With the diagnosis, many things went through Allison’s mind, uppermost being would she be around to raise her young boys.
Allison’s husband, Mark, took her to all her chemotherapy treatments. She went through eight rounds, four with the medications adriamycin and cytoxin, and four with taxol.
The chemo presented numerous challenges. In addition to her having little in the way of energy to keep with boys, ages three and four, there were cognitive issues, forgetting this and that, but she said the hair loss was really traumatic. She said she felt she had lost some of her identity. After clumps of hair fell, she decided to shave her head and reluctantly became a ‘hat person.’
Allison Hancock eventually completed her regimen chemotherapy and radiation, there remained another phase to her journey. She had to go on an Aromatase inhibitor, which is meant to address any lingering cells. Allison said she might have been 40 years old, but she felt like she was 80. She experienced a lot of joint pain and muscle pain, but knew she had to be on this drug, if she wanted to defeat cancer. She also had a lack of energy. She loved to hike, and had these five-mile hikes she really liked, but just could go on them. Getting her body and her muscles and her joints back in shape was a process, but she finally made it back to normal.
Allison went to volunteer with a support in the Portland, Oregon metro area called Breast Friends. With the passage of time, she rose up the ranks and is now its executive director.
While Breast Friends has a number of in-person services it can offer those in the Portland area, its website has a wealth of information that can come to the aid of women worldwide as they go through their breast cancer journey.
Additional Resources:
Breast Friends: https://www.breastfriends.org
TRANSCRIPTION
Bruce Morton: Greetings and welcome. This is the Cancer Interviews podcast and I’m your host, Bruce Morton. Each person forced to go on a cancer journey has their own way of reacting to it. Our guest on this episode not only survived breast cancer, but she chose to be proactive in the fight against it. She is Allison Hancock of Tigard, Oregon, the executive director of the Breast Friends Cancer Support Network, and she’s here to tell her story. Allison, welcome to Cancer Interviews.
Allison Hancock: Thanks, Bruce. It’s great to be on your show.
BM: Allison, it is customary for us to learn more about guests outside of their involvement with cancer. We already know what you do for a living, but if would, let us know where you are from and when time allows, what you do for fun.
AH: I am married. I have been married to my husband Mark for 28 years, and as said, we reside in Tigard, Oregon. I am originally from the South. I grew up in Texas, moved to Connecticut in 1999 and both of my boys were born there. I have two boys, Josh, who is a senior at Oregon State University, and Jeremy is a sophomore at Oregon State University. In my free time I enjoy hiking, I enjoy exploring the beautiful Oregon Coast, I also enjoy gardening, photography and crafting.
BM: In Oregon, you are certainly in a great place to do all of that. Now, I want to ask about your life prior to your diagnosis. Would you say that at that time, you were in good health?
AH: Yes. Prior to my diagnosis, I was enjoying life, my boys were three and four years old at the time, I was being a mom, taking them to play groups, getting them involved in preschool, and then my life changed in the blink of an eye. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had gone in for my yearly exam. The doctor had felt something on my breast, and she recommended I get a mammogram and an ultrasound, which I did. The mammogram didn’t show anything, so they recommended doing the ultrasound, and they still couldn’t pick up anything. At that time, the doctor said that since tests reveal nothing there, let’s wait and see if it could be hormonal. I was 40 years old at the time, so I waited three months, and the tumor was still there, so they decided to have a biopsy, took out the tumor, and when they took out the tumor, they ended up going through the pathology report and the tumor ended up being cancerous. So, at 40 years old in 2004, I was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. It was Stage 2B and my life was forever changed that day.
BM: Allison, it is not a question of whether this was a good day. It is obviously a bad day anytime someone is diagnosed with cancer, but when you got this terrible news, a number of things must have gone through your mind. Those thoughts pertained to what?
AH: Some of the things that went through my mind were my wondering if I would be here for my boys. They were three and four at the time, they were toddlers, they were getting ready to go to preschool, and the thought occurred to me, ‘Will I be here? Will I be here to see them graduate high school, graduate college, be involved in their everyday life? What will my husband do if my treatment doesn’t work, as that would make a single dad and he will have to juggle his work with parenting? Will the treatment work? Did they catch it in time?’ All these thoughts go through your head. Lots of fear, lots of anxiety and you are really putting your trust in your doctors and your medical team to give you the best care possible.
BM: And in terms of support, how was Mark?
AH: Oh, Mark was wonderful. He was my rock. He was there for me and one of the things that he did that made it very special for me, I collect angels, they are the willow tree angels. I had eight rounds of chemo and four rounds of Adriamycin/Cytoxan and then four rounds of Taxol, and after each round he would give an angel to give me hope. It signified one step closer to the end of treatment. So, it was very special to have his support. He was there for me. He took me to every treatment. He was there for the boys, he was just a great supporter. I could not do it without him.
BM: Allison, with respect to treatment, sometimes breast cancer patients have options. In terms of your treatment, did you have options?
AH: I guess I did have options. I did have the option of doing a lumpectomy or mastectomy based on my particular diagnosis. I chose a lumpectomy. I went in a lumpectomy with chemo and radiation, and so I do not have the experience of doing a mastectomy, where they take the breast, and you no longer have a piece of your body. For me, my treatment was very successful with a lumpectomy.
BM: In retrospect, are you glad you chose a lumpectomy?
AH: Yes, I am. I am very happy with the surgeon that I had and all of my treatments. I had great care and support network.
BM: Chemo. What was the toughest part of it for you?
AH: The toughest part of chemo for me was just the energy. Having toddlers at home, having to be there with them, they are very active, and for me knowing I had to slow down when I couldn’t keep up with them. They really didn’t understand what I was going through. They knew that I was losing my hair. I didn’t have enough energy to do the things I did prior to my diagnosis, but me it was just the energy, the tiredness and losing your hair. I was raised in Texas, I had big Texas hair. The biggest part for me was losing my hair. I felt like I lost a piece of my identity.
BM: I am going to invoke a name you know. It is Becky Olson, the co-founder of Breast Friends, may she rest in peace. In our interview with Becky, she, too, suffered hair loss, but tried to address this difficult time with a sense of humor. Were you able to approach this juncture in the same manner?
AH: For me, it was traumatic when it happened. My diagnosis happened in November of 2004. I had treatment during Christmas. My mom had passed away a year prior to my diagnosis and so my dad was with us visiting. I remember sitting in my bedroom on Christmas Day and my hair was falling out. I wanted to be there for the pictures, to make sure that everything looked pristine on Christmas. Then I just decided to shave my head on Christmas evening just because it was traumatic feeling the clumps of hair coming out. There wasn’t anything funny or humorous at the time, but I exuded a different side of myself. I wasn’t really a hat person, but I became a hat person, and my friends brought me some really cute hats, so I could wear those.
BM: Your hair looks great. Are you still a hat person?
AH: No, I am not.
BM: Let’s talk about other phases of chemotherapy. I have been told that food tastes terrible because it tastes like metal, but in terms of what your appetite was like, in terms of what eating was like, what was that like?
AH: For me, usually I hear women gain weight while on chemo because of all the drugs. For me, I lost weight, and I don’t think that was because of my eating. I still enjoy eating. I craved salty foods more than I did anything else, but definitely have that metal taste, especially after the first few days of chemo. It wears after the first few days of chemotherapy, nothing really tastes good, but for me, those salty foods tasted the best.
BM: You mentioned the angels and the eight chemo treatments, so there must have been a day when you accumulated an eighth angel, and I am guessing at that point, you might have felt you were getting the upper hand on cancer. What was that like?
AH: For me it signified that it was the end of putting my body through so much pain. With the chemotherapy, you lose all of your hair, your nails start deteriorating, and you just don’t feel like yourself anymore. Being able to check off that I made it through eight rounds of chemo just was a real day of enjoyment. You ring the bell, and it signifies the end of a long treatment.
BM: Another aspect of chemo, and everybody I have spoken to has undergone chemo says pretty much the same thing and that is about ‘chemo brain,’ and your ability to focus, to remember things. Was chemo brain part of your experience?
AH: It was. I would be having a conversation, and I would try to get out a word, I couldn’t remember what that word was and that I would be talking to noticed that I was acting different and strange, and I would tell them it is the side effects of chemo. Eventually that wears off and you are able to retain your knowledge again. Also, as you get older you start losing your memory, so it’s interesting to be put in that situation.
BM: I have also heard from people who have undergone chemotherapy, that as grueling as the treatment is, they are glad that they underwent chemo. Can you say the same thing?
AH: Yes. I put my faith and trust in my medical team to give me the best care, and if chemotherapy was going to eradicate the cancer, take care of any lingering cancer cells after my tumor was removed, I was all for that.
BM: I want to trot out another name you know well, a member of the Breast Friends family and a guest of ours on Cancer Interviews, Michelle Beck. She said on one of her podcasts that the whole notion of survivorship brings with it its own set of challenges. Would you agree?
AH: Yes. Once you are done with treatment, everyone thinks that everything is going to be back to normal; but that’s not the case. After you go through your regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, depending on what type of cancer you had to be on an Aromatase inhibitor, which takes care of any lingering cells, and so with that AI I was on, being 40 years old, I felt like I was 80. There was a lot of joint pain, a lot of muscle pain, but I knew that in order for me to kick cancer, I needed to be on this drug. So, you may be looking great on the outside, but on the inside your body is still struggling to repair itself and to get back to a normal state.
BM: How tough was that?
AH: That was really tough. With my boys being so young, I was pretty active prior to cancer, so being on those drugs, I just had to take more time. I couldn’t go on a five-mile hike like I did previously. I had to work up to that. Eventually your body works into that shape and your muscles start working again and your joints feel a lot better.
BM: Allison, there was a point in which you had zero involvement with the Breast Friends Cancer Support Network. Now you are its executive director. Can you feel in the blanks and tell us how you got from Point ‘A’ to Point ‘B’?
AH: I was diagnosed in 2004, and I was living in Connecticut. When you are going through that diagnosis, you don’t know what’s going to happen and then fast forward to 2012, my job accepted a job here in Oregon, the boys were in middle school, so I had the opportunity to volunteer. I wanted to get out and wanted to start meeting people, what with my being new to the area. I stopped into the Breast Friends office. It is five minutes from my house, and I met Sharon Henefin, who has been a guest on your show. I sat down, met with her and she wrapped me a big hug, and I said I would love to volunteer at Breast Friends, and asked what they had available. At that time, they did not have a volunteer coordinator, so I started volunteering as the volunteer coordinator, and through a series of events that happened, I became the event coordinator, and then Becky (Olson) and Sharon were at that stage in their lives in which they were ready to retire. So, they were looking at someone who could take over for them and continue to build on that legacy that was built, so they asked me if I was interested and I said ‘yes,’ and in 2018, I became the executive director of Breast Friends.
BM: And what are those responsibilities like? How tough can they be?
AH: They were really tough in the beginning. Just getting your feet wet and settled in getting sponsorships, being a non-profit, all of the funding that we received comes from sponsorships, donors and the community, so it’s building those community relationships. It’s being able to share with the community we can provide for the women who have been impacted with breast cancer and also leading a team. I am a fulltime employee at Breast Friends. We have four other employees who are part time, and so it really takes a team to work together and to build up our programs and the support.
BM: There are going to be some people watching or listening who prior to this interview had never heard of Breast Friends. Tell us about some of the things Breast Friends can do for someone on a breast cancer journey.
AH: When Breast Friends was started, it was co-founded by Becky Olson and Sharon Henefin. During that time, in 2000, there wasn’t a lot of support for women who were going through breast cancer and so with their own experience and diagnoses, they thought that there was a void, there wasn’t emotional support for women, so they set out to create this amazing organization to offer support services and programs to women who are navigating their breast cancer journey. Currently, our programs have expanded, they have grown, we have a variety of different programs to be able to get that support. There are support groups. There is our breast cancer support group radio podcasts that are available on all your favorite podcast channels. People can listen to more than 300 episodes. They can not only help the cancer patient but can help her family and friends on how to be a better caregiver. We have workshops. Because of COVID, we have really branched out and did a lot of Zoom meetings. That opened up a huge opportunity to support women, not only in the Portland metro area, but also all over the United States.
BM: For those who are not in metro Portland, because that’s where you are, what can Breast Friends do via the internet to help those on a breast cancer journey who don’t reside in the metro area? Oh, and if you would, give us your web address.
AH: It’s www.breastfriends.org. On the website, there is a variety of different ways you can connect. As I’d mentioned, we do have Zoom workshops that are still going on, so those are really important to be able to give you the opportunity to connect with other women who have walked in those shoes of going through a cancer diagnosis. We also have our Breast Friends podcast. In addition, we have some tips and tools, some brochures that are really helpful on how to be a better caregiver, how to help you through your journey. There is one brochure for when Mom has cancer. It addresses talking to your children about your diagnosis and letting them, letting them know it is not their fault, that you are there and that you will get better through the treatments. We also have resources, and we have a mentorship program. If you are in an area that doesn’t have support, please feel free to reach out to us through our website and you can connect to another woman who has gone through that cancer journey and we can answer questions, we can be a friend to you.
BM: Allison, you were not there when the idea for Breast Friends was hatched, but I think you probably have an idea of the scope of the services that were offered at that time and obviously because you are the one in charge, you know the scope is now and it is much bigger than it was in the year 2000. So, my next question to you is, I suspect, you have a vision of Breast Friends, in the future, doing even more than it is doing now. What are some of the things on the drawing board?
AH: A couple of things that are top of mind for strategic planning as the board and I are looking at growing. One of our goals is to be visible, be out there in the community and to get resources to not only the woman going through cancer, but also her partner, her family members, her co-workers and also be able to train others to be a mentor, how to be a friend to someone who has gone through cancer and to support and encourage them. Also, how to talk not only to your friends and family, but also to your co-workers and your employees and employers about what it’s like going through cancer and give them some tools and training on how to be a better employer to their employees.
BM: Allison, we are going to wrap up now and I want to take the scope of this question and broaden it. Let’s imagine that you have encountered someone who has just been diagnosed with a type of cancer other than breast cancer. You know a thing or two about support groups. What would say to that person to extol the virtues of a connection with a support group?
AH: I would say for what we do at Breast Friends, we talk to another woman who calls us and says they have been recently diagnosed. We really urge them to get involved in a support group. Breast Friends’ mission is to ensure that no woman goes through cancer alone and that peer-to-peer support is so important to be to talk to another person. Your friends and family are great. They can be there to support you with meals, with child care, but there is just something about being able to talk to another person that has gone through treatment to understand what it is like going through it, the effects of chemotherapy, the effects of how to manage your anxiety and stress, how to navigate this cancer process and being able to share with another one in a safe place to let them know that they are not alone, that they will get the encouragement and hope, and just to be able to be there and to give them support. It’s so important to reach out to someone else. If you are not in the Portland metro area and you don’t have in your area an organization like Breast Friends, ask your medical provider, ask your nurse navigator about local resources that could help you connect with another support group. It’s just really important to let people know they have a safe place to come to talk.
BM: Allison Hancock, thanks so much. We really appreciate your sage advice, your inspiring story.
AH: Thank you for having me.
BM: We really appreciate your time and your story, and we want to remind you, if you are on a cancer journey, you are not alone. There are people like Allison who help you with advice and the ability to listen. So, until next time we’ll see you on down the road.
Support Group:
Breast Friends
SHOW NOTES
TITLE: Allison Hancock, Executive Director, Breast Friends - Tigard, Oregon, USA
Allison Hancock survived breast cancer, then decided to take action to help others with their cancer journeys. She became a volunteer the Oregon-based Breast Friends Cancer Support Network before ascending to the position of Executive Director. This is her story.
Additional Resources:
Breast Friends: www.breastfriends.org
Time Stamps:
02:22 Allison said her breast cancer diagnosis came out of the blue.
03:53 Enumerates her many thoughts once she was diagnosed.
06:45 Describes her treatment options.
08:29 Her hair loss from chemo.
11:00 Allison recalls how she felt emotionally after the last of her eight chemo treatments.
11:57 Chemo brain.
14:09 Survivorship is tough.
24:29 Allison explains why anyone on a cancer journey should connect with a support group.
KEYWORDS (tags):
breast cancer
adrimycin
cytoxan
cancer
taxol
cancer interviews
aromatase inhibitors
lumpectomy
bruce morton
mastectomy
chemotherapy
allison hancock
radiation treatment

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