Portraits of Breast Cancer

The Optimist

Kendall Womble, 38

Nashville
Married to Travis, 35; mother of Crosslin, 11; Cal, 8; and Cullen, 2 

About six months before my diagnosis, I started feeling a burning sensation under my arm. I thought I was just out of shape. Then one night my husband and I were spooning and he touched me on the side and it hurt like crazy. When I saw my doctor three weeks later, she sent me for a mammogram just to make me feel better. After the test, when I had been sitting in the waiting room for 30 minutes, the doctor came in and said I should have an ultrasound immediately. Following that test, the doctor told me, “I’ve called your gynecologist, and I’m not going to lunch, because I want to do a biopsy right now.”

Luckily my gynecologist is a friend, so she rushed the test. At 2:30 the next day, I knew that it was cancer and that I needed chemo and radiation. I said, “Take both my breasts―I can’t handle not knowing and worrying.”

That was in April 2008. In May, I went in for a double mastectomy and reconstruction, expecting a full day of surgery. So when I woke up 2½ hours later, I knew something was wrong. They had found more cancer in my lymph nodes and removed them. The doctors said it was stage 3, which is pretty advanced, on the scale of stage 1 (very treatable) to stage 4 (often terminal). They warned me that the cancer might have started somewhere else in my body, so I had a brain and body scan two weeks later. As I waited for those results, everything was a blur.

When the scan came back, they didn’t find cancer anywhere else, and I took that as my call to fight back. I did chemo and radiation and went on the trial drug Avastin. I’m still on Tamoxifen.

Treatment was exhausting. I would walk out of chemo like an old woman. My joints were so sore, and my arm would get swollen like an elephant’s leg. Sometimes I was so tired, I couldn’t climb the stairs to tuck in my kids.

Still, I kept thinking, You have to bust through. You have to do the things you think you cannot do. In September, after my fourth chemo treatment, I did the Hope on Wheels 100 Women Cycling for a Cure 12-mile breast cancer bike ride. It was awesome and liberating. In October, I did the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Nashville. Forty of my Kappa Alpha Theta sorority sisters from the University of Kentucky flew in from all over to surprise me and complete the 5K with me. They all wore pink “Re-Kendalled Spirit” T-shirts and helped raise more than $100,000 for breast cancer research. It was very emotional―I cried all day. I’ve also gotten involved in speaking at YMCAs, churches, and women’s groups. Last October, I even got Tennessee to issue a breast cancer– awareness license plate.

On January 2 of this year, when I had my last radiation treatment, I adopted a new motto: “ ’08 wasn’t great, but ’09 is going to be fine.” I sold my business, a stationery store, so I could concentrate on my kids. (The new owner is keeping the two pink awnings outside, which are hallmarks of the store, in my honor.) Cancer definitely changes your life, but I keep reminding myself that when it seems like everything is so bad, people come out in hordes wanting to help.