Breast Cancer Awareness • 7A
www.crossville-chronicle.com • Friday, October 9, 2015
Early intervention can make a difference in cancer treatment By Missy Wattenbarger Chronicle lifestyles editor
3512 Peavine Rd., Crossville, TN 38571 931-484-5122 • Toll Free: 877-484-5122 Cell: 931-248-3657 Gina Knight, Agent www.brownrealty.com EQUAL HOUSING
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On the morning of Sept. 29, Sheila Long walked out of a local cancer center a little drained, but full of optimism. She had just finished her last round of radiation, marking the end of a brief but frightening journey with breast cancer. “Oh, praise the Lord!” she said. “It’s been good, but you have a loss of energy, and that’s the big thing with radiation. After a few treatments, in the afternoon, you just go down hill and don’t have a lot of energy.” Long, who is 54 years old and has no family history of breast cancer, stays busy Monday through Saturday at Simonton’s Cheese and Gourmet House, 2278 Hwy. 127. Since 1994, she has spent her time handling the daily operations of the business, which she owns with her husband, Jim. Although the radiation sapped her energy, Long pushed through, counting her blessings that surgery and radiation were the only remedies needed to rid the cancer from her body. “They say it’ll take about six weeks or so before the radiation is out of my body, and once that’s all out of there, my energy should start to increase, at least I hope,” she said. Long’s cancer story begins with a missed mammogram, which is something she doesn’t recommend doing because it can make a difference in the type of treatment prescribed. Although it’s recommended for women to get annual mammograms starting at age 40, Long admitted she would skip a year or so between them. “And I had put off this one,” she said. “I should had went in like March or April, and things kept coming up and I kept putting it off. Then they called my mom [Selma Davis] because we went together last year and got our mammograms done at the [Knoxville Comprehensive Breast] Center to find out why I hadn’t been.” After some prompting from her mother, Long finally got around to getting a mammogram on June 3. The center also conducted an ultrasound as a precaution since her breast tissue is dense. This marked the second time that Long had to undergo additional imaging. “When I went back this year, I had my mammogram and it was fine. It came back fine. She did an ultrasound and that’s when she found a spot,” Long said. “They did a biopsy that day and I knew the next day that I had cancer,” she added. Long had to go back for a few MRIs, which picked up more spots. The biopsies of those, however, contained no cancer. By the end of the month, she was scheduled for surgery. Long was very concerned as it was her first surgery. She listed a great family and church family and “lots of prayers” for helping her get through it. “You can never have too many of them,” she said. On June 22, Long underwent a lumpectomy, which removed the cancerous spot, and some lymph nodes were removed as well
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Sheila Long, who recently finished radiation treatment for breast cancer, is looking forward to getting her energy back as her business, Simonton’s Cheese and Gourmet House, heads into its busiest season. as a precaution. Her doctor suggested she undergo 37 rounds of radiation as part of her recovery, but Long was reluctant. Because the surgery was a success and the lymph nodes showed no trace of cancer, she thought she would be fine without it. “My doctor advised me that doing the radiation with the lumpectomy was like doing a mastectomy. Your odds of it reoccurring is just about nothing, like three precent I think,” she explained. She pointed out that a test exists, called the Oncotype DX, that can analyze a
patient’s cancer tissue to see how it is likely to behave and respond to treatment. One of the other benefits of the test, which studies the activity of a specific group of genes, is that it also provides information about how likely (or unlikely) the breast cancer will come back. “They did a test to see… I think mine came back eight percent. So real low,” she said. Long opted to go to Cumberland Medical Center’s Regional Breast Center for radiation. She would arrive at the cancer center
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around 7:30 a.m. to receive her treatment, which would last about 10 minutes. Then she would head to work. She considers herself lucky that was her only commitment after surgery to keep cancer at bay. “It’s brutal,” she said about chemotherapy. “I have a friend who went through breast cancer and had a double mastectomy [and] See early page 9A
N ever Sto p Fig htin g Fo r A Cure.
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