Editor’s Note: In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, each Friday in October The Dispatch will feature an area resident’s story about battling the disease. If you know of an inspiring story we should share email [email protected].
Edna McGill began chemotherapy to treat breast cancer on her 60th birthday, in July 2014.
It would prove to be 100-percent effective.
That didn’t mean her battle with breast cancer was over, McGill explained from her home in Columbus Thursday.
“At the time I finished chemo, there was no evidence of cancer cells,” she said. “But I had to have surgery just to be cautious.”
McGill had been diagnosed in June — on Friday the 13th, she remembers — a few weeks after she found swelling around the lymph nodes under her arms. That’s a departure from what many people think of when they think of how women discover they have breast cancer, she acknowledged, since women are constantly told to check their breasts for lumps.
“It’s so important … if you notice anything, just get it seen about,” she said.
The diagnosis also came as McGill was settling into a new house and was just starting to enjoy retirement from a career in education, which ended with a stint as interim superintendent of Columbus Municipal School District in the 2013-14 school year.
“That will stop you in your tracks when you’re told you have cancer of any kind,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it. I just kept saying, ‘No, no.’ It was so hard to accept. I was very frightened.
“I am never speechless, but I literally could not formulate any words right then,” she added. “… I just sat there. I didn’t know what to think or how to think. It was just a total shock.”
‘More purposeful’
Though McGill would go on to have a partial mastectomy and 28 lymph nodes removed in December 2014 and several weeks of radiation in early 2015, she said the days when she was undergoing chemo were some of the most frightening.
Her doctor told her chemotherapy could affect her heart and she had to undergo a heart function test.
“That really scared me,” McGill said. “I thought, ‘Oh my, what if all this messes my heart up?’ When I had chemo and I’d be lying on the couch — because I really had no strength at all to do anything … — I could just feel my heart racing, and it would scare me that, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m not going to get a good report.’ If you didn’t get a good report, you couldn’t take the chemo that you would have to take to keep the cancer (from) going away.
“I prayed a lot about that particular scenario,” she added. “And then I would think about my son. He (was) getting married (at the time) and I … would get scared that I’m not going to be here to see his children. Those were some things that kind of stand out to me.”
Still, she said, she tried to never give up hope. She became thankful for daily routines. She prayed often. During her recovery, which took about a year after the radiation ended, she became more conscientious about eating fruits and vegetables and getting appropriate exercise, things she is still mindful of today.
“I’ve always been active, but now it’s more purposeful,” she said. “I’m more purposeful in taking care of myself. I stay active, but I make sure to get to the gym, I make sure to do some meal planning and be more observant of how I feel. I’m more cautious with my health.”
Finding support
McGill said she could not have gotten through the treatment and recovery without the support of family, friends and doctors.
One of the first things she did after being diagnosed was talk to people she knew who survived breast cancer before she went to her first oncologist appointment.
“Of course you get on the internet and start Googling. I did learn some things that gave me some questions to ask,” she said. “That was important, but talking to people was comforting. I talked to a lady that my daughter-in-law works with and she had breast cancer three years ago. She was doing OK, working. A friend of mine here who had been breast cancer … she was doing great. It helped me a whole lot to know that, ‘OK, these people had it and they’re OK. They don’t have it anymore.”
Though she received treatment at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas — and liked her doctors there — it also helped to have a local doctor to rely on. She also appreciated support and prayers from people she knew at First Baptist Church, where she still attends church, and other friends and family.
Her husband Rick, in particular, was supportive and would never let her give up, she said. He never once let her go to MD Anderson without him.
“He said, ‘I want you to get up and get dressed every day,'” she said. “He didn’t want me to give in to it.”
Rick said finding out Edna had cancer was like a “punch to the stomach.” He knew he had to be supportive and made up his mind to be “the strong one” for her.
“You’re going to fight the ‘why me, why us, how can this happen?'” he said. “All of those questions are going to come out, but you’ve got to put it all aside because there’s so much for you to do. … You’re going to have to be the one to hold her together.”
Five years later and both Edna and Rick are extremely grateful and hopeful the cancer will never come back.
“I’m remarkably fortunate that it’s five years and I’m still cancer-free,” Edna said. “Now I’m enjoying my life to the fullest. Having cancer really gives you a new perspective on what’s important in life.”
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