Tee Pittman remembers the day all too well.
After a regular check up with her obstetrician gynecologist in May 2003, Pittman was pestered by her doctor about getting a mammogram. That very same day, if possible.
Pittman, who will be 64 in December, didn’t really understand why it was necessary at the time. She was fine, and felt good, she remembered thinking.
“I got in the car, and it was late in the day, and I just thought, ‘Ugh, I don’t want to,'” said Pittman, who was 46 at the time. “I’ll do it later.”
Then, something convinced Pittman to get the mammogram done that day. Maybe it was a desire to catch up with her dear friend Lee Hackett, who worked at the radiology clinic at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle. Maybe it was something else entirely. But she went.
Pittman had just returned to her residence from the appointment when Hackett called her.
“Tee, there’s some irregularities,” Hackett said of the results. Instantly, Pittman was scheduled for another mammogram the next morning, which she thought was simply procedural because Hackett didn’t really sound concerned, she said.
“I had another one, left and went home,” Pittman said. “I hadn’t been home five minutes, then Lee called me and said, ‘Look, you’ve got signs of breast cancer and you need to come in and talk with your doctor.'”
Pittman underwent a needle biopsy and was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), meaning the cells that line the milk ducts of the breast have become cancerous, but they had not yet spread into the surrounding tissue.
“I remember just going, ‘Are you sure? I feel fine,'” Pittman said. “I had not done self exams. I don’t think I even knew how to do one. It just never entered my mind. My mother was very healthy. My two sisters were very healthy. It never crossed my mind.”
Her doctor wanted her tested to make sure the cancer had not spread to her lymph nodes. Thankfully, Pittman said, it had not.
Nevertheless, she had a treatment decision to make. She could have gone through chemotherapy, opted for radiation or even a lumpectomy.
After talking with her husband, Terre, she decided to do a mastectomy to remove the entire breast.
“Get it done,” Terre told her. “We’re not waiting on this.”
Pittman thought of her three sons, who were 15, 12 and 9 years old at the time. Their lives were just getting going. She didn’t want to allow herself to think what would happen if she wasn’t around. Pittman wasn’t going to wait.
“If I had not done anything, the consequences would have been worse,” said Pittman, a Columbus native. “I had to do something. There just wasn’t any waiting around. In two weeks, I had my breast removed, I had the beginnings of reconstructive surgery done at the same time, and I spent one night in the hospital, went home the next day, rested up over the weekend and Tuesday of the next week I watched my son’s baseball team win a state championship. It was just like that. I have never looked back.”
Pittman eventually finished the reconstructive surgery of her breast, which she called “time consuming” and said it took several trips to complete.
“It never really interfered with my life, or at least I didn’t let it,” she said. “I was very comfortable with my decision, and I was glad I did what I did. I don’t regret it.”
She often thinks back of her decision to not put off the mammogram and have it when it was recommended. It’s a decision she’ll be forever grateful for.
“If I had not gone in and had the mammogram that afternoon, I wouldn’t have done it,” Pittman said. “I wouldn’t have gone back and re-scheduled it. Even if I waited two or three months, the cancer cells could have, and probably would have, spread. The outcome could have been totally different.”
Pittman has spent the last 14 years doing accounting work for Rhett Real Estate. She still has a yearly mammogram and does self exams, checking herself for lumps or anything unusual. She has not had any cancer scares since 2003.
“I know what people think when they think of breast cancer,” Pittman said. “They think of the horrors, the sickness and the hair loss. My story is not that at all. My story goes to the importance of mammograms.”
Hodge is the former sports editor for The Dispatch.
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