DESCRIPTION:
A nurse practitioner found a lump in one of Becky Olson’s breasts at age 36. That led to her first breast cancer diagnosis. The year was 1996, and that diagnosis was her first of five. At first, she got a lumpectomy on one breast, but when cancer appeared on the other, she got a double mastectomy. Intent on helping other women diagnosed with breast cancer, Becky established a radio show and co-founded a support group, Breast Friends, which thrives to this day. Becky passed away in 2022, but her legacy has touched those who formed her listening audience and all those she met through Breast Friends. She was a guest on the Cancer Interviews podcast in 2021.
Becky Olson was born in Alaska, lived in Denver for a time, but most of her life was spent in the Portland, Oregon area. She worked full-time selling Yellow Pages advertising, and said sometimes she worked 16 hours a day. Looking back, Becky said if there is anything she has regretted about her life is that she spent too much time working.
She says with the exception of being overweight, she had never had any serious health issues prior to her first breast cancer diagnosis. Becky carried two gene mutations from her father, and she thinks that had much to do with her cancer journey.
Interested in losing weight, one day Becky went in for a physical. Instead of seeing her doctor, she was seen by a nurse practitioner who saw a lump in one of Becky’s breasts. She then asked Becky when her last mammogram was. When Becky replied seven years earlier, the nurse practitioner said she wasn’t letting Becky leave the office without making an appointment for a mammogram. The mammogram turned up a walnut-sized tumor, which doctors said was Stage III.
Becky did not want to lose all or part of a breast, so she opted for a lumpectomy with radiation. She said that was a tough call because the radiation makes reconstruction more difficult. His surgeon then said a lumpectomy followed by radiation and chemotherapy would be as effective as a mastectomy at treating the cancer. That said, it was still shocking to hear she would have to have eleven treatments of chemo in nine months. While she felt lousy during those nine months, Becky said the worst part for her was hair loss and dealing with hats and wigs.
Becky’s cancer journey made an impression. After her first diagnosis, she was inspired to co-found the support group, Breast Friends, which led to her radio show on breast cancer awareness and support, Breast Friends Around The Globe, which was heard in 113 countries.
Becky began working at Breast Friends part-time, but then she retired from the Yellow Pages, got her pension and could work at Breast Friends full-time after which she said Breast Friends “took off like a rocket.” Breast Friends offers programs and classes and one-on-one counseling for those on a breast cancer journey, and through its website, it can now offer this assistance worldwide.
Becky’s first and second diagnoses were confined to her breasts. When was diagnosed a third time, the cancer had spread to her sternum. She underwent more radiation, but with a fourth diagnosis in October 2018, the cancer spread to her lungs. Then in March 2020 came her fifth diagnosis. The cancer had spread to liver, bones, skull, hips, ribs, and spine. Becky said her doctor was an ardent believer in immunotherapy, but that didn’t work. He then went with a drug he had used in the past, taxol. In May 2020, Becky’s doctor told her to use what time she had left, even though he could not tell her how long she would live.
By way of advice, Becky told the Cancer Interviews podcast that despite the physical, mental and emotional anguish, without her cancer journey, she would not have founded Breast Friends, and she says to never lose hope.
Additional Resources:
Support Group:
Breast Friends: https://www.breastfriends.org
Book by Becky Olson: The Hat That Saved My Life
TRANSCRIPT
Jim Foster: Hello, and welcome to the Cancer Interviews podcast. I am your host, Jim Foster, and we look forward to sharing the cancer journey together. On today’s program, we have an incredible guest with us whose story we hope will provide a great deal of information, encouragement and inspiration. She is the mother of five, grandmother of five, a wife, a published author, a national motivational public speaker, a five-time breast cancer survivor, the co-founder of Breast Friends, as well as host of the Breast Friends Cancer Support radio network, and is joining us from her home in Portland, Oregon. Please join me in welcoming Becky Olson to the show. Becky, welcome to the Cancer Interviews podcast.
Becky Olson: Thank you, Jim, I am really looking forward to today, and happy to be here.
JF: Thank you so much for being here and taking time out from your busy day to share your story with our audience, and if you’re ready, let’s get right to it. Sound good?
BO: Yep.
JF: So, Becky, before we get to talking about your cancer journey, why don’t take a few moments to tell us about yourself, like where you are from, what your life was like, what your work and interests were, and a little about your family prior to your cancer experience.
BO: I was born in Alaska, lived in Denver for a while, and now I live in Portland, and I have been married to my husband, Bill, for 40 years. We have five children, I brought two of them into the marriage with me, so we have just had a very busy life since our first day of being together. I also worked full-time selling Yellow Page advertising, and it was a very busy and very stressful job, and I did that for many years. I was actually up to where I was working 16 hours a day. That was not unusual for me, and all that came when I had my cancer diagnosis. One regret I have is that I spent so much time at work because when the end of life happens, nobody says they wish what they would have done is work harder, because there are a lot better things than that, and that is where I am trying to lead my life now is better places.
JF: What was your overall health like in the years prior to cancer?
BO: I had never had any serious health issues before cancer, so it really caught me off guard. I had some weight issues, no diabetes, no heart issues, my heart was in really great shape, never anything real serious that became life-threatening until cancer hit me.
JF: Was there a history of cancer in your family that you knew of?
BO: I am glad you said ‘that I knew of,’ because breast cancer back in the day, nobody talked about it, so I didn’t know that I had a pretty heavy duty cancer in my family, I just didn’t know about it. So, when they asked me that question the first time, I said no, there is no cancer in my family, but it turns out my dad’s mom had cancer, his sister had it twice, once at 35 and once at 53, and an early diagnosis like that is a sign of hereditary breast cancer. My cousin, who is my dad’s niece, she also had breast cancer, she got it after I did, but we were about the same age. I was diagnosed at 43. My mom had cancer, but not until later. She got it after I did. She’s so funny, she said, “I didn’t think I could get cancer from you.” We decided when I got it, I finally figured out that my dad’s side of the family was posing the risk to me, and I did find out I carried two gene mutations, I just found that out within the last couple years that I have the two gene mutations I inherited from my father. He never got cancer, so there’s no guarantee that even with the gene mutations that you will, but your risk greatly increases and obviously, mine did, so his brother, his niece, we all got the same genetic breakdowns.
JF: Is there something that caused you to think something was wrong?
BO: In my mid-thirties, mammograms generally started at age 40, and there has been some effort to move that to 50, but we have done some lobbying in Congress to not allow that to happen and keep it at 40. They don’t determine what age it happens, but they do determine insurance payouts, and we got the insurance companies to keep paying out at age 40. Anyway, at age 36, I actually found a lump in my breast, and it scared me because I didn’t know my history, but I knew lumps don’t belong there, and I went in for a mammogram and my doctor looked at the results and he told me that it was just a fibrous mass, some tissue mass and not to worry about it. He didn’t say ‘don’t ever worry about it,’ but that’s what I heard. We tend to hear what we want to hear, and I heard him say I don’t ever have to worry about that and it’s just fibrous, it’s not a problem, so for the next seven years, that fibrous tissue grew and kept getting bigger, and was just across the top of my right breast, but it grew so slowly I just really didn’t pay attention to it. One day I went in for a physical. I wanted to lose some weight, and I wanted to see my doctor first, but saw a nurse practitioner named Madeline Anderson. I love her to this day, she saved my life. She saw that lump, and she asked me when my last mammogram was. I said it was seven years ago, and she said she wasn’t going to let me leave until she made an appointment for me to get one. She suspected something was off, but I had no idea. There was no pain, no side effects, no nothing, just this lump that was growing, so I finally went in for a mammogram, hoping to reaffirm that it was just fibrous tissue, and lo and behold, it turned out not to be. It was actually a walnut-sized tumor inside of that mass and it had spread to my lymph nodes. It was already considered Stage III at that time, so it was pretty serious. That’s how we found it.
JF: I guess you would say it was important to get your preventive checkups, even if you get kind of a false negative test early on and not take it for granted.
BO: When we found it, I was 43. Had I started my routine mammograms at 40, we would have caught it three years earlier, and it is possible that it would not have been as big, that it might have been easier to treat because it wouldn’t have gotten in my lymph nodes maybe, so age 40, is a great age to consider starting those routine mammograms. The problem with doing it any earlier than that is it’s possible that they didn’t see any cancerous tissue and that cancer cells turn white on that ultrasound and if you have dense breast tissue, which I did at that time, it’s also white. So, it is hard to spot cancer in a dense breast. Since then, I think they have developed procedures that make that a little bit easier, but we are talking the 1990s, and in those days, they couldn’t see the difference, and probably didn’t know the difference between dense breast tissue, they didn’t know. So, I think if you have dense breast tissue and they tell you there is a lump there or if you feel a lump there, don’t rule out the possibility that it may be cancerous, because they could see it clearly at age 43 on an ultrasound, so go for more than just the mammogram. Have them do an ultrasound if they need to completely rule out what that lump is, and make sure.
JF: In general, your first time as well as the other times, how did you feel when you had gotten through the diagnosis process and made your decision about treatment options? Were there decisions you had to make to determine what type of treatment, or did your doctor say there was one clear path forward for your type of breast cancer?
BO: There’s the oncologist and there’s the surgeon. There are so many factors that go into this, but if you have a doctor you can trust, and it is important that you have a good feeling about the doctor that you are working with, and if you don’t, get a second opinion. I trusted my doctors, I didn’t feel I needed a second opinion, but the first thing I had to do was figure out surgically if I was going to do a mastectomy and remove that breast entirely or, I didn’t even know a lumpectomy existed, I didn’t even know about that option. So, I was kind of struggling with that a little bit when he told me that a lumpectomy was something we could do. What that meant at that time, I was pretty well endowed, and to remove one full breast or even one half of one would make them very uneven, and I didn’t like that idea very much, but I also didn’t like not having one at all, so it was a tough decision. Part of that decision was, if you do a lumpectomy, then they also request that you get radiation, and radiation makes reconstruction harder, later. So, there were a lot of actors that went into that first decision. I did end up deciding on the lumpectomy, with radiation. Part of that is because my surgeon was from the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York, which is huge. He had been recruited to Providence Cancer Center (in Portland, Oregon). I trusted him, I trusted his knowledge. He said that lumpectomy followed by chemo and radiation was as effective as a mastectomy in treating the problems. I went ahead and ended up doing that, and then I had to think about reconstruction down the road. That was hard. As far as chemo went, I trusted my oncologist, she was great and told me I was going to have eleven treatments of chemo in nine months, which shocked me. I had no idea I was going to be that involved, but I never sought a second opinion on that one.
JF: Was the treatment site in the town where you lived, did you have to travel far?
BO: No, I was fortunate. We have great medical care in Portland. We have world class doctors here, we have amazing support and treatment here.
JF: Did your treatment require that you stay in the hospital overnight or was it done on an outpatient basis?
BO: Generally, it was outpatient, and with the chemo treatments, you go, and you are in and out in a few hours. I think the lumpectomy was just a one-day procedure.
JF: With the chemo, did that cause you to lose your hair?
BO: When you talk about what was the hardest part about going through this, you know, the hair seems like such a superficial thing to be sweating about, but I was already overweight, I was 43 and now I was going bald. The thought of that, Jim, was so frightening to me because for a woman, we have already lost so much when we lose a part of a breast or all of a breast, then you have tubes dangling from the chemo, and so you already feel ugly that way, and now you are bald and that was really more than I could handle at the time. As silly as that sounds, people would say, it’s just hair and it will grow back, and my first instinct is to say to them, you shave your head and then we’ll talk about that. One of the things I found out during my battles is people don’t know what to say, they don’t want to say the wrong thing, so they don’t say anything, and then they feel guilty because too much time has passed, and they haven’t said anything, and they don’t know how to come back into your life and say something. So, to anybody listening, I want to say to you, if you are that friend who kinda shied away and you couldn’t think of what to do, just pick up the phone and you know, I just watched this podcast today and it made me think of you, and I am so sorry I have fallen out of your life and I want to promise to be here for you. That’s one piece of advice I want to give, and that’s how you fix it, it’s a simple fix. Can I tell the story about my book?
JF: By all means, tell us about it.
BO: This book is called, “The Hat That Saved My Life.” Right after my hair fell out, and you put a scarf or a hat on a bald head, people think you are going through cancer. One day I did that, I wore a hat, actually a scarf, then a hat on top of it, and thought that would trick people somehow, but it didn’t. I went out to meet my friends for lunch, and we were at this restaurant and as I was walking past this table with a tray of food, as this was a buffet, this older lady said to her lady friend, and they were looking right at me, “Oh, that poor thing, I’ll bet she’s got cancer,” and the last thing I want to be seen as is, ‘that poor thing,’ I don’t to be pitied for all this, I didn’t want to be ‘that poor thing,’ I didn’t know it until that very moment because that remark stung really bad, so I got to the table and I said to my friends that I had just had an experience that tells me something, and I said I would not go out in public again until my hair grows back, so if you guys want to see me you will have to come to my house, and that’s just the way it is. I didn’t want to be ‘that poor thing’ in public, so I came home and told me husband that from now on, he would do all the grocery shopping because I am not going out until my hair grows back. So he did all the grocery shopping. Overall, that was a really unpleasant experience. So, about a month and a half later, around the Fourth of July, 1996, I will never forget the day because it was great to give him this gift on Independence Day, a friend called me and she said, “Becky, I would love to come by because I have a gift for you.” So she came to my house and when I came to the door she had this paper bag. She gave me a hug, I heard the bag crinkle and I had no idea what was in it. She and her husband had found this gift, wanted me to have it, but he was afraid to give it to me because he wasn’t sure how I would take it. She then said she would not give it to me unless I received with a sense of humor, and that I should it is being given to me in love. She then handed me the bag, I opened it up, I looked inside, I started to get kind of choked up and I thought this was so cool. It was a little black and white baseball cap, and it read, “No Hair Day,” and it has a hole in the back where anyone can see I am bald. They found it in some catalog, and they ordered it for me. They loved it, his wife brought it to me, and I loved it. I ran into the bathroom and I took off my scarf, put the hat on and for the first time since all this happened, that hat actually put a smile on my face. I looked in the mirror, I smiled back, and I thought, “This is going to work, this is going to work,” and it led to my book, “The Hat That Saved My Life,” so when we talk about doing things for our friends and trying to support them through this, it’s not that my friend, Patty, did anything huge or spectacular, she didn’t send me on a trip somewhere, but the next day I got dressed, put on a little makeup, put the hat on and told my husband I was going to the grocery store. So now I am walking through the store and people were smiling at me and nodding at me and giving me thumbs up, and I thought this is really cool. When I got to the counter, I am one of these people that believes a lot of things happen in our lives for a reason and that there is meaning behind it. I think the hat was there for what was going to happen next. When I got to the line at the grocery store, there was this young man in the line in front of me. He knew I was looking at him, I felt me starring and he turned around at looked at right in the face and said, “Cool hat, lady, but why did you shave your head?” I said, “I didn’t shave it, Captain Chemo did,” and I was trying to be funny. But I turned his back to me, and I felt horrible as though I had just ruined his life. I couldn’t figure out how to fix the situation, he turned back and said, “Is it working?” I said, “So far, so good,” and with him and everybody in the line you could feel this huge sigh of relief from what could have been a tense situation. When I got to the counter, the gal said that she loved my attitude and I said it was all about the hat, it is not me. Then she said her mom was going through breast cancer, she is losing her hair, she is really stressing about it, and the gal wanted to know where I got the hat. I took it off my head in the middle of the store, just took it off and on the bill, it said, “Lake Street Caps,” but we were never able to find that hat. She wrote down the brand name and we thought it would be really cool if I had a truckload of these. We ended up through my foundation, Breast Friends, meeting a lady who told me if I drew up some images, she could turn them into images for hats that we could give to ladies who are bald. One of the conditions would be that we don’t sell the hats, and to this day, we have never sold the hats, we give out about 700 a year to women who are experiencing chemo hair loss and they send us a picture of their wearing the hats. That hat led to my book, it led to one of my stories I use as a motivational speaker, it really stresses the importance of humor to find ways to laugh. It’s the little things we do to support others in our lives that make a huge difference, so I just want to stress that. Another example is my husband’s cousin, Candace, who called me one day and asked me if I was going to be home, I said yes. I said the house would be a mess, but she wasn’t coming to see the house, she was coming to see me. Nonetheless, she showed up with a bucket of cleaning supplies, a stack of CDs and rubber gloves. She said I had told her the house was dirty, so she was going to help me clean it. She said I could help, or I could take a nap, I could sit and visit, whatever I wanted, but that she showed up to clean my home. She also said she needed a CD player because she could not clean without her music. At first, I sat and visited, watching her clean, but her energy rubbed off on me. I had been watching this cobweb grow in the corner of my dining room for weeks, I mean it was getting big, and knew it needed to come down, but didn’t get the broom to knock it down. But because she was there, I got the broom and knocked the stupid thing down and just felt like I had run a marathon. It was pretty amazing, but her energy had rubbed off on me and pretty soon I was cleaning things, too. I was feeling better and pretty soon, my focus was no longer on my cancer, but on her. It’s the little things, and those are the stories I remember the most. Some people gave me gift cards and people at my office took up a collection to come and clean my blinds because there was massive dust in my place, so my team took up a collection and they sent $400 to have someone clean up my blinds. Someone on my team at work bought a bunch of funny cards, had everyone sign them, and then every other day, one was dropped in the mail to me, telling me they missed and that they couldn’t wait for me to get back.
JF: I know you have been through cancer several times. How did your family deal with, not only your first time, but your relapses?
BO: As I mentioned, I have five kids and at the time of my first diagnosis, some had grown, one was going to college in Eugene, at the University of Oregon, and the other was working in Seattle. They were somewhat removed from the picture. My son would check up on me from day to day, but I still had three kids that were there. My daughter was 15, and the other two were 12 and 11. We didn’t tell them all right away what was going on because we wanted to wait until we knew what the treatment would be, which didn’t take long, but we didn’t wait long. One night we were watching a movie and my 11-year-old son looked at me and saw me with tears in my eyes. He asked why I was crying when watching this movie. I said it was because of the sun shining through the window. He closed the blinds, but I was still crying, which he could see. That’s when I told my kids we needed to pause the movie because there was something my husband and I need to tell you. To your audience, I want to say it’s easy to say that mom is going to be fine, but the truth is, we don’t really know that. If you promise to your kids you are going to be fine and then you are not fine, and the worst imaginable thing happens, we try to find a better way to say things. So, we told the kids even though it is scary what we are going through, I am getting great care and we have wonderful doctors doing everything they can to make this go away, but I am going to be a little bit sick for a while and we are going to do everything we can to make this go away. So I might need your help and my husband told them one thing you can do is keep your rooms clean because messes really stress out mommy, so you keep your rooms clean and don’t fight with each other because that stresses her, too. So, one would start fighting with the other, the other would say to stop fighting because that stresses mom. It was hard, but every time I would go to Chemo, my son that was still home, the 12-year-old, he would run out and say, “Mom, I love you,” and give me a big hug. He always wanted to say that before I went off to Chemo, so they did their part. My daughter is a little fashion goddess, so she made sure that I dressed appropriately even though I didn’t feel like it. One night I was watching TV, and they said my hair would start to fall out in three weeks before my second treatment. It was at that point where it was feeling crispy and just feeling weird, so I knew it was a matter of days before it was all going out. So, my daughter who was 15, not old enough to drive, called her friend and she came over and my daughter said they were running to the store and would be right back. She came home with a box of hair dye to turn me into a blonde. She said, “Mom, you have always wanted to be a blonde, and we’re going to see what you look like as a blonde, you’re only going to have your hair for a week, so no big deal. If you don’t like it, it’s going to be gone, anyway, but we are going to do this.” I thought it was silly. We are at the sink and doing all this stuff and they won’t let me look in the mirror until she was done, but I saw the look on her face, and she again said I was only going to have it for a week. Then she turned me around, and I looked in the mirror. It wasn’t blonde, nor was it the brown I was used to, it was cream of tomato soup orange. You could have poured a bowl of soup on my head and you wouldn’t know the difference. It looked terrible, but it was so funny. I laughed, I mean, what can you do, I was only going to have it for a week. The box of dye didn’t cost a of money, but the important thing was they took the time to do this to make me laugh and to bring a little joy into my life, even if only for a week. It’s a story I remember, and I tell it, so it’s those little things that people can do.
JF: All these years later from that moment, it seems you remember more than the inconveniences you went through as a patient, although at the time they may have seemed like insurmountable hurdles that you are facing.
BO: I was fortunate, Jim, I was able to take six months off from work because I had short-term disability, I was paying for through my company benefits. I had to go back to school to get my degree, and I was about three months in when my diagnosis hit me. I was taking a math class and decided even though I was staying home from work I could still finish that math class because I didn’t want to start over. So, I finished that, then I decided to continue on with school and my friends said I shouldn’t be doing school, you should be home taking care of yourself. Well, to me, staying home and taking care of myself means lying on my couch in my stinky pajamas all day, staring at mindless television and doing nothing of value. I had to do something beyond that, and a phrase came to me two years ago from a friend and it followed me, but I just didn’t have a name for it. She calls it ‘staying in the light’, meaning doing something you love in spite of what you are going through. Find a way to do something that brings you joy a little bit every day, even if it is only a few minutes at a time because it takes your focus off your circumstances and puts it out beyond something bigger than you. So, I stayed in school, then I actually finished my college degree. When I got my diagnosis, they told me I had a 60 percent chance to make it past five years, and I was really glad they were wrong because it took me seven years to graduate. So, my advice to listeners is, stay in the light, find something you enjoy, whether it is school, or now, for me, it is painting.
JF: So, your foundation, Breast Friends, is just located in Oregon, what is the scope of Breast Friends?
BO: We are located in Oregon, but we have a hat project that goes out nationwide. We have a radio show that is now listened to in 113 countries. As for how it came about, I am a list maker, and on my list was to speak in all 50 states. I had spoken in 32 states when my diagnosis hit, so I had 18 to go. Then I met this woman, Cara Duffy, she has a business called Power Ladies, and she does podcasts as well. Through our podcasts, she discovered I still wanted to speak in 18 states. One day she asked if it was important that I actually speak in all 50 states or that you speak to people in all 50 states. Sometimes we have to revise our goals a little bit because of life. Things happen and we can’t just hang on to one thing because it was on our list. So, speaking to people in all 50 states without actually going there could work, and she helped me create a Facebook group called Breast Friends Around the Globe. Then Cara and I talked about this radio show, and getting people in all 50 states, the other 18 that I was missing, to send us to people that they know and get them to listen to my show and then let me know where they listen from and I can put a little star on my map. I now have the remaining 18 states taken care of, thanks to Breast Friends Around the Globe. We decided after we got all 50 states, we would now focus on the world and see how many countries we can get around the globe. I now have a wall map and we have pins in all the spots where we have listeners. It’s got 113 pins on that map, meaning we have been listened to by somebody in all 113 nations, which is very cool, so because of that we have become kind of global. That’s been the emphasis of our global outreach, but people in Ireland and Italy and Israel, all these people, they get cancer, and they, too, don’t know what to do, so hopefully our show is giving them the inspiration and hope that they need to get through this journey and because we do this every week they can go back and listen to every podcast, if they like.
JF: And we will have links to all the resources Becky has mentioned, including her book, the Breast Friends organization and you will be able to find that in the description and Show Notes below. They’ll be easy to find. One question I had about your cancer journey. You are a five-time survivor. What can you tell us about those reoccurrences?
BO: Let me tell you about some of those. I had my second battle in 2004, so it was eight years after my first one. My youngest son, who was 11 the first time was now 19, and I said to him I had felt this lump when I was in the shower. I wasn’t due for a mammogram for a couple more months, but I felt the lump and wanted to know what was going on. So, I went in for another mammogram, it took a while to get things back to get results. I said to my son the good news is, if it is cancer, I can take more time off from work. He wondered aloud if I would rather have cancer than go to work, but maybe I did, as it took another year, but I resigned from my company, I retired, got my pension and got out of there. I was really glad I did, because up until that point, I always had to work on Breast Friends, part time, because I still had a full-time job, and I had kids at home. So, after quitting, I was able to work full-time on Breast Friends, and after that, Breast Friends took off like a rocket and then we have been building it slowly. You know, things happen when you can finally focus on them. Meanwhile, after getting a lumpectomy on one breast, there was cancer on the other, and I decided to get a double mastectomy and get rid of both of them and let me heal from it and deal with that reconstruction nightmare after radiation. So, I had a double mastectomy and that was kind of a life changing moment, too, to go through that. I had to go through Chemo, I didn’t have to go through radiation, although now in hindsight, I wish I had because a few years later, in 2017, I had been going in every few months. Regarding scans, there are two schools of thought: Either you do them regularly or you do them only when there is a problem, but we decided it was time to do one and we found this hot spot right in my sternum. So, having two gene mutations, that was probably why. My first two diagnoses were probably stand-alone issues, and the third it showed up in my sternum was a reoccurrence. We just did radiation and got rid of it, and it seemed like it was gone. Then a year later with a scan it had shown up again, but it also showed up in my lungs, and I thought, oh, man, that’s the big deal. That was in October 2018. Then in March 2020, it showed up in my lungs and my liver and my bones, I mean it was in my skull, my hips, my ribs, my spine, it’s kinda all over the place. This was the hard one. I thought the first one was hard. The second one, I’d kinda been there, done that, so I knew what to expect, and I knew I would get through that one again. The third one and fourth one were just radiation, that wasn’t a big deal, but we thought we’d gotten rid of it, but to have the fifth one show up not only there, but in my lungs and now in those other places, too, that was a little harder to deal with. My doctor at Providence was a big believer in immune therapy, so he put me on immune therapy drugs, and unfortunately, they didn’t work, they don’t work for everybody, but you don’t know until you try it, so I am glad we tried it. We then went back on what they call standard of care, some different things. They all work a little bit, you might see a slowing of growth or a standstill, but they consider that successful if they can buy you some time or they can keep it steady and then it is not growing so fast. But if the second things start to go the wrong way, and the cancer was starting to grow, my doctor would take me off standard of care and put me on something else. So finally, he got me on a new drug regimen, not a new drug, but an old drug that I had had before. I resisted taking it because I didn’t like it the first time. It’s a drug called taxol. It’s not for everybody, but for my type of cancer, it’s probably the best one I could take. I said I’ve had it before, I really don’t want to take this drug, I hate it. He convinced me it is worth trying, but they would change the dosages, and we would do things differently, so instead of going in once every two or three weeks and getting a heavy, heavy dose, that they do a smaller dose, two weeks on and a week off. So, I started doing that. The first week was terrible because he gave me the maximum dose for this schedule, and it was really hard. I couldn’t get out of bed, I couldn’t eat for a week, and I told my husband, I said if this is as good as it gets, I am done. I talked to my doctor and told him the same thing. He said he would drop the dosage 20 percent and it’s been fine ever since. Meanwhile I want to say I believe in the power of prayer, and I have people all over the world that have been praying for me. In March 2020, I got this terrible fifth diagnosis, and in May, my doctor told me to use what time I had left, but I wouldn’t let him me give me a date as to how long he thought I would live. That said, he did say this was the time to get my visits in with my kids as they are scattered all over the country now. I made it to my daughter’s wedding in July, and these days, I set little goals to get through to the next stage because I don’t know how long I have. Well, in May, my husband for Mother’s Day, planted seven trees at our property in Florence, which is on the Oregon Coast. We have a house on seven acres near a lake, so it is straight up a hill. At the top of the hill, he planted seven trees, one for each child, apple trees and two pear trees, for us. They are all planted in a certain order, so I know which tree is planted for whom. The pear trees, there is one for me and one for him. We think it is a cool thing, they probably feed the deer and nothing else. On July second, we went up the hill to look at the trees. All of them were thriving and doing beautifully, except mine. My tree was pretty much dead, all the leaves were gone, the few that remained were crispy, just waiting to fall. I looked at that and thought, “My gosh, Lord, are you telling me this is it, and I’m done?” You know, God hears our prayers and sometimes He speaks to us in nature. I saw that tree and my heart just sank and I thought this is terrible, and it was so symbolic that everybody else’s trees were thriving except mine, which was almost dead. I was heartbroken. So, a month later we went back down there again, and I walked to the top of the hill in August expecting to see my tree completely withered, maybe laying on the ground, I didn’t know what to expect. When I got there, what I saw instead was my tree and every leaf was back, as tall as all the others, it was green, it was thriving. I have pictures on my Facebook page from July 2 and August 2, and my tree was back in all its glory! That was the moment that I knew I was going to be okay. Now I don’t know if this latest cancer will go away, but since August I had another scan, and they do my blood markers, they do my blood and check my tumor markers about every month. I get scans every three months. In September 2020, I got a tumor marker scan and my tumor marker, a number that includes an acceptable range. For one type of marker, the acceptable range is zero to 38. Mine was originally 600, but in September, it had gone down to 119. Another marker, the range is zero to three. Mine was originally 21, but in September went down to seven, and then to three. So, I have had two recent scans and in both my numbers have gone way down. All my tumors are shrinking, and so all I can say is, “Thank you, Lord.” I know that prayer works, it’s always up to God if he is going to honor that prayer, but I am claiming it because I am seeing such great results from this. So, I never want people to lose hope, because there is always hope. The power of prayer is very, very powerful, so wherever you are in this journey, there are a couple things I want to end
this on, some good thoughts. We talked about humor, and we talked about staying in the light, doing the things that bring you joy, but hope is so important. In my book, there is a picture of a trip my husband and I took to New York. It was in 1993, three years before my first diagnosis. We were on a boat that went past the Twin Towers, and when I published my book in 2004, I was going through my photos, looking for things that were meaningful to me, and that picture was right there and I thought that is a really powerful picture because 9/11 had already happened by the time I published my book, and it just a great reminder to us that our lives can change in an instant. On 9/11, some 3,000 people lost their lives that day, and not one of them went to work in that building on that morning expecting to be dead by 9 o’clock. How many of them lost their lives with things still undone? So, don’t for someday to do that thing you always wanted to do, get your bucket list out, talk to somebody and tell them what’s on your list because that’s when the magic happens. One of the things I wanted to do was speak at my graduation. I graduated in 2003, and he found out about my list. He contacted a woman who writes for the local newspaper and she wrote about my list. Meanwhile, I had reached out to my counselor and told him it was my goal to speak at my graduation, and two weeks before my graduation, I received a phone call from the Dean of Students who asked me if I would like to speak at graduation. That’s when my husband reached out to the newspaper, The Oregonian, and told them. And then when I told him one of my goals was to spend a week at a bed and breakfast in Vermont in the fall to see the leaves, he said, “I didn’t know you wanted to do that,” and he made reservations for the plane and the B & B. Find someone who can get excited about the items on your bucket list with you because they will probably help you make it happen. By now, I have crossed off just about everything on my list. Those are the things that give you hope. So, you never know that next phone call that you get, that next e-mail could you bring you good news, could change your life. Don’t lose hope, because without it, you would have nothing, and with it, you have everything.
JF: As we wrap up, we want to again say we will be sharing the links for all your resources. Although you have touched on it, if you were speaking directly to someone who had just been diagnosed, what would you tell them?
BO: My answer to this changes based on thoughts I am having and who the person is and what they are going through, but you know, treatments have gotten better, they are getting better at figuring this whole thing out and how to stop it early. Immunotherapy, when it does work, it’s a miracle. It can actually make cancer go away. But the bottom line is, and this is more my focus than anything, and that is to stay in the light. If you picture in your mind a little golf ball in your house rolling across the floor. You see it going into a little dark corner of your living room. That’s kinda like when we are going through something. But all it takes to get the golf ball out of the corner is for someone to swat it from the corner, and sometimes we need that someone who swats the golf ball for someone else, to remind them there are things and ways to look at this a bit differently, but the key is to stay in the light. Find something that gives you joy. This cancer is hard, and it’s difficult and it’s ugly and there is nothing good about it, except for where it can lead. If I hadn’t gotten breast cancer, we wouldn’t have Breast Friends, wouldn’t have the radio show, I wouldn’t have a topic to speak about. I always wanted to be a professional speaker, but darn it, I found out I need a topic. Suddenly when I got cancer, some doors opened for me. That’s my topic now. Think about the blessings, think about the people you haven’t met yet, and think about the good that can come from this. Use this time to spend time with your family regardless of what your outcome is predicted to be. Don’t be afraid to ask for help and don’t be afraid to accept help when it is offered, and don’t forget to reach out to Breast Friends. Our website is breastfriends.org, you can reach out that way and there are people there that are willing to talk to you. We also have a Facebook group called Breast Friends of Oregon. Listen to positive stories and podcasts and stay out of politics.
JF: Those are great words of advice that you have given, and I can certainly see how you have earned the title of a motivational speaker. Given all that you have been through and all that you are going through, you have such a happy spirit and positive outlook and a heart of giving to others that really comes through. I’m just so thankful for what you have shared with us and it’s a real honor to have you here on the podcast and sharing the journey with us. Thank you for being with us today.
BO: Thank you, Jim, so much for inviting me, and best of luck to your podcast.
JF: If you the information from today’s interview to be helpful, please consider subscribing to our You Tube channel and wherever you get your podcasts, and just remember you not alone, we’re all in this together and we wish you the best possible outcome with your cancer journey, so until next time, please take care and we will see you on down the road.
Additional Resources…
Foundation
Breast Friends
Book by Becky Olson
The Hat That Saved My Life
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