These six women, authors of Just a Lump in the Road, share a friendship that’s been forged in warmth and pain, fear and love, through moments that no one should undergo alone. Debbie, Gina, Tamara, Jackie, Cindy, and Donna are all survivors of breast cancer who helped each other as they faced the disease together. The women, all South Florida residents who were diagnosed prior to turning 45, experienced the power of mutual support. They wrote the book to make sure that other young women, whose needs often differ from older patients, could benefit from that same sort of assistance.
The women met when they joined the same support group at Lynn Cancer Institute at Boca Raton Community Hospital. Such support groups are, says Jackie, "a network for patients to discuss everything from diagnosis and treatment to emotional effects and drug effects. It empowers them by sharing information, but it’s also a time to talk about your feelings."
The authors are careful to explain that they do not offer medical advice. Support networks, they say, can fill a void during extremely trying times. "When all of this stuff happens," says Donna, "you have your medical experts and surgeries to correct this and that, but support is what gets you through it."
"All of the things that we gained from the support group are the reasons we wrote the book," Debbie says. "We are lucky to be at a place that has a proactive cancer center and a specialist that leads the meetings, but a lot of women don’t have this kind of opportunity."
"We approached the book chronologically," Cindy says, "discussing things such as what you do when you’re diagnosed, how you plan treatment options, and once you start treatment, what are the kinds of things you could experience. We tried to describe the experience and what we wish we would’ve known."
"The face of breast cancer is changing because of awareness and early detection," says Debbie. As a result, she adds, "there’s a better prognosis, but there wasn’t a book that addressed our needs. We have kids, we have to deal with the seemingly little things such as carpool and homework."
"We have dating concerns," Cindy adds, "or we’re recently married. These are all subjects we’ve addressed in the book."
In many ways, it wasn’t an easy book to write. "When I read it today, I still cry," says Gina. All, however, agree that it was worth the effort. "It was cathartic for us to write," notes Debbie. "It helped me to reflect back on this journey and put into perspective all that we went through. It’s also a happy story. It’s good and inspiring, and we all said if we can just help one person, just one new patient, it would be worth it."
For more information or to purchase Just a Lump in the Road, visit www.alumpintheroad.com. There are also links to other Web sites with information on breast cancer and support networks.
A Helping Hand
As with anyone fighting a difficult disease, breast cancer patients benefit greatly from help in many forms. The authors of Just a Lump in the Road offer the following tips to help a friend or family member get through her day.
Encourage her to join a support group or help her find someone to talk to.
Do her laundry and clean her house. Don’t ask because your friend will say no. Get a house key and go while she’s at a treatment, which can take six hours.
Offer a few hours to help your friend organize her paperwork and bills. During the times that your friend is feeling good, you don’t want her knee-deep in paperwork.
If she has children, volunteer to take them to some of their functions—Little League games, birthday parties, etc. Those places can be germ factories that women going through chemo should avoid.
Be understanding. Every woman deals with her diagnosis individually. As you read in our book, while we were all on the same journey, we often dealt with things differently.
A NOTE TO OUR READERS
"Cancer Sisters" is from the September 2008 issue of Florida Living: People & Places, a special section of Southern Living for our subscribers in Florida.
February 29th, 2008
"Lump In The Road" details Boca Raton women's breast cancer battles
By Christine Dardet
When Debbie Leifert was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 37, she immediately started thinking about her children. She worried that her boys, then four and six, would feel scared of how she looked and how sick she would be.
"I tried to keep their routines normal and did my best to take a shower, get dressed, and put my wig on before they came home from school and then interact with them as much as possible," said Leifert. "With the kids, my husband and I counted down my chemotherapy treatments and the days until I would be all better. Seeing my hair starting to grow, even the fuzz at the beginning, was a celebration in my house. To physically see that me getting better helped them believe that I was going to be okay."
Leifert details her experiences in a new book titled Just a Lump In The Road… Reflections of young breast cancer survivors along with five young women who she met during support group meetings at Boca Raton Community Hospital. The book is a compelling compilation of the authors' stories, who are all now courageous survivors.
Several of the women were initially told that they were just too young to have breast cancer. Unfortunately, the group is not alone. Over the past 30 years, an epidemic of breast cancer has swept the nation, affecting one in eight women and all of those who know her. Breast cancer does not discriminate, even when it comes to age. Often now, it is a young face and a young life suddenly dealing with subjects not learned in school and issues not talked about at girls' night out.
"Just a Lump in the Road… shares the kind of candid information, insight, and inspiration that only girlfriends who have 'been there' can deliver," said Jackie Ehrlich, who was diagnosed at 42. "With our modesty hurled aside, we discuss dating and mastectomies, children and mortality, and treatment and hair loss. Together with our doctors and health care professionals, who continue to care for us, we provide an overview of the many types of treatment options now available."
Although Ehrlich's diagnosis was devastating for her, the thought of not being there for her family was not an option. As difficult as breast cancer was for her to swallow, it was equally as traumatic for her teenage children. They were at the age where they were old enough to ask questions and comprehend what was going on, but they were not emotionally mature enough to deal with the information. Her teenagers were scared and embarrassed at the same time.
Ehrlich did her best to show them that she was going to be okay. She got up each morning at 4:00 for her morning run. The only differences were that she wore a wig, and she was a little weaker, a little slower, but she ran. She took her teenagers to school and went to work. After school, she would carpool the teens to the mall or to dinner with friends. She saved her worries and insecurities for her supportive husband and her support group.
"Without them, my difficult journey would have been impossible," said Ehrlich.
Leifert finds solace in the book and the overwhelming and positive response that it has received from young women looking for a coping resource. The group heard from people all over the country and traveled to the 8th Annual Conference for Young Women Affected by Cancer last weekend in Jacksonville where they held a book signing.
Ehrlich also find therapy in the book and has committed to making "newbie calls" each day on the way to work to new young women diagnosed in Boca Raton.
"Young women need a 'friend' close by that they can reach out to," said Ehrlich. "Sometimes it's just a phone call and sometimes it is a cup of coffee. I will never forget the power of being able to talk to someone like me who had gone through the same thing and was okay."
Giving a much needed voice to the young survivor, Just a Lump In The Road… offers validation, comfort, and encouragement to those battling cancer as well as their spouses, children, babysitters, friends, bosses, boyfriends, and significant others yet to come. For more information visit www.alumpintheroad.com.
On February 22, 2008 Tamara, Jackie and Debbie attended the 8th Annual Young Survival Coalition Conference in Jacksonville, FL for a book signing. It was an incredible experience attended by over 1,000 young survivors from all over the United States! This empowering and educational conference should be on all young breast cancer survivors’ lists of things to do. For more information about the Young Survival Coalition and future conferences visit www.youngsurvival.org
Breast cancer fundraiser set for Saturday
Sisterhood of survivors will race together
By Sally Apgar | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
January 18, 2008
While she was going through chemotherapy, Jackie Ehrlich woke up every morning, slapped a long blonde wig on her head and ran four miles. She wanted to be healthy, strong and normal.
"My wig was my security blanket," said Erhlich, a Boca Raton mother of three who was diagnosed two years ago with breast cancer at the age of 42. "Being bald is a symbol you are sick. If you wear a wig, nobody knows you are sick."
On Saturday morning, with her own hair now shoulder length and enhanced with blonde extensions, a cancer-free Ehrlich will run the 5K in the 17th annual Susan G. Komen South Florida Race for the Cure on Flagler Drive in West Palm Beach with an estimated 30,000 other participants.
Last year, the race along the Intracoastal Waterway attracted more than 23,000 participants and raised $1.7 million. Of that, 75 percent was used to fund local grants for research, education, screening and treatment and the balance was invested in cutting-edge research. Over the past six years, the South Florida Affiliate of the Komen Foundation has awarded more than $6 million to local nonprofit hospitals and organizations that provide breast cancer education, screening, biopsies and treatment.
The Komen foundation was started 25 years ago by Nancy Goodman Brinker of Palm Beach, a former Dallas socialite and now the chief of protocol for the White House, after her only sister died of breast cancer. From $200 stashed in a shoe box, Brinker, 61, grew a global breast cancer awareness movement that has 125 local affiliates and has invested $1 billion in research and health services. Brinker also founded the Race for the Cure, a national series of 115 races aimed at raising awareness.
"We are the largest grass roots breast cancer research organization in the world with outreach in 50 countries," said Brinker in a phone interview Thursday. The foundation "is not just fighting breast cancer at a local level but at a global level," she said.
More than 1 million women worldwide will be diagnosed this year with breast cancer. Even more disturbing to Brinker is the statistic that 70 percent of the new cases are occurring in undeveloped countries where diagnoses are late and, more often than not, people go untreated.
She said that the foundation funds cutting-edge research but also tries to compensate for the wide disparities in care.
Brinker fights breast cancer on a global level, but also understands why a woman in Boca Raton would try to survive chemo by running four miles every morning.
"I played polo when I had a port [for chemotherapy] in my chest," Brinker said. "My doctors went crazy, but I needed to prove that I could still do something competitive and aggressive."
During the Komen race Saturday, Ehrlich will be in the company of a few close friends she calls her "cancer sisters" — women she met during cancer treatment in a support group for women under 50 at Boca Raton Community Hospital.
The group of six women supported each other through mastectomies, chemotherapy, breast reconstructions and baldness. They said they became "famous" for meeting in the bathroom to examine each other's scars, wigs, implants or bra inserts. They shared emotions and the physical side affects of drugs. They took care of each other in ways doctors did not.
"The doctors wanted to cure us. But in our heads we were going to be fine. So we'd meet and talk about hair and boobs," said Ehrlich who acknowledges the fixation on hair was a distraction from thoughts about dying.
Debbie Leifert of Boca Raton, another cancer sister, who was diagnosed at the age of 37, said, "The group gave me a place to go where I didn't have to explain myself or feel like a burden. I didn't want pity. I just wanted someone to help me get through the day."
The sisters were so grateful for their support system that they wrote a breast cancer book published last month, Just a Lump in the Road ... Reflections of Young Breast Cancer Survivors. The book is aimed at young, newly diagnosed women who are being bombarded with information and are under pressure to make life-changing decisions. Using the perspectives of six women, the book covers issues from radiation and mastectomies to feelings about hair, beauty and identity.
Another cancer sister, Gina Castronovo of Lighthouse Point, resisted going to the support group for six months because "I wasn't going to sit in a circle and watch a bunch of women cry all over themselves."
But as soon as Castronovo walked into the room that changed. "I found a place that I could be OK."
Cancer survivors meet at Boca support group, write book
By Gretel Sarmiento
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Two years ago breast cancer brought six women together. The disease left them with a strong friendship, a book and a desire to support others.
Debbie Leifert, Jackie Ehrlich, Donna Palmisciano, Tamara Brennan, Cindy Goldberg, and Gina Castronovo will be participating each with a different group in Race for the Cure Saturday.
They were younger than 45 when they were diagnosed and met through a support group at Boca Raton Community Hospital.
Theirs is a woman-meets-woman, woman-battles-breast-cancer type of tale, which they put together in 163 pages and named "Just a Lump in the Road."
The book, which came out last month, aims to help all the women now battling breast cancer. One woman in eight either has or will develop breast cancer in her lifetime, according to the American Cancer Society.
"Just a Lump in the Road" contains personal experiences, reactions from relatives, friends and physicians, as well as helpful tips for dating, makeup and hospital visits.
For the most part, it's painfully specific.
"It becomes very difficult not only to physically have sex, but mentally as well," writes Brennan, of Boynton Beach. She and her husband had been married for three months when she was diagnosed.
"Whether it is in the arm or chest. It looks like an alien is living under the skin," writes Palmisciano, of Boca Raton, referring to the beginning of the chemotherapy process when a special valve or port is placed under the skin via which medications went into their bodies.
And, upon hearing her diagnosis, Castronovo writes.
"My wish is that I could wrap up the newly diagnosed breast cancer patients in yellow work tape with big black print that reads: CAUTION! HEALING IN PROGRESS! It would serve as a symbol to everyone entrusted with her care to proceed with caution; because just like a home that's being renovated, there's a lot of work being done under the facade."
Once in a while it would appear funny.
"I started wearing my wigs. They seemed to have their own identity so I named the long ones Tiffany One and Two and the short one Maxine. I can't say I ever felt like a sexy, hot bald woman, but I was damn close a couple of times," writes Goldberg, of Delray Beach.
Real, simple and yes, funny, is the way they meant it said Leifert, the main author. "When you go to a bookstore you find all these books but none telling you what it's like for young women or how to date," says Leifert, of Boca Raton. "We have little kids; some of us are singles, newlyweds." The money from the books purchased will go to breast cancer-related charities, she said.
October 2007
In support of breast cancer education and awareness, Debbie helped chair a Pink Ribbon Luncheon in her community. Four hundred women attended the luncheon at Woodfield Country Club in Boca Raton, FL. Speakers included renowned Medical Oncologist Dr. Charles Vogel, MD and Dr. Sue Friedman, DMV, founder of FORCE.
October 2007
Jackie Ehrlich and Gina Castronovo were spotlighted in the October 10, 2007 edition of the Palm Beach Post. Jackie and Gina participated in a calendar with other breast cancer survivors that had double mastectomies with reconstruction. This is yet another way they hope to raise awareness and money for the cause. The article also mentions "Just a Lump in the Road" as a resource for young women diagnosed with breast cancer. The book will be available for purchase soon.
