My Fight for Life: Theresa’s Story
As treatments begin, images of a father lost to cancer come rushing back
My father and I walked down the sidewalk a short distance from our house in Fremont. I was just shy of my 15th birthday. It was a late summer afternoon and the air was warm. Drivers were speeding past us and they stared at my father. Our progress was slow, and we finally stopped as my father’s energy waned. He sighed as he sat down slowly on the low brick wall of a neighbor’s yard.
“I’m sorry, honey. I just need to rest for a bit. Guess I’m a little more tired than I thought,” he said.
My father had cancer and he was slowly, horribly, wasting away.
I’ve thought of him often during my treatments for breast cancer. After diagnosis, I faced tough decisions about treatment. I settled on a blend of the old and new: chemotherapy and radiation, along with acupuncture and guided imagery.
The cancer that I had was aggressive, and I was in the fight of my life.
Just like my father had been years before.
Potent drugs — and powerful memories
On July 7, 2004, I walked into the chemo clinic in Stockton. A large nurses station dominated the center of the room, where four or five nurses either sat working on charts or preparing drugs for treatments. One wall of the room was filled with windows and allowed natural light to filter in and wash over the mottled forest green wallpaper. The smell of the room was strong — isopropyl alcohol, I thought. A familiar smell which brought back memories of my days working in the medical field. Recliner chairs, all filled with patients in varying degrees of treatment, lined the walls. Despite the people in the room, it was strangely quiet. I could hear the occasional murmur of voices, the squeak and pop of recliners being put into upright positions or being laid back down.
I was anxious. I’d read the literature for the combination of drugs being used to try and stop the cancer. The list of possible side effects was daunting: nausea; vomiting; heart failure; mouth sores; reduced blood counts; increased susceptibility to infection; fatigue; weakness; numbness and tingling in the hands and feet; cognitive problems; and hair loss.
The chemicals could only be delivered intravenously or through a portacath, a dome-shaped reservoir implanted just under the surface of the skin and sewn to the chest wall. It has a small tube that leads from the reservoir to a large vein or artery in the chest. I’d had my “port” installed just two days before.
Pam would be my oncology nurse. Pam smiled reassuringly as she spoke. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled. She readied the IV bags and gloves and the IV needle that would be used to pierce the skin over the port.
As she talked, I watched her hang a large bag from an IV pole, then don latex gloves and swab the area of my chest over the port with a brown antiseptic liquid. My palms were sweating as I inhaled and prepared to feel the pain of that needle. It looked the size of a tree trunk to me. I squeezed my eyes closed and she quickly inserted the needle.
I felt a little “pop” as the needle pierced my skin and entered the port. It did hurt, but the worst of it was over. I exhaled with relief. God, she was good. Then, with little fanfare, the switch on the IV line was turned on. Life-saving, life-altering drugs began to slowly drip down the line, into the port and through my body. I soon began to feel the effects of the sedatives that had been added. My body began to relax. I mentally willed myself to accept the drugs now coursing through my body. I desperately needed to relax. I repeatedly reminded myself that the treatments were not my enemy, but the cancer was.
As the chemicals dripped slowly into my body, powerful images danced in my head, the sounds of the room faded away and I closed my eyes.
Brown, threatening cocklebur cancer cells.
White light.
Prancing silver stallions.
Pulsing lights of color.
My father.
I’d been thinking of my father an awful lot lately. Gordon “Billy” Frieze, one of eight children, raised in Oklahoma. He never went to college, but worked hard at his job as a produce manager, then supervisor, then buyer. He worked hard at being a good family man, too.
As the drugs flowed through my bloodstream, I saw my dad. Dark, wavy hair. Hazel eyes. Vividly bright smile. He loved me fiercely and I knew it. I remember tracing the veins that bulged in his arms with my finger as I sat next to him on the couch. We’d had an extremely close relationship. My dad was my caregiver for a while due to a back injury that kept him home. My mom had to work — an anomaly during the late ’50s. Our father-daughter bond only seemed to grow as I got older.
And then he was diagnosed.
My eyes fluttered open. The time seemed to have passed quickly and my first chemo treatment was drawing to an end. Pam disconnected the IV line attached to the needle taped to my chest. She then gently withdrew the needle, and placed a small Band-Aid over the hole.
Only a little wobbly from the sedative action of some of the medication, I walked from the clinic and to the car to be driven home. I’d survived my first treatment. But, my journey as a cancer patient was only beginning. There were seven more treatments to endure over 14 weeks.
A wonderful woman, a frumpy mascot
In my research on cancer and treatments, I became intrigued with the idea of using “complementary therapies” along with conventional treatment. Two complementary methods used for cancer management, in particular, piqued my interest: guided imagery and acupuncture.
I was fortunate to find a wonderful woman, Lodi therapist Beverly Breakey, to help me with guided imagery. Guided imagery can help to relax the mind and body during times of stress, physical pain and anxiety. It is effective in lowering blood pressure, decreasing the heart rate and even altering brain waves. It is thought that by getting the body to relax, the body becomes more receptive to the effects of drug therapies. There is some proof that guided imagery can help alleviate the nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy and relieve stress associated with having cancer, combat depression, and rev up the immune system.
I entered Beverly’s office and was greeted by a lovely, 60-ish looking woman. She was smiling, soft-spoken, and auburn-haired. Her office was beautifully adorned with feminine touches. She invited me to sit on a small leather sofa and she began to tell me a little about herself. I felt immediately comfortable with the former registered nurse. She then asked me to describe to her, in detail, everything I was feeling. I found Beverly to be compassionate and understanding of the medical procedures I was enduring and the highs and lows of my emotions. The fear. The anguish. The sense of loss. Together, we developed an initial goal: to alleviate my fear and stress over being diagnosed and treated for cancer.
After discussing all of this, Beverly asked me to close my eyes. She then made a tape-recording that I could take with me to my treatments and play, in an effort to relieve the stress of the treatments. With these tapes, I could listen to Beverly “guiding” me, helping me to imagine, based on my earlier descriptions, the ugly cocklebur-looking cancer cells being contained by the white light of my own energy that they shrink from. But as the white light wanes, strong silver stallions rush in to stomp on the cancer cells driving them back into the circle. Surrounding it all is God, represented by brilliant lights similar to an aurora borealis.
With each session, Beverly talked me through the anxiety, fear and sadness of being diagnosed with cancer. She, and the tapes she made for me, helped me relax and accept my treatments. And, creating the visual images was actually quite fun. I got to use my imagination to create scenes and character. I also got to add some elements of humor to take the edge off a serious situation.
I even had a treatment “mascot” — a Dame Edna-looking bosomy old woman with blue-gray hair piled high on her head, pointy, silver-framed eyeglasses perched on her nose, a purple dress, sagging support hose and sensible shoes. She was always holding a knitting needle in one hand and a mesh shopping bag in the other. Dame Edna would course through my blood stream along with the chemo and gleefully stab at any rogue cancer cells, using the knitting needle like a spear, stabbing them straight through and then sticking them in her bag.
Different kinds of needles
The IV needles inserted in the skin of my chest weren’t the only needles I’d face. Acupuncture, another complementary therapy, has helped in treating the nausea caused by chemotherapy. Acupuncturist Michael Shi met with me in his central Stockton office just days before my first chemo treatment. The air of his office was pungent with the smells of Chinese herbs, and soft music played in the background. I was invited to enter his inner office and I watched and listened as Michael patiently explained the philosophy of Chinese medicine, meridians, and energy flows. I thought to myself that he didn’t look old enough to have a degree in acupuncture. He looked so youthful. I learned later that he was in his mid-40s and had been practicing acupuncture for years.
Maybe there was something to this yin and yang stuff after all, I thought.
After giving me the basics, he led me from his inner office to a treatment room. I removed my shoes and rolled up the legs of my pants. I lay comfortably on a padded table, a pillow under my head. He swabbed my skin with alcohol and began to insert long, hair-thin needles into my skin. I waited, expecting to feel each needle as it entered. But, Michael quickly and painlessly inserted a dozen or so needles into my skin at different points on my body — some in my lower legs, some in my feet, one in my ear, one on top of my head. Some needles were attached to electrodes and stimulated with faint currents of electricity, causing my muscles to pulse. Each session lasted 45-60 minutes and ended with acupressure massage of my feet and legs.
I always left the office feeling calm and relaxed.
During my months of intense chemo treatments, I experienced little to no nausea and vomiting. Maybe it was the new anti-emetic drugs, or maybe it was the guided imagery, or perhaps the acupuncture.
Maybe it was all therapies combined, but the most dreaded side effects experienced by cancer patients, for me, never materialized.
Rising research, falling hair
I found researching breast cancer enlightening. The science is exciting. The strides made in treating cancer have been phenomenal. Several years ago, Herceptin, a monoclonal antibody developed to fight HER-2/neu-positive breast cancer, did not exist.
For years, scientists knew that stepping up the delivery of chemotherapy, a “dose dense” schedule, could be much more effective in fighting cancer. But the resulting annihilation of blood cells could leave patients fighting for their lives. Now, cell growth factor injections can be given to boost blood cell production as the stepped-up schedule of chemotherapy is being given.
As predicted by my oncologist, 15 days after my first chemo treatment, my hair began to fall out. It was worse than autumn leaves falling on a windy day. I left a trail of short blond hair behind me as I moved from room to room. Despite my attempts to style my hair, it stuck out at odd angles and left my scalp feeling tender.
So, on a warm summer afternoon, I had my son, Matt, shave all of it off. When my son tried to protest, I had to remind him that it was only hair. And after all, hair grows back. I sat in a chair on my brick patio with a towel wrapped around my shoulders. The warmth from the bricks radiated through my bare feet. My family, my good friend Robbie, and her husband Kirk, watched as Matt turned the clippers on. A buzz filled the air and Matt took the first swipe of the electric clippers along my scalp.
Robbie told me later that it was difficult for her to watch my head being shaved, that watching my hair fall victim to the clippers brought the reality of this disease home for her.
Later that night, I examined myself closely in the mirror. My hair was gone and only patches of blond-gray stubble remained. In some spots, large patches of my bare scalp were beginning to show. Soon, I thought, it would all be gone. Losing the hair on my head would be followed by the loss of eyelashes, eyebrows, and then the loss of hair on my arms and legs. I’d expected to feel sadness at being bald. But, strangely enough, I didn’t.
My father, weak and wasted
My hair loss, though, rekindled more thoughts of my father, who also lost his hair as he battled a devastating cancer called melanoma. Toward the end, bald and weighing less than 100 pounds, he looked more like an aged monk than my 34 year-old father. He had been the picture of health just months earlier. But the ravages of cancer and experimental chemotherapy for the rapidly spreading disease had left him weak and wasted.
Despite being so desperately ill, he still wore his signature freshly pressed white, short-sleeved dress shirt and charcoal-colored slacks. The white shirt made his pale, colorless skin seem transparent. His clothes hung limply on his gaunt frame.
As we walked along the roadway so many years ago, I glared at the drivers who stared at this man whom I loved so fiercely. At that moment, I hated the drivers who stared more than I hated the cancer that was stealing my father away from me. A simple walk. He couldn’t complete the simple act of walking his own neighborhood. Maybe that was the moment he knew he was beaten.
He didn’t survive. He didn’t live to see me turn 15. His own valiant, but futile, battle with cancer ended four days before my 15th birthday.
I had not thought of my critically ill and dying father in such a long time. Those thoughts had been mercifully replaced by happier images years ago. But the memories rushed back to me, time after time, during the months that I received my own treatments for cancer. Each time I looked at myself in the mirror, I’d see my father’s face, superimposed over mine in the mirror. My own bald head, fading eyebrows, and pale complexion reminded me so much of him. In many ways, I was walking the same path that my father walked.
I was so afraid his fate would be mine. But I also knew there were differences.
I knew cancer treatments had advanced dramatically since my father’s death.
And while my father was viewed as a contagious freak, I was treated with compassion and understanding.
My father didn’t stand a chance. He died a young man.
I still have fear.
I also have hope.
For more than a year, Theresa Larson, the News-Sentinel's director of administration, has been fighting breast cancer. This is the story of her ordeal.
Breast Cancer Stages
The numerical determination of how far the cancer has progressed.
Stage 0: Non-invasive or in situ cancer.
Stage I: Tumor measures two centimeters or smaller, has not spread to lymph nodes in armpit.
Stage II: Tumor measures larger than two centimeters, less than five centimeters and/or has spread to lymph nodes under arm on same side as the breast cancer.
Stage IIIa: Tumor/tumors larger than five centimeters and have spread to lymph nodes or surrounding tissue.
Stage IIIb: Breast cancer of any size that has spread to skin, chest wall, or internal mammary lymph nodes.
Stage IV: The cancer, regardless of size has spread to distant sites such as bones, lungs or lymph nodes not near the breast.
Source: “Breast Cancer Treatment Guidelines for Patients,” National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
Histological grading:
Describes how slow or fast the cancer is growing from stage to stage.
Grade 1: Tumors consist of relatively slow-growing cells and resemble normal cells.
Grade 2: Moderately differentiated cells, slightly abnormal in appearance.
Grade 3: Poorly differentiated cells — fastest growing and more aggressive in their spread, most abnormal in appearance.
Source: 100 Questions and Answers,” Zora Brown, La Salle D. Leffall Jr., MD, FACS, and Elizabeth Platt.
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