Seven years after Maxine Missick battled stage two breast cancer and survived, she is encouraging people to talk about it. Sharing their experience she said could possibly help someone else. "People who have had breast cancer should talk, " said Missick, 67, as Breast Cancer Awareness is being observed during October. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. Talk -- share your experience, it may help someone else." And while she said the stories might all sound alike, she said they're still different at the same time. The discovery that she had breast cancer was found during her routine annual physical and found by the doctor. Missick said it wasn't easy to detect, but after the medical professional told her exactly where it was, she was able to detect it for herself. He spoke to her about taking a mammogram and about the possible results and the possibility that she could have breast cancer.
Even though the doctor said all of these things to her, she said in her mind, she still considered it a remote possibility. A mammogram and a biopsy both returned positive results. "I was upset at first," recalled Missick, "but it wasn't very long before I was able to compose myself and realize whatever the outcome, God was in control, and He would give me the strength to go through whatever I had to go through. And from that point, even before I left the doctor's office, there was a kind of calm ... a kind of peacefulness that helped me to go through the next few months." Missick opted for a mastectomy on her right breast, then put the impending surgery and treatment out of her mind to enjoy a planned vacation with her family that July. She had her surgery on August 18, and said that unlike stories from other survivors, she was virtually complication-free.
As she went to start the second phase of her attack against the insidious disease, and start chemotherapy in October, she had to delay treatment. The day she was supposed to go to her first chemo session, her mother passed away at age 87. She'd had untreatable bladder cancer. Missick said that during her treatment, both she and her mother at various intervals were hospitalized together, although she said her mother was never informed that she had breast cancer. They told her she was sick with the flu. But she's grateful for the fact that post-surgery she was able to get up and visit with her mother and rub her back for two weeks before she died.
Immediately after her mother's funeral Missick started chemo. That too she said went well. "People respond differently to the chemo experience. My experience was not an unpleasant one at all. I had the hair loss and the dark nails and that sort of thing, but I didn't have the serious loss of appetite, the nausea and vomiting and the various things some people go through." While fighting cancer and taking treatment was a breeze, that did not prepare Missick for what life would throw at her afterwards. It was a few months after being given a clean bill of hill that she noticed that whenever she held her head down she would have severe pains. Her doctor's initial thought was that the cancer had spread to her brain, but an MRI revealed a tumor on her brain stem. She had surgery in January 2007.
The tumor was benign, but because of where it was located, the doctors could not remove it all. Within a year's time, it had grown back. She had a second surgery in 2008, and doctors again removed as much of the tumor as they could. But that surgery was tough on her. She literally had to learn to walk again. "I thank God that I was able to go through it without getting depressed, or being a burden emotionally on members of my family ... coworkers ... church members who were all so supportive during all of this," she said. "The year 2009 was a lovely year." A cancer fight and two tumor surgeries, you wouldn't think anything else could be thrown at her, but in 2010, the tumor grew again.
This time the medical professionals treated it with radiation that weakened her and left her with nerve damage. And she's still recovering from a severe case of shingles attack that she got on her face. (Shingles is a skin rash caused by a nerve and skin inflammation from the same virus that previously caused chickenpox. After an individual has chickenpox, the virus lives dormant in the nervous system and is never fully cleared from the body. Under certain circumstances such as emotional stress, immune deficiency from AIDS or chemotherapy, or with cancer, the virus reactivates and causes shingles. Anyone who has ever had chickenpox is at risk for the development of shingles, although it occurs most commonly in people over the age of 60). Missick also had problems with both of her shoulders that prompted medical personnel to advise her to have shoulder replacement surgery.
She declined. After what she had been through, she said she can live with the limited ability in her shoulder to reach up. And it seems that breast cancer has taken a back seat, to the other problems she's fighting and living with and she admits that she sometimes forgets she had the disease, especially as her portacath was removed in 2010, she was taken off medication and declared cancer free. But she said she watches her diet, even thought she doesn't pay as much attention to exercise as she should. But, with statistics showing that Bahamian women are more prone to breast cancer at a younger age than their American counterparts, Missick advises women to be more aware and learn as much as they can about cancer.
Health statistics show that 34 percent of Bahamian women diagnosed with breast cancer are 44-years-old or younger, compared to 12 percent of American women under age 44. The average age of women with breast cancer in The Bahamas is 42 while the average age in the United States is 62. Bahamian health officials currently use the American Cancer Society's screening recommendations that call for screening at age 40. "Do not pay attention to the fact that you do not feel a lump, or do not feel sick, go and get a mammogram," she said. "Be aware, and try to get knowledge. Get your screening, make sure you get your regular checkups and your mammograms, and talk to people," she said. "Especially people that have gone through the experience. And people who have had breast cancer should talk. It's not something to be ashamed of. Talk, share your experience, it may help somebody else. And the most important thing, develop your relationship with God, because in the final analysis, when the bombshell hits you, it's only God's arms that will carry you through, and that's what I've found with my experience and my many experiences," she said.
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