Breast Cancer Drives Woman to Live Life to the Fullest

Freeport, Ill. — Shelia Pratt, 59, works with her clients each day at Liberty Village to help them overcome the odds of physical disability. As an occupational therapist, it is she who helps them become physically stronger each day. Many of her clients are unaware of how she taps into her own inner strength each day just to stay strong enough to survive.

Pratt is a breast cancer survivor. She is like many women, who look fine on the outside, but bear the scars of breast cancer survival. These scars are both physical and mental. Survival takes its toll. Pratt, like many women, lives with the possibility of recurrence, but it is her inner strength that keeps her going. Pratt has a zest for life.

Pratt admits she was not diligent with self breast exams or mammograms. Like many women, she didn’t think about it. It was her doctor who detected something wrong during a physical exam. A radiologist did a needle biopsy of the lump found in her left breast. She was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma breast cancer in February 2010. She tested positive for three cancer markers.

“By the time they told me I had cancer, I already knew it in the back of my mind,” Pratt said. “I knew what I had was weird — I had already had a prior cyst removed during the 1970s.
“At the time I had a choice, lumpectomy or bilateral mastectomy — I selected a bilateral mastectomy,” she added.

Of the 20 lymph nodes she had removed during surgery, 12 came back positive for cancer. Pratt was told she had an aggressive type of cancer, which is most common in younger women and African-American women. She was accepted into a clinical trial for treatment.
“I felt I was lucky to be in a blind trial, (which) was a drug on top of chemo and radiation,” she said. “I finished all treatments in March of this year, but I still see my oncologist every six weeks.”

Living With ‘Ifs’
Pratt said she is not a gambling person. She has been told the odds of recurrence are as high as 70 percent with her type of cancer. She said the high odds will not slow down her thoughts of survival. She takes life one day at a time.

“I ask myself if there is anything I can do to prevent cancer from returning and the answer is, no,” Pratt said. “I am doing well now and I felt horrible for so long and, eventually, I started to feel normal — pre-cancer. Now I feel pre-cancer — I’m tapped into just living now.”
Pratt said she refuses to live with the “what ifs.” Because of the type of tumor she had, she just has to watch her health — see her doctors.

“Yes, things changed for me,” she said. “Buying clothes — the necklines of tops makes me stop and look closer, and as far as living life — I’m more open now — less tolerant on how I spend my quality time in life — I just enjoy life.”
(Source:  www.journalstandard.com)