Gloria Byrd, a breast cancer survivor for eight years, says she has gotten the longevity her mother and maternal grandmother never lived long enough to enjoy.
“I am living on borrowed time,” Byrd said, but not because of her earlier brush with breast cancer.
Her mother died at age 46 of a stroke and her grandmother at age 39 during childbirth. Living well beyond her 40s is something Byrd never expected. At 63, she has lived longer than the women closest to her in her family. But breast cancer, she insists, would not cut her life short.
“Yes, it’s a shock when you learn about it,” she said. “But I was assured that they found it in its earliest stages. I found out in February [in 1992] and they did the surgery in March. I said then, ‘Lets get this taken care of, so I can get on with my life.’”
“I had a mastectomy,” she said, “and one reason for that was to make certain that all of it [the cancer] was gone.”
Family History?
Even with a stoic attitude toward such devastating news, there was a reason for her take-charge approach: Breast cancer had loomed elsewhere in her family, stalking women, striking at periods in their lives when they least expected to be affected by the disease.
“I learned that I had two cousins who had double mastectomies, so it was something I was always looking out for,” she said of breast cancer. “I had an aunt who also had breast cancer,” Byrd said. One of her cousins was in her early 30s when she was diagnosed with the disease; the other was in her mid-40s. Her aunt was already past 70 when her diagnosis came.
No one in Byrd’s family underwent testing for the presence of any of the known breast cancer genes. In fact, the first of those genes was discovered in 1994 — two years after Byrd was diagnosed. But to say that genes may play a role in a family where four cases of breast cancer have surfaced may be too quick of an answer, doctors say. Sometimes chance and coincidence are equal factors in the occurrences of breast cancer when it is detected among relatives.
Still, Byrd thinks about her mother and grandmother. She has no idea if they would have developed the disease because they died young, and of other causes.
Enjoying Borrowed Time
Despite those sad episodes, Byrd has had a happy and full life. She and her husband Joshua have been married for 44 years. They have no children, but they enjoy each other’s company immensely. They travel frequently together and look forward to June 2001 when Gloria retires after 39 years in her academic affairs position at a university in California.
Byrd, who by nature is very quiet and unassuming, has become in her own way a healthcare advocate, urging friends and co-workers to be mindful of their annual mammograms. “I tell them breast cancer is a very serious thing and to get their mammograms yearly.
“It had been two years,” she said between mammograms at the time she was diagnosed in 1992. “I just wasn’t that diligent. For some reason or another, life sometimes gets in the way.”
Numerous various internet companies spread breast enlargement pills. This medicines is the most widespread breast enhancement methods cause absorbing drugs is simple, and you’ll prevent discomfort specialist visits and painful surgery.