It's A Team Effort - Many Provide Help and Support in Cancer Journey
10/24/2022
This article originally appeared in The Mooresville Tribune on Sunday, October 16, 2022 as a front page feature. This article was written by Karen Kistler who can be reached at kkistler@mooresvilletribune.com.
From the start of Barbara Herland Barajas’ breast cancer journey beginning with her diagnosis, and following with treatment and support, it has been a team effort.
In February 2022, she received a letter from the Imaging Center in Mooresville letting her know that it was time for her mammogram, something she noted she has been faithful to receive for many years.
“I’ve been a patient of the Imaging Center for years, probably 10 or 12, if not longer,” Barajas said. “It’s been every year for a while now because my mother had breast cancer at 71, so they keep a close eye on me.”
Dealing with other health issues at the time, she noted that she put the letter aside. It was in April that a second reminder letter arrived, and Barajas realized she had failed to get her usual mammogram and quickly took care of making her appointment.
She shared how thankful she is for those letters from Lake Norman Imaging as she noted that she relies on them.
Looking over at Breast Health Nurse Navigator Tina Hunter, MSN, RN, CBCN, R.T.(R), she said to her, “I can’t emphasize enough the relationship with Lake Norman Imaging. I get that letter, I mean you guys did it and they followed up a month later, so they don’t give up on you. I rely on that. I don’t have it on my calendar usually and I get that letter. It’s like okay, it’s time.”
“It’s our team here,” Hunter said, “because one person cannot take care of all of your needs. We are here to support you in different ways.”
So on April 25, Barajas went in for her mammogram, not experiencing any symptoms, and not having felt a lump or anything, but merely going in for her usual visit.
“It was just an ordinary experience,” Barajas shared.
But then she received a call back from Hunter, letting her know that they had seen something and wanted her to come back in for a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound.
That initial call would be one of many times that the two would talk as Barajas said there was a time they spoke every day as she had questions or needed clarification.
“Once they see the surgeon, I kind of step back a little bit because I know you are going to have other phone calls, lots of phone calls, lots of doctors’ appointments,” said Hunter, “but I always tell patients, I am here if you need me, and they’ve got my phone number and they can call me at any time.
“You need to get those questions answered sooner than later and that’s why I make myself readily available for patients to do that for you, to help you get to the next steps and help you with part of your decision making process and give you that information,” she said.
When receiving that call to come back in, Barajas’ husband Ed said “it was a sinking feeling when it was said, ‘you’ve got to come back.’ But we were hopeful.”
Barbara shared that “the worst was actually getting the news that you have cancer. We were really shocked and at that time you don’t know what type of cancer it is, how advanced it is. At that time, you don’t know anything.”
While dealing with this and other health issues, Barbara noted that two psychologists, Dr. Frank Gantz and Dr. Stephen Moyer, have been helping her. She said that Gantz works through “mindfulness, meditation and I even do hypnosis with him, and it’s his philosophy to deal with what ‘is’ right now. We don’t know what the future is so what ‘is’ right now, what do you know right now. And that’s what we’re going to focus on,” she said.
The word cancer wasn’t new to the couple as Ed had gone through prostate cancer 13 years ago, they shared.
“I helped him through in 2006,” Barbara said, “and then he just said, okay, you did for me, I’m going to do for you.”
The pair teamed up to encourage one another and help get through this difficult time. Barbara noted each of their philosophies as they faced what they were going through.
“My philosophy,” Barbara said, “has been ‘worry about nothing, pray about everything.’ That’s what has kept me going. And his has been ‘eat, pray, love’ because he feeds me. He’s in charge of food, shopping and all that. So we’ve been laughing about our philosophies while we’ve been going through this.”
In addition, Barbara said she has received lots of other support from family and friends.
“Oh my, people coming out of the woodwork, friends, a lot of my friends live far away because I’ve lived in different places and so there’s just a lot of phone calls, a lot of texting.” She noted that by using the portal she can see and talk with her family including her 92-year old mother, who lives in New Jersey. They talk every day she said. A niece and her husband who live nearby have been amazing support as well, along with local friends.
After receiving the news, the next step was to go back for additional testing and learned that what was seen “was very, very small. It might not have even been there two months before,” Barbara said. “It was Dr. Shannon McCrann, who found what actually turned out to be three spots.” Barbara said that she called the doctor eagle eye, “she was amazing.”
She was then brought in for a biopsy, which Hunter helped get scheduled, and with that they were able to remove two of the spots, Barbara said, and it was soon after that it was tested as Stage 1 cancer.
Hunter then talked with Barbara and asked if she wanted to see Dr. Michelle Bertsch, who is a board-certified surgeon at Lake Norman Regional Medical Center and specializes in breast cancer diseases, diagnosis and treatment.
Barbara said yes and they helped her get that appointment made. Living in Huntersville, she also decided to do some internet searches and discovered lots of programs in the Charlotte area and decided to also have a referral from one of those, which was also done.
Her appointment with Dr. Bertsch happened right away and after talking with her extensively, “it felt like a right fit,” and surgery was set to happen within a couple weeks as opposed to having to wait elsewhere.
And waiting, she noted, could “mean you are at higher risk, and Dr. Bertsch felt that she wanted to take care of me right away and she did.”
Both Barbara and Ed were thankful for Bertsch’s care and helpfulness.
“She’s been absolutely wonderful,” Ed said. “She’s always there for us and she’s very helpful. She can sit down with us for an hour and take questions if necessary” to which Barbara added they never were rushed.
And “her staff makes us laugh. You know when you’re going through something to have somebody joke around with you, kidding, and telling jokes, it’s been a wonderful experience.”
Following a lumpectomy, which went well, Barbara shared, and additional follow through visits with more testing, she was found to not need chemotherapy as she wasn’t a high candidate for reoccurrence.
“Relief!” she exclaimed, to which she added the importance of finding it “early, early, early, I can’t stress that enough,” Barbara said. “So it was less complicated.”
Coming in for regular check-ups can help catch those possible changes from year to year as Hunted noted, that “our breasts, our bodies change every year and things can change every year from year to year. You might have for years regular mammograms that are very normal and all of a sudden you come that one year and you get the call back.
“So our physicians here believe in starting mammograms at age 40 for a low risk person, a regular risk person and then for somebody that is at higher risk, you would start your mammograms or other imaging at an earlier age just depending on your risk factors that you take into effect.”
Hunter likewise noted, as did Barbara, that “getting here early, we are seeing more things with the 3-D mammogram that we’re doing, we’re picking up more things earlier and people get taken care of at a much earlier time, and the survival is greater with that.”
So her next step, she said was radiation and thus she met with Dr. Aakanksha Asija, a medical oncologist with Novant Health Cancer Institute – Mooresville.
“She recommended Novant Radiation, where I could get it down in Huntersville, where I live.”
She noted that she was torn about where to get the radiation because both centers, the one in Mooresville and in Huntersville, were both amazing. However, having to receive the treatments five days a week for four weeks, they decided to get them in Huntersville because of the convenience and she wanted to be able to drive herself. Dr. Kevin Roof is serving as her radiation oncologist there, she noted.
While the actual radiation treatment is quick, taking about 10-15 minutes, she commented on the camaraderie between the women as they wait in the waiting room. The women talk with one another “finding out who’s who and what’s what,” she said.
When the treatments are over, Hunter noted that the doctors will “come up with a follow-up plan. You take one step at a time, and they will come up with a plan.”
Barbara was in the early stages of her treatments at this current time and thus those plans were still to be made, but she did note she would be taking a hormonal blocker because of the type cancer it was, thus decreasing the chances of it reoccurring.
The pandemic changed many things and that included people visiting their doctors and having those regular checkups, which has been seen nationally. Now, many are trying to get in to have those screenings, not just mammograms for others as well, noted Leigh Whitfield, network director, marketing and public relations/PIO. And while the pandemic caused a backlog and many are trying to get in, they are working hard to get people in for their screenings.
Both Whitfield and Hunter emphasized the importance of not putting off screenings. “And Barbara didn’t,” Whitfield said, “so this is a perfect example of why you shouldn’t put it off.” Hunter added, “you don’t need to let certain things go. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”
Breast cancer is “like another world,” Barbara said, to which she added, “people are surviving these days. I’ve become really more and more aware of how advanced we’ve become with all the work and research that’s been done and now people are surviving. So it’s really time to celebrate women’s health in this regard, celebrate all the hard work.”
Before moving to the area, Barbara shared that she had worked in management training at several hospitals and “so I really can see clearly when things are good and our impression has always been really positive – the hospital, with the doctors.”
And these doctors work together as a team, Ed added. “It might not be a formal thing like other places, but there’s such a collaborative group of doctors. It’s really a team effort.”
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