At age 86, Letteece Fairley now arrives dancing for follow-up visits at Long Island Jewish Valley Stream’s Wound Care Center — after years of avoiding the doctor following the discovery of a mass in her breast during a routine checkup.
For more than three years, her daughters made several doctors’ appointments for Fairley, of Elmont, and she skipped them all, including this summer. She finally agreed to have the surgery done on Sept. 18.
A doctor found the mass in her breast during a 2023 checkup and set her up for a biopsy, but Fairley repeatedly refused to go.
“I wasn’t hurting. I wasn’t in pain, and I just felt good,” she told the Herald.
However, what she did feel was fear. Her older sister, Mildred, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008 and died in 2019. Her younger sister, Celeste, died in 2022 after doctors found her cancer had already spread.
“I do think it did have an impact on me not going to the biopsy,” Fairley said. “I know it did.”
Her daughter, Kuwata Williams, 59, of Freeport, said her mother was convinced that going into a hospital would be the end of her, and that even hearing a diagnosis could do harm.
“She felt that would get into her spirit, her mind, and that would lead to her demise,” Williams said.
At the time, Fairley said she was also still grieving the October 2020 death of her husband, Benjamin, who joined the Marine Corps out of high school.
“That’s why I wasn’t thinking about me and what was going on with me,” she said.
She leaned on her faith instead, reading her Bible with a magnifying glass because of glaucoma and listening to an audio Bible. She spent well over a year living with her daughter Kimberly in Arizona.
Earlier this year, her stage 4 cancer had grown through her skin, leaving a bleeding wound. At that point, her family stopped pushing her to treat the cancer and insisted she at least treat the symptoms, according to Williams. In August, Fairley finally sought treatment at LIJ Valley Stream’s Wound Care Center.
Nurses gently cleaned the wound and told her she did not have to do anything she didn’t want to, Williams said, adding that it’s the same thing her daughters had been telling her for three years.
About a week later, Fairley met with Dr. Ira Klonsky, a general surgeon who joined the hospital in 1986 when it was Franklin Hospital. Klonsky said he could tell she was in denial, so he went slowly rather than bombarding her with facts.
“You don’t blame the patient. I listened to her,” Klonsky said.
Williams remembered what the doctor said after examining her mother. “His words were, ‘Oh wow, this is not as bad as what was described to me,’” she said.
Klonsky calmly explained how surgery could help, and her mother’s response stunned her.
“Immediately, she says, ‘Okay, and will you do the surgery?’” Williams recalled. “I couldn’t believe it.”
Klonsky said the wound needed immediate attention. Most breast surgery cases at community hospitals are now referred to larger hospitals, he said, but Fairley insisted that he perform the operation.
“I didn’t want to farm her off to another surgeon,” Klonsky said.
On Sept. 18, Klonsky performed a mastectomy to remove the tumor. The operation was not performed to cure her cancer, but to relieve its effects, hospital officials said. The goal, Klonsky said, was to improve her quality of life.
Fairley spent one night in the hospital. Her children were told she came out of anesthesia singing the gospel song “Take Me to the King.”
A month after surgery, Klonsky said, she is a different patient.
“She was even afraid to show me the wound, and now she’s hugging and kissing,” he said. “She’s dancing in the office.”
Williams said her mother still has future appointments for follow-up care.
“We don’t know what the future will hold,” she said. “I feel like I got my mom back.”
Klonsky said he still sees patients who wait until their breast cancer erodes through the skin, though it happens less often today than it did 20 years ago, which he credited to breast cancer awareness and newer treatments.
“You have to treat the patient first, not just treat the disease,” Klonsky said.
Fairley said she underwent only one mammogram in her life. When one of her grandchildren asked why she never followed through, Fairley simply responded, “I just didn’t.”
Williams once asked her mother whether she would want her daughters to handle a health scare the way she did. Her mother said “no.”
“I do believe that early detection is clearly the best way to go about this,” Williams said.
Fairley, who has 12 grandchildren, hopes her story reaches the next generation.
“I feel so good,” she said. “I am so grateful.”
