By Nancy Hiler, Laura Lane and Mary Malloy
She soon discovered a tiny, flat bulge under the skin of her right breast. "It felt like a rubber washer," she said. She sensed that something wasn't quite right, but was not overly concerned, having had regular mammograms in the past.
Ironically, Colter, who lives in Merrick and is an English as a Second Language teacher in the North Bellmore school district, had been researching information about breast cancer because, about eight months earlier, her mother had been diagnosed with the disease. She made an appointment at the Women's Health Center in New York for the following month.
At that appointment, she had a mammogram and a sonogram. Her doctor said there was probably nothing to worry about. "Eighty percent of these things are nothing," she told Colter. Nevertheless, the doctor ordered a needle biopsy, - a procedure in which a small sample of tissue is removed through a hollow needle - to be done immediately. A few days later, the diagnosis was "atypical cells - benign."
"I asked myself, 'Am I going to be waiting to see this thing become cancer?'" said Colter. "Will it become something or not?"
That April, she went to the Day Outpatient Center in Mineola and had an excisional lumpectomy, a surgical procedure in which a suspicious lump and surrounding tissue is removed for diagnosis. The tissue is then examined under a microscope. The doctor said there was some bad news - there was a small tumor.
Five days later, with Colter's skin still raw, doctors operated again, and found that the tumor was cancerous. Because of her previous research, she knew she now needed a sentinel node biopsy. The sentinel lymph node is the first lymph node to which cancer is likely to spread from a primary tumor. The biopsy is a procedure in which the sentinel lymph node is removed and examined under a microscope to determine whether cancer cells are present.
"I didn't have to hear it was OK," said Colter. "I had a feeling [it wasn't] ... I couldn't be nervous or upset until I knew for sure."
Again, she was told there was good and bad news. They had removed the tumor, but it was cancerous.
"I went into an OK-let's-take-care-of-it mode," Colter said. "What do we have to do now? I asked myself. "Tamoxifen?" she said to herself, referring to a medication that interferes with the activity of estrogen to help treat breast cancer. "Chemotherapy? Radiation?"
Colter kept teaching, all the while keenly aware that she had life-changing decisions to make. "I had cancer, but I didn't want to give in to it," she said. "I wanted everything else to stay the same."
Feeling something weird
Roslyn Innerfield of Oceanside, 77, said she always had regular mammograms. She was vigilant about her health, and nothing of concern showed up on a mammogram in 1993.
"There's a small percentage of people for whom that's true," she said. "Where it doesn't show up on a mammogram." But she said she felt something "a little weird."
She had a biopsy, but it showed nothing unusual. Her doctor told her to come back in about three months. By then, however, the lump had changed.
"In those days, there was no such thing as a centinel node biopsy, in which ink goes to the node, to see if the cancer spread," she said. "I told my doctor to do everything in one fell swoop. I trusted him enough." She said that had total confidence in her surgeon, and she trusted him so much that she told him to do a mastectomy if need be while she was in surgery. "Go ahead and do it," she told him. When she came out of the operating room, she learned that he had been able to do just a lumpectomy.
Innerfield who worked as a secretary for a Supreme Court judge in Mineola. "I was one of the first at the court system to be diagnosed," she said, adding that the women she worked with had "something of an epidemic" later on. Shortly after she was diagnosed, Innerfield said, four others were also told they had breast cancer.
"I kind of became the mentor, able to talk about it - people needed somebody they could say anything to," she said. "I was helpful to them, but they were helpful to me. It was helpful to me to be helpful to them."
UPCOMING EVENTS
Talent Search
The Talent Search for Breast Cancer Help and the Oct. 21 showcase or Breast Cancer Help, Inc. For more information call (631) 675-9003 or visit www.breastcancerhelpinc.org.
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer
Sunday, Oct. 21, Jones Beach State Park, 8-11 a.m. Registration (Pink Tent); and Event Start. For more information call 1-800-ASC-2345 or visit www.
cancer.org/stridesonline
For support
Adelphi NY Statewide Breast Cancer Hotline and Support Program at (800) 877-8077.
