‘I Wanted To Do The Most I Could Do Because I Want To Live'

National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

‘I Wanted To Do The Most I Could Do Because I Want To Live'

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- It was the cracker crumbs, really, that gave Cheryl Mann her first indication that she was a very sick woman.

Mann, 44, of Canton, Ga., was hunched over in bed two years ago, reading a romance novel and eating crackers, when she brushed some crumbs off her chest.

And there was a lump in her right breast.

"I couldn't believe it," Mann said. She'd had annual mammograms starting at 40, just as the doctors said, and they'd shown nothing. And she'd had no symptoms.

There was no way she could have breast cancer.

To be safe, she scheduled an appointment with her doctor and underwent another mammogram.

"It still showed nothing, which was funny because we all could feel something," Mann said.

Next, she underwent an ultrasound, which found that something. "There on the screen was this octopus-looking thing, black with tendrils reaching out," Mann said.

It was stage three breast cancer, the worst a woman can have and still have a chance of surviving. Her left breast also showed signs of precancerous growth.

Mann said the news didn't scare her, at least not immediately. "I thought, we've got a problem here, cut it out," she said. "Cut it out. Cut it out."

Within two weeks of her diagnosis, Mann underwent a double mastectomy. The doctors reconstructed her breasts using fat cut from her belly. "I ended up with a tummy tuck, woo-hoo," Mann said, with a chuckle.

But her ordeal wasn't over.

Ten days after surgery, she found out that 25 of 28 lymph nodes the doctors had removed during surgery tested positive for cancer, indicating the malignancy may have spread to other parts of her body. "This many lymph nodes and a whopping big fat tumor, my survival rate was between 20 and 50 percent," she said. "Not good."

Mann flung herself into her treatments. "I wanted to be radical," she said. "I wanted to do the most I could do, because I want to live. I don't care about my boobs. I don't care about my hair. I care about living."

Mann underwent 16 rounds of chemotherapy that left her without hair on her head and crawling to the bathroom with sickness.

She also took 30 rounds of radiation therapy. "Radiation is like a walk in the park compared to chemo," Mann said. "The only problem is you have to do it every day, so it kind of takes over your life." Toward the end, her skin had started to blister from the therapy.

Mann also got enrolled in a clinical trial for herceptin, a drug that has shown remarkable prospects in treating some women with advanced breast cancer.

"I'm just so glad I got this drug," Mann said. "I literally am hoping this drug will save my life."

Finally, Mann also underwent a hysterectomy. "My cancer likes estrogen, to grow, so I couldn't see why I would keep anything in my body that produces estrogen," she said.

Mann now is waiting and seeing what will happen next, to her body and to herself.

"I'm not going to say I'm cancer-free, because there's no cure for this cancer," she said. "But I will say I have done everything I can to make myself cancer-free, and I don't have any symptoms of cancer."

Mann said her family, more than anything, has helped her get as far as she has. She's married, with an 11-year-old daughter and twin 8-year-old boys.

"I have an amazing husband, and this drew us even closer together," she said. "I think women need a support system when they're in this fix."