A cause, a cure

By April M. Silvaggio  

SEPTEMBER 29, 2010 12:30 p.m. (0)

Leslie Crews’ husband found it on Labor Day 2006.

A lump, no bigger than a marble, beneath her arm.

“We were lying on the couch watching a movie, and he slid his hand up my side beneath my arm,” she said. “I won’t ever forget him asking me, ‘What’s that?’ because I sat right up.”

Then, Crews was 32, and had just returned from a dream vacation in Mexico. She and her husband, Ken, had been married for six years, and had decided to start a family. She had never doubted she was healthy, so she had never even considered doing a monthly breast self-exam.

She didn’t know one in every eight women will get breast cancer.

“We younger women think we are invincible,” she said. “I look back and realize that I never felt bad up to that day. That is why it is so important to make sure we are aware of what is going on with our own body. Other than the lump on my breast, there were no other symptoms, and I was eight years away from a mammogram.”

By the time she was diagnosed on Sept. 11, 2006, with Stage II Invasive Ductile Carcinoma, the most common type of breast cancer that begins in a milk passage, breaks through the duct wall and invades the breast’s fatty tissue, the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.

She had eight rounds of chemotherapy, a lumpectomy and 30 rounds of radiation. She promised God if He’d let her live she’d not only dedicate herself to helping other women navigate the nightmare of breast cancer, she’d also work to get the word out about the necessity of breast self-exams, mammograms and annual physicals.

Crews will be among 400 breast cancer survivors expected to take part Saturday in the 2010 South Carolina Mountains to Midlands Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, being held for the first time this year at Fluor Field.

She and her husband are part of a team fielded by Upstate Karate, where she recently earned her advanced red belt. Next, she’ll go after a black one.

By mid week, her team was nearly half way to its goal of $10,000, having raised $4,695.47.

The race on Saturday will climax a week that started with city fountains going pink with the launch of the “Go Pink For The Cure” campaign, which runs through Oct. 2. Some 125 businesses have doused storefronts in pink.

“We’ve come a long way in 25 years,” said Terry Von Gieson, board president for the local Susan G. Komen chapter. “The five-year-survival rate for early detective breast cancer has gone from 74 percent to 98 percent.”

In 1980, Nancy G. Brinker’s sister, Susan G. Komen, died after a three-year battle with breast cancer. Brinker promised to end breast cancer forever.

That promise launched Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which in 26 years has become the global leader of the breast cancer movement, creating the world’s largest grassroots network of cancer survivors and activists, investing hundreds of millions of dollars each year in research, education, screening, treatment and encouragement of governments everywhere to make cancer research a top priority.

Crews said, “I remember the doctor saying, ‘Mrs. Crews, it is malignant,’ and I was so out of it my mind was racing, thinking malignant or benign, which one is bad. Then I looked over at Ken, and saw he was crying. My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, how long do I have?”

She doesn’t remember much else about that day, except a ringing in her ears and the sensation of feeling very hot.

She wondered if she would lose her hair, or be too sick to work. For a moment, she said, she wondered if her husband would leave her.

“I’ve never felt so out of control or such sadness,” she said. “I felt like a science project.”

The day of her first chemotherapy treatment, she and her husband knelt and prayed. “We’d never done that together before,” she said. “It was awesome.”

She and her husband had been raised in church and baptized in their teens. She wondered if God in some way was sending her a message that she and her husband needed to get serious about their faith.

“I would never have made it through without my faith in Christ,” she said.

Knowing she would lose her long, red hair within two weeks of her first chemotherapy treatment, she decided to have her hair cut, and donated 11 inches to Locks of Love, a nonprofit organization that provides hairpieces to financially disadvantaged children suffering from long-term medical hair loss.

“About 15 days later, what was left of my hair was all over the house,” she said. “Ken took me outside and we shaved each other’s heads. I was a sight. But once it happened it was one less burden. It was done.”

Today, the physical part of battling cancer is behind her for the most part. She still has some numbness in her hands, a side effect of the radiation. Occasionally, she deals with bouts of lymphedema. She’ll be on Tamoxifen for five years.

She prays each day for a cure.

“Occasionally, I have small ‘comeaparts’ when I have to get a mammogram or go see my oncologist, but I lean on my faith to get me through,” she said. “I always tell people this is one of the best things that ever happened to me. It made me a stronger Christian, a better wife and a better friend.”

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