Breast Can­cer Aware­ness Month: A Maryville Sur­vivor's Story

As breast can­cer im­pacts peo­ple around the world, it also hap­pens to those around us at Maryville. Breast can­cer is a part of our moth­ers, cousins, pro­fes­sors, jan­i­tors and class­mates, and in Oc­to­ber, it is breast can­cer aware­ness month.

In 2013, Geri Dreil­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor, was go­ing to get a phys­i­cal when the doc­tor dis­cov­ered a lump in her breast. At this point in time she wanted to be pos­i­tive and hope it was­n’t can­cer­ous.

“Find­ing out I had breast can­cer was scary. It was­n’t any­thing that I was ex­pect­ing at all. I thought I was per­fectly healthy, and it was a to­tal sur­prise to me,” Dreil­ing said.

Find­ing out a friend or coworker may have breast can­cer is a very emo­tional ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I only knew that it was a lump,” Dreil­ing said. “I did­n’t want to tell any­one what the doc­tor told me, be­cause [at the time] I did­n’t know if it was can­cer­ous or not.”

“As soon as the doc­tor found the lump, I de­cided to go to the Site­man Can­cer Cen­ter for a fol­low up and for a mam­mo­gram to test it, be­cause when you first find some­thing, they don’t know if it is can­cer­ous or not. [It] takes a few weeks and is not fun to worry about. Once I went to Site­man, they told me it was pretty likely can­cer­ous be­fore they got the fi­nal re­sults back. Af­ter my biopsy, they con­firmed that it was can­cer­ous, and from there, I went into surgery.”

Luck­ily, tech­nol­ogy is so ad­vanced that they can test a tu­mor to see what they ge­netic makeup is. For­tu­nately, Dreil­ing had the low­est stage, stage 1 breast can­cer. It was not an ag­gres­sive form, so she was able to skip ra­di­a­tion com­pletely.

“Go­ing into the breast health cen­ter I saw a lot of young women go­ing through breast can­cer treat­ment. It was­n’t just older per­sons go­ing through it, so it was sober­ing to me see­ing that.” Dreil­ing said.

Breast can­cer aware­ness month is about in­form­ing peo­ple on this type of can­cer, sup­port­ing sur­vivors and re­mem­ber­ing those who lost their lives to this dis­ease. It is dev­as­tat­ing to fam­i­lies who have been af­fected by it, know­ing there is noth­ing per­son­ally that they can do to help their loved ones. How­ever, de­feat­ing breast can­cer is a feel­ing of em­pow­er­ment and re­lief so in­de­scrib­able.

Breast Can­cer can af­fect any­one. Sup­port by do­na­tions to the Breast Can­cer Foun­da­tion can help save a life. Check out www.abcf.org to do­nate and get in­volved.

The Amer­i­can Breast Can­cer Foun­da­tion (ABCF)

Their mission is to provide financial assistance for breast cancer screenings and tests regardless of age or gender. This is achieved by the Breast Can­cer As­sis­tance Pro­gram (BCAP), the Com­mu­nity Part­ner­ship Pro­gram and the Com­mu­nity Ad­vo­cacy Pro­gram. The goal of each of these programs to reduce disparities in access to diagnosis and the treatment of breast cancer.