‘It was breast cancer’: How one diagnosis changed two women’s lives

Take a deep breath. That’s the first thing Sabrina Griffin tells people to do when they find out they have breast cancer.

Griffin’s been there. She remembers getting the phone call at 9:39 a.m. on Aug. 9, 2013.

“Hey, Sabrina,” her doctor said, “I’m so sorry, but it was breast cancer.”

Griffin’s brain stopped processing. She was in shock.

“After you hear your name followed by cancer, you just don’t hear anything else after that,” Griffin said.

Griffin’s diagnosis changed her life. But it didn’t end it.

The Kathleen woman is one of more than 3.5 million breast cancer survivors nationwide. As treatments improve and survival rates climb, more and more women are able to share their own experiences with the disease.

Now 56, Griffin has been in remission for nearly five years. She wants others with breast cancer to know that they, too, can get through.

Treatment moved quickly for Griffin at first. She underwent a double mastectomy within 24 hours of her first meeting with her doctor and went home the next day. Griffin said her family barely had time to digest her diagnosis amid the chaos, but they supported her every step of the way.

Griffin then endured four rounds of chemotherapy. She remembers days when she couldn’t even make it from the chair to the sofa.

“It really just knocks the life out of you,” she said.

A self-described workaholic, Griffin tried to work through her illness. But soon she got so sick that she had to take medical leave.

Griffin felt like she had lost control. Cancer had taken over both her body and her schedule. Soon, she knew, it also would take away her thick curly hair. So Griffin’s daughter, Savannah Calhoun, decided to throw her mom a head-shaving party.

“We’ve kind of lost control of life right now,” Calhoun told her mother. “But we can control when your hair’s going away.”

Griffin was nervous to lose her locks at first, but she learned to embrace the bald-headed look. She rarely wore a wig or a headscarf, choosing instead to flaunt her hairless scalp.

Even at the worst moments, Griffin felt a sense of strength and peace. She told herself she would not die from this diagnosis.

And nearly half a decade later, Griffin still remembers the overwhelming relief she felt when she found out she was in remission. She said it was like 100 pounds had been lifted from her shoulders.

“I don’t know if I could put words to it, you know, how incredible that felt,” Griffin said. “I felt like I had just accomplished something very major.”

Griffin said she had become so consumed with work before her cancer diagnosis that she’d lost touch with the little moments of daily life. Now, she tries to do something that makes her happy each day.

The survivor also offers her advice to women now navigating their own cancer journeys. She calls them “pink warriors.”

“You’ve got to have that positive attitude and determination that you’re gonna get through this,” Griffin tells them.

‘It was just never on my radar’

Samantha Jones is trying to stay positive through her own battle with breast cancer. The 32-year-old was diagnosed in April, five days before her wedding. Three weeks later, she started chemotherapy.

Jones, of Marshallville, couldn’t believe she had stage two breast cancer. Only 31 when diagnosed, the possibility of breast cancer hadn’t even crossed her mind.

“It was just never on my radar at all,” Jones said. “So I just wish that I had known that there were a lot of young women that get breast cancer at a young age, and that it’s – I’m not immune to it.”

Unlike Griffin, Jones waited to have surgery. Her doctors decided instead to shrink the tumor first with chemotherapy treatments, to keep the aggressive cancer from spreading.

Jones chopped her waist-long brown hair to her shoulders and waited for the drugs to take their course. Treatment drained her energy and left her skin covered in rashes.

Chemotherapy wasn’t quite as bad as she thought it would be. She wished she had more energy to spend with her 2-year-old daughter and 10-year-old stepson, but by the time she finished treatment at the end of August, she was starting to feel like herself again.

Jones underwent a double mastectomy on Sept. 28, and now she’s on the mend, hoping she won’t have to endure radiation treatment.

Her doctors are optimistic, though. A week after surgery, Jones learned that her surgeon hadn’t found any evidence of cancer in her tumor. Jones’s nurse navigator, Kimberly Lewis, threw her arms around Jones and told her to go home and frame the results.

“That made my day,” Lewis said, a grin spread across her face.

Jones is ready to put her sickness behind her. But she doesn’t want to be quiet about her experience.

“I want to help other people who have gone through this,” Jones said, “and just make sure that people understand their risks.”

She’s also trying to cherish every day.

“The little things that I used to worry about,” Jones said, with a laugh, “they just don’t really matter.”

Samantha Max is a Report for America corps member and reports for The Telegraph with support from the News/CoLab at Arizona State University. Follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/smax1996 and on Twitter @samanthaellimax. Learn more about Report for America at www.reportforamerica.org.