Cover Gallery > Click here to return to the Cover Gallery main menu

In the depth of our souls, we know that's true. Yet it's a gut-wrenching lesson learned by the 1,000 women who are diagnosed with breast cancer every two days in the United States. Last year in Indiana alone, it was estimated there would be 2,100 new cases of breast cancer, with 500 women dying from the second leading cause of cancer deaths in women.

Here are the stories of three courageous Indianapolis women who have coped with the psychological terror of a breast cancer diagnosis, endured the physical challenges of treatment, and triumphed. All will be participants in the April 21 Komen Indianapolis Race For The Cure®. They are the faces of the race.

Ginger Brown
It was Ginger Brown's 36th birthday. She and Glenn, her husband of 17 years, had spent the last eight weeks in marital counseling to open the lines of communication. So she was thrilled when Glenn booked them into the Sybaris Hotel on April 14 for a night of renewed romance to celebrate her birthday. Nothing could ruin her mood. Not even Glenn's alarmed question, "What's that?" while caressing her breasts.

"He's a Federal Express aircraft inspector, so he instantly went into technical mode," jokes the exuberant mother of four. "My mother found the first of many cysts at about my age and they were all benign. So I didn't think anything about it because it didn't hurt.

"But I did report it to my doctor, who set me up for my first-ever mammogram. It was really no big deal. If you've nursed four babies and have been bitten by them, you'd rather have a mammogram!"

Results from her needle biopsy came on May 5, as Ginger and Glenn were headed out the door for breakfast and finalizing plans for a party celebrating her graduation from IUPUI. "I answered the phone call from my doctor on our bedroom phone. When he used the 'C' word, I fell silent. And I'm never silent. I hung up and told my husband and we just sat there, crying a lot," she recalls.

Brown had been diagnosed with medullary carcinoma, which accounts for about 5 percent of all breast cancers. "It's the rarest, the most curable, and it has the highest survival rate," explains the unsinkable Ginger Brown in her Sandra Bullock soundalike voice. And that was the information she gave to her family two weeks later, as they gathered in her living room from all over the country.

Tears bounce off the 5-foot-7-inch redhead's cheeks as she recalls telling her family, "We're going to have fun tomorrow at my graduation because I've been going after this degree for seven years. Damn it, we're going to have fun and you are going to smile."

A mastectomy was scheduled for June 1. "Your first inclination is 'Get it off! Just get it off! I don't need it!' " she shouts with hands waving in the air. But before that could occur, Brown hit the Internet and started doing her own research. She began to wonder if a lumpectomy could be an option.

Her independent research led her to Indiana University Medical Center's Dr. George W. Sledge Jr. "He's one of the leading breast cancer oncologists in the nation." She asked him about her surgical choices. "Am I just being anal about not wanting to be cut on?" she quizzed. She says his answer was, "Avoid people with shiny knives."

That answer sealed the deal, and she agreed to be part of a Sledge-led research project, which included 12 weeks of chemotherapy, six weeks of Taxotere and six weeks of Adriamycin. "I lost 25 pounds during this whole process and people told me that I looked great! I told them that it's called 'The Chemo Diet.' I don't recommend it. But it works!" she says, erupting into her contagious laugh.

The smile goes away when she talks about the trauma of losing her hair during chemotherapy. "When I started the Adriamycin, my hair started falling out. I remember my first time standing in the shower and getting a handful of hair. I knew it was coming, but my stomach still flip-flopped. I was losing hair for about three weeks ... handfuls of it.

"And Glenn was so good. He would sweep up my hair in the bathroom while I went outside. Finally, I said, 'Just shave it!' And Glenn asked, 'Can I do it?' He shaved it for me and I was ready for it. It wasn't nearly as traumatic as I had thought it would be because I had time to prepare myself."

Now she raves about the three wigs she bought from Wigsalon.com. "Wigsalon.com was wonderful. They worked with me because I was worried that my red hair would be difficult to match. I had this one within a week," she says, tugging on the perfect match. She calls it her "Carmel Housewife" wig.

Then she digs into her attache case and pulls out her "Barbra Streisand" and her "Stripper" wigs. "I had scarves and I wore my little bandanna to bed. But I feel so much better in wigs," she says, flipping her hair into the air with her fingers.

She's like an uncorked bottle of champagne. But she's deadly serious when she talks about the emotional support she has received. Another redhead, Amy Hulka, was the lab technician who went above and beyond with her emotional support. "And Glenn became the man I married. He was always there with a hug or a kiss. With the stresses of marriage, work and kids, it had all gone away. But when I got sick, it all came back," she says adoringly.

"We didn't tell the kids for a long time. I spent so much time trying to protect my children, except for my 14-year-old daughter, Melissa. I let her feel the lump because I wanted her to know what if felt like. I figured if her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother had cysts, she was going to have cysts. And I wanted her to know what one felt like.

"Mitchell, our 10-year-old son, guessed. He asked Glenn if I had breast cancer. We said, 'Mom has breast cancer but it's the good kind.' Melissa looked at me and said, 'Mom, there is no good kind.' " The proud mother praises Melissa, Mitchell and 7-year-old Bobby for taking care of 4-year-old Brian when she was too sick to function. And she is indebted to her best friend, Kim Cox, who cared for her.

"I've never been sick my entire life," says the sidelined real estate broker. "I saved it all up for cancer! It's been a physical journey and a mental journey, as well."

She had a lumpectomy in September, and now is enduring 30 five-day-a-week radiation treatments. Has breast cancer changed her? "My breasts are just as floppy as they always were!" she howls. "I'm just as sexual as I used to be. But Glenn doesn't touch me as often as he used to. I think he's afraid that he'll find another lump. I'm like, 'Excuse me. Would you please pay a little attention to them? I went through a lot to save them for you!' " she laughs raucously.

It's a known fact that one's attitude can affect the immune system.

Ginger Brown has a good shot at a very long life. She says, "I've seen so many doctors, I have spent the last six months being half-dressed. When I see a person in a long white coat, I instantly start getting undressed. It's only a problem in the Kroger meat department!"

Malinda Hunter
Malinda Hunter felt like an absolute klutz when she lost her balance and walked smack into a wall in her own home. Her family was watching, and "they just laughed and laughed at me! But it saved my life. And they're not laughing anymore," says the petite dynamo.

More than her ego was bruised. So was her chest. After a couple of months, the bruise was still there. So in June, an alarmed Hunter went to the doctor.

'Though she always had practiced self-examination, she never had had a mammogram. Beginner's luck. Her first mammogram resulted in a breast cancer diagnosis. The bruise was just a coincidence. "When I was first diagnosed, I was so upset. But I just turned it over to the Lord and went on from there. I realized that I was just making myself sicker brooding about it," says the popular Meridian Hills Country Club banquet server.

"They started chemo treatments right away to shrink the tumor before they did any surgery," says the 44-year-old, who had a mastectomy and immediate reconstructive surgery last November. "Doing the reconstruction at the same time helped my mind. But they found some (cancer cells) in my lymph nodes, so I've had more chemo treatments and now I'm on radiation.

"All my hair fell out with the chemo and that was really hard," she says with tears welling up in her eyes. "Whew, that was hard," she gasps for breath. "I had it braided and I was taking it down to wash it. And before I could even take the braids out, the whole braid just came out in my hand. I wasn't just having a bad hair day. I was having a 'no hair' day!" laughs the mother of two, exposing her dimples. "But my hair is starting to come back. It was always nappy, but it's coming in really straight."

Hailing from Delta, Miss., Hunter is one of 16 children born to the late Peter and Ledora Carroll. Of the 14 siblings still living, all but two are in Indianapolis where Hunter moved when she was 10 years old. After graduating from Arsenal Technical High School, she attended business college and then joined her mother in the dietary department at Methodist Hospital.

She worked at Methodist for 23 years as a dietary aide. It was there, 18 years ago, where the spirited, pixie-faced woman first spotted her husband, Travis. "It was love at first sight," blushes Malinda as she sits at her dining room table and looks across the room at her husband.

As they exchange loving glances, Travis tries not to raise his "Barry White" voice. But he is angry that there isn't yet a cure for breast cancer. "She's taken it better than I thought she would. I'm very proud of the way she has handled herself," he praises.

Her diagnosis has been hard on the whole family. Trevor is their handsome, very animated 8-year-old son. With homework clutched in his hands, he snuggles next to his mommy. 'Though only a second grader at Allisonville Elementary School, "He has been a big help," Hunter says, hugging him."He helped feed me and change my bandage. He's seen it all."

"Her suddenly going bald really bothered" Trevor, Travis interjects, as long-time married couples often do.

Hunter gazes affectionately at her son. "That was hard. But he rubs my head now and asks, 'Is your hair coming back?' He took everything pretty well except my hair falling out."

Her 19-year-old daughter, Rakia, has had a harder time coming to grips with the disease. "At the beginning, she couldn't handle the idea that I might die. Every time she was around me, she would run away crying. I would try to hug her and she would just run away," bemoans Hunter. "But after seeing my progress, she's doing a lot better now."

Hunter worries about her. But she's also upset about her 56-year-old brother, James, who is recovering from colon cancer. "There was no history of cancer in our family. And then I get breast cancer and my brother gets colon cancer right behind me. It's the first cancer we've ever had in the family," says Hunter, who is now on an early detection crusade.

"I've made all my sisters go get themselves checked. Some of them are older than I and they had never had a mammogram. We had all done self-examinations but that isn't good enough anymore. I didn't feel anything. No lump. No pain. No sign. You have to have a mammogram," she admonishes. "I was afraid of getting a mammogram because I thought it would hurt. I thought, 'How can they clamp me down like that and mash on me this way and that.' I figured it had to hurt. But it didn't hurt at all! I barely felt the machine. I think fear turns away a lot of people, but it shouldn't. It doesn't hurt at all!"

The gentle, softspoken woman knows that many African-American women don't believe they can get breast cancer. The fallacy is that it's a white woman's disease. Yet each year, breast cancer kills more than 5,000 African-American women. These women have the highest death rate from breast cancer and are more likely to be diagnosed with a later stage of breast cancer than white women.

Walking into a wall may have ultimately saved Malinda Hunter's life. But she is walking tall as she makes plans to participate in the Komen Indianapolis Race for the Cure®, surrounded by sisters Karen, Lue, Barbara and Debbie; husband Travis; son Trevor; and daughter Rakia.

Diane McCabe
Standing in front of her mirror 11 years ago, Dianne McCabe took off her nightgown, raised her arms up over her head, and began her monthly breast self-exam. "I saw a retraction, a dimpling, that hadn't been there the month before. But I thought that maybe I had just slept on my nightgown wrong, because the nightgown had little round pearl buttons on it," she recalls. "But it was still there that night and I thought, 'Oh, shit.'

"A couple of days later, I went to see a breast cancer specialist. In fact, I walked into the office and said, 'When can you work me in?' "

She was busy at work, and once she knew she had an appointment a couple of days away, "I did my Scarlett O'Hara routine," says the 62-year-old nurse who is now director of public relations and marketing for The Women's Health Resource Center.

"Instead of being frightened, I thought to myself, 'I don't have to think about that today. I'll think about that tomorrow.' After all, I had just had a negative mammogram six months before." For years, McCabe has been active in the community as a nurse educator, teaching women how to do breast self-exams. "I never dreamed that I would ever receive my breast cancer diagnosis (lobular carcinoma) because there was no cancer of any type in my family," says the oldest of seven kids.

Yet, she knows "only 5 to 8 percent of women do have breast cancer in their family history. The majority of women do not. You're at risk simply because you're a woman.

"When you hear the diagnosis that you have breast cancer, every woman has to deal with it in her own special way. The way I was able to cope and deal with it was to become very clinically oriented about it," says the I.U. School of Nursing magna cum laude graduate. "I wanted to know everything about the pathology report. I needed to think of it in terms of a clinical disease process. It made me comfortable by looking at it from a medical standpoint, rather than as a personal issue."

McCabe had a modified radical mastectomy followed by immediate breast reconstruction. "From a psychological and physical standpoint, the data is pretty clear that women tend to do better with an immediate reconstruction," explains the 5-foot-1/2-inch hazel-eyed blonde.

The former nursing manager was nursed back to health with loving support from husband Frank, son Brian, daughter Mara, five brothers and one sister. But that didn't stop her rage. "The numbers are staggering of women who die each year from breast cancer. If this was a male disease, the good-ol'-boy American medical system would have found - if not a cure - at least the causes," she says, her voice rising in angry frustration. "It took me a couple of years to get rid of my anger against the medical establishment, who I didn't think were taking breast cancer seriously.

"A female clinical psychologist helped me figure out how I was going to get over my anger and move on," she admits candidly. "One has to be able to put things in perspective and move on." Nursing her own hurt, she joined a support group, but didn't like it. "I'm not a person interested in doing pity party, and people in that support group were hung up on this 'why me?' kind of thing. I just didn't have time to deal with that.

"Though I'm opposed to that kind of support group, I am a big believer in structured support groups where each session deals with an issue that helps women resolve that issue and move on to the next issue," she clarifies. The Central Indiana Chapter of the Y-Me breast cancer support organization is certainly not a pity party group, she emphasizes. And the Wellness Community does wonderful work with cancer patients of all types and their families.

As part of her wellness, McCabe was put on tamoxifen, an anti-estrogen drug that has been used in hormonal therapy for breast cancer. But its side effects made her miserable. "I know they say there are not a lot of side effects, but within six months I had gained 20 pounds. It totally changed my whole metabolism. My hair broke off and I couldn't get my nails to grow.

"After three years, I took myself off of it. I couldn't sleep without a fan going on me. I was suffering from sleep deprivation, waking up two or three times a night so drenched in perspiration that I had to change my gown. And sometimes I had to change my clothes two or three times in the morning before I even left for work. It came down to my making a personal decision about quality of life versus length of life," she declares.

Through it all, her marriage grew stronger. The woman who deftly handled the international publicity for the Dilley sextuplets (who were born at Women's Hospital) saw her love multiply. "If you have a good marriage and a good relationship before you're diagnosed with cancer, then it continues and becomes even stronger. If you don't have a good relationship and you don't have your own good sexual identity - if you're hung up that your body is everything and that is who you are - then you will have problems," she predicts.

As a founding board member of the Komen Indianapolis Race for the Cure®, McCabe is an annual walker. She's also a talker. "Women must take control of their own health. They need to quit putting themselves last. They will take care of everyone else; make their husband's annual exam appointment, get the kids to the orthodontist, Little League and soccer practice. Yet they will miss their own GYN exam and mammogram.

"Women must learn to put themselves first so that they have enough physical and emotional energy to take care of others," needles the nurse who is living proof that breast cancer isn't the death sentence it used to be.