Carolyn Abadie considered skipping her yearly mammogram 11 years ago. She didn’t, and it made a difference.
Her main focus was her knee after a botched surgery meant to fix a torn meniscus. She had several more surgeries, including one a week before her mammogram appointment, and getting into a car was difficult for her, she said. She hadn’t thought much of the lump that was a few inches above her breast, higher up in her ribcage, but she chose to go to the appointment because she thought the lump had gotten bigger.
She was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer on Oct. 1, 2008. She had a lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, and her treatment ended in August 2009.
“Once you get through all that, you meet a lot of people along the way who inspire you,” said Abadie, the manager of the family-owned Book Mart and Cafe in downtown Starkville.
The day she was diagnosed, she reached out to Diane Holloway, who had been diagnosed a year earlier. Abadie and Holloway were old friends who had fallen out of touch, but their mutual experience with breast cancer rekindled their friendship.
Abadie was later there for Holloway when her daughter was diagnosed with breast cancer and when Holloway had a mastectomy, she said.
“It’s a club that you sure don’t want to belong to, but I have met many wonderful people and have lifelong friends because of cancer, which is kind of crazy,” Holloway said.
One of those people for Abadie is Molly May, a 25-year-old breast cancer survivor. She was crowned Miss Mississippi State University in 2017, the year she graduated, and has competed in other beauty pageants including Miss Mississippi. She also had a double mastectomy at 19 after testing positive for the BRCA1 gene and a precancerous tumor that meant she would almost certainly develop breast cancer.
May’s memoir, “My Crowning Achievement: Beating Cancer,” was published in 2018 and is available at Book Mart and Cafe.
“We were looking for someone to carry it in Starkville, and Miss Carolyn stepped up to do that for me without even knowing me, which was so incredibly kind and just speaks to the person that she is,” May said. “It also just shows how much the cause and my story meant to her.”
May now lives in Jackson and works for the Memphis and Mississippi chapter of the nonprofit Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Abadie attends more than half of May’s events, most recently a book signing in Louisville on Tuesday, May said.
“She’s just a light,” May said. “She makes going (to events) an even more wonderful experience because she uplifts me constantly.”
Abadie knows what being uplifted is like. At the time of her diagnosis and treatment, she worked at the North Mississippi Medical Center’s Wellness Center, and her coworkers rallied behind her, she said. They brought her meals, held a run and made t-shirts in her honor.
She said she hopes people can take care of themselves well enough, such as through healthy eating habits and regular exercise, to avoid breast cancer if possible.
“Early detection is key,” Abadie said. “Go to your appointments. If I had skipped that one, I would have been at another stage or two.”
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