Breast Cancer Diaries: Stacy
Photography by Dave Cooper
Text by Jennifer Cooper
“‘Strong’ doesn’t mean you handle things by yourself. ‘Strong’ means you have the inner strength to ask for what you need and sometimes demand what you need.”
Throughout the month of October, we’re sharing personal stories of women affected by breast cancer. This is part 3 of our series. Here are links to part 1 & 2.
Stacy Deems finalized her divorce in March of 2019.
“You know, it was really strange. I remember sitting in the courtroom and my lawyer looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to ask you one more time: Have you gone to the doctor? Are you fully healthy? Are you well?’”
“I told him yes, I’ve just seen the gynecologist and had a physical.”
“And he said, ‘Because you know, people get diagnoses after divorce. You want to make sure you have health insurance if you need it.’”
Six months later, she found the lump.
According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, one in eight American women will develop breast cancer in their lifetime. It’s so common in the U.S. that every two minutes a new woman will receive the same diagnosis as Stacy and Jennifer and Frieda.
It will be found through a lump in the breast or a rash on the nipple. It will be found in the shower or during sex or a routine breast exam. However it’s discovered, it will change the direction of life in an instant.
It was the height of the busy season at the Jewish Community Center where Stacy works when she felt a hard spot in her breast. She wanted to focus on getting through work so she put it out of her mind. Three weeks later, she saw a doctor.
For many women, especially women who are the primary caretakers for their families, putting their needs last is not only culturally reinforced, but economically as well.
This is especially true for single moms thanks to the Divorce Gap. Working women see a 20% decline in income after divorce and are nearly three times more likely to fall into poverty, making it even harder to take time off from work. [source]
The doctor confirmed what Stacy had already assumed. She had cancer. The diagnosis carried a weight beyond the medical concerns. It caused old traumas and grief to come flooding back. “I was diagnosed with cancer at the exact same age as my mom,” she said.
Image courtesy of Stacy Deems
Stacy’s mom was diagnosed with renal cell cancer the summer before Stacy’s senior year of high school. The treatments were intense and experimental. And they frequently took Stacy’s parents all over the U.S.
The cancer, the travel, and the stress took their toll on 17-year-old Stacy. It affected her emotionally. “After the diagnosis, I wasn’t home. I just couldn’t deal with it.” It also affected her physically. First came mono, followed by chickenpox. “Who gets chickenpox at 17?” Stacy asks. And I think, a young woman under extraordinary pressure.
Stacy ended up moving in with her parents’ best friend to convalesce because her mom was immunocompromised. Stacy couldn’t recover at home or be with family after her mom’s return home from the hospital.
It was an incredibly emotional and stressful time. Here was Stacy just growing into her adult life, while her mother was battling to save her own.
“I feel like since my mom passed away I was waiting for when it was my turn. ”
Stacy was 19 when her mom died. It’s weighed on her for decades. Right up to sitting in the doctor’s office that day hearing the news that she had cancer.
“The hardest thing after my diagnosis was to convince myself that I’m not my mom and it’s not going to be the same thing. I am going to have a totally different story and journey and I’m not going to wind up in the same situation.”
Stacy has completed six rounds of chemo and has two left to go. As I spoke with her, I noticed a lightness in her voice, as if she’s already won. It made me smile. I asked her how she got to this place.
“It was my doctor,” she explained. Her doctor explained his personal connection to breast cancer. His mother had fought and survived it. Hearing that helped Stacy see that there really could be a different story for her. “He told me my entire goal is a head game. He said they had the medical side covered, and I was responsible for how I dealt with this mentally. Then he prescribed me anti-anxiety meds,” Stacy laughs. “It helped me see that I was in charge of how I handled this.”
The meds worked. They gave her space to think about the future. So she started collecting as many stories and pieces of hope from others as she could. She also went back to her roots, which leaned heavily on her sarcastic and self-described obnoxious sense of humor. “My dad was a truck driver and I was a waitress so I had it in my nature to begin with.”
All the tools—medicine, humor, hope—helped her through some of the roughest patches, like when she returned to work and the people she’d worked with no longer knew how to act around her.
When Stacy returned to work, the facilities manager gave her an awkward kind of hug and asked Stacy what he could do for her. She told him, “Just be yourself.” He said, “But I’m kind of an asshole.”
It was exactly what Stacy needed, telling him, “You need to keep being yourself because if you change how you are around me because of my diagnosis I’m not going to be treated the way I should be treated.”
What Stacy meant was, “Treat me like I’m the same person as before.” Because she was the same. Cancer wasn’t going to define her. It may be a part of her story, but it’s not her whole story.
“I almost feel like the diagnosis for me was a relief. I feel like since my mom passed away I was waiting for when it was my turn. And I don’t think in all that time I was really living. I knew I was going to get cancer, I’m going to die. Now I see I get to write a new ending to this. I get to live the life she never got to live. I get to live into my 70s. I get to meet my grandkids. I get to retire.”
“In some ways, I’m living for both of us.”
And that living continues and will continue on long after Stacy’s brush with cancer.
“The hardest thing after my diagnosis was to convince myself that I’m not my mom. I am going to have a totally different story and journey and I’m not going to wind up in the same situation.”
There’s something I want to say before I let Stacy’s story go, and that’s about strength. I find in many ways the word “strong” is coming up for so many of us this year. Each of us has had to call on our own courage in the face of the almost unimaginable.
I’ve been thinking about the word “strong” throughout this series. What does it mean? Have I confused it with stoic? That dangerously romanticized practice of shutting off our emotions that keeps us apart from not only each other but also ourselves?
Does being “strong” mean you survive cancer? If so, what does that mean for those that die? That they weren’t strong enough? And that’s when Stacy schools me.
“I have this weird relationship with the word ‘strong.’ When my mom was sick we had a conversation. She said, ‘I’m not worried about you because you’re strong. You’re going to get through this.’”
“Meanwhile, I’m still in high school. So I’m taking the word ‘strong’ to mean I can’t grieve. And that lasted with me for years. I didn’t grieve her death until my late 20s, and that was after a lot of therapy to walk through the grieving process.”
“Since cancer, the word has come up again. I think my experience has made me realize that ‘strong’ doesn’t mean you handle things by yourself. ‘Strong’ means you have the inner strength to ask for what you need and sometimes demand what you need. ‘Strong’ means I know what I want. That I don’t lose my voice.”
Stacy found her voice, just like Jennifer, and I’m hoping just like you have too.
This series is about breast cancer, but it’s about so much more. It’s about care, healing, strength, courage, and love—not just for each other, but for ourselves. So really, it’s about radical love.
We could do with more of that in our world.
Here’s a sneak preview of our next story…
Jen
Jen’s first round of chemo propelled her into full-blown menopause. “I had one period and that was it,” she says.
And for a writer who wrote openly about her life including sex, something that gave her immense pleasure, things were about to get very uncomfortable.
Additional editing on this piece was provided by Kathy Cornwell
Additional story development for this series was provided by Cassie Boorn
Here’s a sneak preview of our next story…
Jen
Jen’s first round of chemo propelled her into full-blown menopause. “I had one period and that was it,” she says.
And for a writer who wrote openly about her life including sex, something that gave her immense pleasure, things were about to get very uncomfortable.
Additional editing on this piece was provided by Kathy Cornwell
Additional story development for this series was provided by Cassie Boorn