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Crabtree, detective cleared of wrongdoing
Boundary
discussion turns into PGE debate
Dundee to discuss
decision to cut reserves
Flu bug arrives
in state
Student
hospitalized after injury
Young
Newberg woman
battles breast cancer |
A new urgency punctuates certified nurse midwife Sue
Schrader's advice to young wommen |
By Gunnar Olson, Newberg Graphic
reporter
E-mail Gunnar at golson@eaglenewspapers.com
|
Part of Sue Schrader’s job as a certified nurse midwife is to
instruct women of all ages about how to perform monthly self breast exams.
Schrader followed her own advice, even though, as a woman in her 30s, she had
only a one in 250 chance of getting breast cancer. And last fall, she found a lump in her
breast. Since then she’s been through a myriad treatments, from surgeries to
chemotherapy and radiation.
“It’s been a really long year,” Schrader said Tuesday from her
office at Newberg Women’s Clinic.
Schrader’s eyes were attentive, her complexion healthy, and her hair
done up in a new spiky ’do. She was more than comfortable talking about her
experience and how it has given new urgency to the advice she delivers to her clients.
“I’m not shy with telling my story,” she said, adding that she hoped
it would encourage more women to administer self breast exams.
Schrader emphasized the need for women to start checking for lumps in their
breasts at an early age.
“Early detection is really the key to surviving,” Schrader said.
Women as young as 17 are being diagnosed with the cancer. She was 33 when she was
diagnosed.
“This isn’t a disease that affects just our grandmothers any
more.”
Providence Newberg Health Foundation is working to make earlier breast cancer
diagnosis available at Providence Newberg Hospital. The foundation has teamed up with
J’s Restaurant, 2017 Portland Road, to help generate funds for a new CAD machine
(computer-aided detection for mammography), which is able to diagnose one out of five
women with breast cancer by an average of 14 months earlier than other tests.
J’s Restaurant is donating 10 percent of the proceeds they make Sunday
to help fund the new machine.
Schrader’s battle with breast cancer began with a simple self
examination.
“I was pretty much in denial at first,” she said. She preferred to
think it was benign, which is more common in women her age.
Schrader figured she’d have it looked into. That was last fall.
She’s still having chemotherapy done once a week.
After a biopsy on Jan. 8, Schrader was diagnosed Jan. 9, and underwent
surgery on the 10th.
“It was so boom, boom, boom,” she said. “Get this out of me
now — that was what I wanted.”
On the 11th, she was at band practice. She plays the flute with a concert
band in Lake Oswego.
A couple treatment options were available to her — one of which would
have called for the complete removal of her breast. If her surgeon had said her chances of
survival would have increased by taking her breast, she said, her response would have
been: “Take them both.”
“I didn’t want to lose it if I didn’t have to,” she said.
And she didn’t.
The first wave of treatment didn’t rid her of the cancer, not the
surgery that took a golf-ball-sized lump out of her breast as well as the lymph nodes
under her arm, nor the chemotherapy that followed, including 35 doses of radiation —
that’s once a day five days a week for seven weeks.
Another piece of advice Schrader stressed was for women to get health
insurance. She said the cancer would have devastated her had she been without health care
insurance.
And, she advised, invest in a financial safety net, in case taking an
extended period of time off work is required for treatment. Schrader said she was
fortunate to work with generous people. Thanks to co-workers who donated 160 hours of paid
time off, she’s been able to work three-day weeks.
She has underwent more surgeries. In September she started chemotherapy
again, and continues to go once a week. Yet, all signs indicate that she will have a full
recovery.
The cancer may have taken away one dream for her. Schrader said she was
thinking about starting a family last year, before she was diagnosed. She had met a
wonderful man.
However, she said, “the chemo fried my ovaries.”
There’s a 50 percent chance of regaining her fertility. But now that
she’s a postmenopausal woman, Schrader is reminded every month that, for now, she
can’t conceive.
“That’s the dream that’s been taken away from me.” |
|
From Nov. 1,
2003, Newberg Graphic
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