*This is the second in a series of articles on breast cancer survivors in recognition of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
You’ve come a long way baby! is the slogan from a popular 1968 commercial targeting women. Mendenhall resident Tenelia Frier can say the same about her own life as a breast cancer survivor of 37 years.
Frier was diagnosed at 43 when her daughter Lauren was three. “People look at me funny when they ask me how I did all this and I said, ‘I never worried about me. I think I worried about Lauren. She was three years old! My crying time was always in the shower. I just always prayed the good Lord would let me live long enough to have her grown.” He answered that prayer and then some as Lauren is now grown and married.
Frier’s famiy was living in Washington, DC when she performed a self exam and found a lump in her left breast. She went to her doctor who removed the lump and it was found to be benign.
Less than a year later in 1988 the family moved to Jackson and Frier went to work at what once was Mississippi Power & Light Company. While in her office one day she felt a pain that went from under her left arm radiating downward. Frier decided since she was new in Jackson and needed a new gynecologist she would find someone. The doctor believed it to be nothing but still wanted it removed.
“When I woke up he said, ‘We had a surprise; it was malignant.’ This was on a Friday. He said, ‘My recommendation is that we do a mastectomy.’” Frier was still coming out of anesthesia hit with life altering news in the middle of major life changes of a new baby and new job. She got a second opinion that day and he said the same thing.
The following Monday Frier was scheduled for the mastectomy. She also had reconstructive surgery but adds, “If I had it to do over again, I’d do a double. They never looked the same which except for your husband, nobody else should see except for your doctor. But you see when you’re getting in and out of the shower. It brings back a lot of things that you wished you’d done differently. Memories.”
Frier did not have radiation but she did have six months of chemotherapy following the mastectomy. Her hair thinned but she never lost it all. “I prayed all the time, ‘God please don’t take all my hair!’ The two things I think I prayed for the most was that God would let me live to see Lauren grown and that I didn’t lose all of my hair. I didn’t pray for me. I think I felt okay about me. I just worried about Lauren so much.”
Chemotherapy was every three weeks for six months, a total of nine treatments. Medicine was delivered intravenously through a vein in her hand each visit rather than a port.
Frier remembers receiving two unsettling phone calls from a woman she did not know offering advice that was not beneficial. . “She wanted to tell me what it was like to go through all this. I should be prepared; I should take a trash can with me every time I went to a treatment because I was going to throw up all the way home. She gave me all this bad negative stuff and that’s not what you need to be hearing when you’re going through all this. You want to hear good positive things not how bad it’s going to be!” Frier believes she had good intentions however misplaced. After receiving a second call from her, Frier’s husband, Walt, said he would answer the phone from that point on. Frier has no memory of the woman calling again.
Her chemo treatments were rough but Frier learned and lived with the cycle. The first week and beginning of the second week were tough. The next week and a half she was fine before she started it all over again. While on chemo, her oncologist found a suspicious spot on Frier’s shoulder. Her plastic surgeon biopsied it. The spot was stage 1 melanoma. During reconstruction the surgeon removed a bit more around the same spot and margins were clear. No chemo needed.
Several years ago Frier also underwent the BRCA genetic testing and she was negative.
She has had three more occurrences of cancer since the two found in 1988, all skin cancers – basal cell carcinoma and sqamous cell carcinoma in two locations. Frier is an avid golfer spending three mornings a week on the golf course and sometimes Sunday afternoons. She also enjoys yard work. Frier sees her dermatologist annually for what he calls a mole picking. She was released from annual oncology visits after number 25.
“People didn’t talk about it as much 37 years ago as they do now. Now it is a very open discussion. People who have it are willing to talk about it. I didn’t talk about it. If you weren’t my immediate family or my best friend I just didn’t talk about it. It’s almost like I was ashamed, or the plague or something.”
Daughter Lauren was diagnosed with breast cancer in July of this year. She too had BRCA that found she was not a carrier.
“I talk about it more since this has happened to Lauren, than I ever have. I guess it’s because I see how open she is with it. She’s got such a tremendous support group at her church and her school. I think ‘why didn’t I have all of that’ because I didn’t.”
Frier does remember one thing when it was all over. She and Walt were taking a trip to Hawaii to celebrate. “I could never find a swimsuit that looked right on me and that was depressing. Other than that, I never talked about it. It was just something that was me. That’s one thing that has changed in 37 years. People do talk about it now and it helps to know there are other people that have been through this or at least want to know more about it. And, they care. You just need to know people care and it’s not a stigma.”
Lauren’s story continues in next week’s edition.
