October 22, 2014
July 13, 2011
Vol 13 No 28
Breast Cancer Awareness
Recipes
Spice Up The Holidays
11
Around Town
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Special Section
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School
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Jinglefest Lineup
Christy Parks and her mother Sue Sturhahn. Photo by Ray Rockwell
Previvor urges other women to get checked for breast cancer gene By Shawn Clubb A while back, Christy Parks worked with a friend to write a speech she would give about breast cancer. In crafting the speech, Parks called upon the words of her mother, Sue Sturhahn, a breast cancer survivor. “You must be an active participant in your survival; you need to learn as much as you can about your diagnosis and the treatments available to make good decisions,” she quoted her mother as having said. Those words are at the core of Parks’ belief when it comes to breast cancer. “You must be an active participant in your survival,” said Parks, 46, herself a breast cancer previvor. “That’s true. That is something that has stuck in my mind.” A Strong Family History In her speech, “In My Mother’s Footsteps,” Parks, an advertising sales rep for Community News, explains how her grandmother died in 1969 from breast cancer. She said her mother was diagnosed in 1988 with a cancerous lump during a gynecologist visit. This diagnosis caused her mother to be shocked, but not really surprised. Her mother opted to have a modified mastectomy and 13 months of chemotherapy. Ten years later, her breast cancer returned. “My mother knew that my potential for developing breast cancer could be as high as 80 percent. So, in 2004, at the urg-
ing of my mother, I took the genetic test to determine if the BRCA gene mutation was present,” Parks said in her speech. “I placed my faith in a negative test result. That’s why, when the doctor matter-offactly informed me that I did have the BRCA2 gene, I was stunned, surprised and emotionally unprepared in the moment. At 36 years old, that wasn’t something I expected to be dealing with.” The genes labeled BRCA1 and BRCA2 suppress tumors. Certain mutations to these genes significantly increase a person’s risk of developing breast cancer, ovarian cancer and other cancers, according to the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health. A Hard Decision Parks’ diagnosis left her with decisions to make. She had to decide whether to preemptively have her breast and ovaries removed, and whether to take Tamoxifen in an effort reduce the risk of breast cancer. “It was the hardest decision of my life, because it’s not like I had a doctor telling me, ‘Hey, you have appendicitis. You have to have appendix out.’ There was no direct doctor telling me what to do. I had to make the decision myself. It was so hard, because you had so many options available.” At age 36, Parks decided to have her ovaries removed and keep her breasts, and to take Tamoxifen. Combined with ovary removal, Parks said Tamoxifen
reduces her chance of developing breast cancer by 50 percent or more. The surgery was minimally invasive, but she was immediately thrust into menopause. Despite that dramatic change, she said she has no regrets. She did it in trying to ensure she would be around for her children, who are now 18 and 21 years old, and her husband. Parks has become a previvor, “someone who has hopefully beaten cancer before it’s materialized,” she said. See CANCER on page 2
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