Support group creates sisterhood for those battling cancer

For Anne Olszewski, getting the news she had breast cancer shortly after turning 41 came as a shock. She admits she had trouble accepting the news.

“I kind of freaked out when the surgeon said I’d have to have a mastectomy,” she recalls. “I thought – are you kidding me?”

Breast cancer is most common in middle-aged and older woman. In fact, the National Cancer Institute cites the median age for a woman diagnosed with breast cancer 61. Olszewski says as a busy, working mom with two young children, she never thought about it happening to her. Her doctor told her she wasn’t alone.

“To calm me down, the doctor told me he had another patient similar in age, also with kids, recently diagnosed as well. He said he’d try to get her phone number for me.”

That other patient was Julie Skillman who was also a professional working mother of three. She discovered she had breast cancer two weeks before her 38^th birthday. She had no family history of the disease.

“I was doing my self-breast exam in the shower,” Skillman explains. “I never really did them on a monthly basis like you’re supposed to. I found the lump and thankfully acted on it, because I’m normally not one to go to the doctor. It all happened very quickly.”

Anne and Julie connected over the phone. Later, while both had already begun chemotherapy treatment, they got together in person for lunch.

“It was nice to meet someone who was just as bald as I was at the time,” Olszewski said, “someone who had young kids in school, and was also trying to deal with life in general, never mind what we had just been handed.”

As they continued moving through treatment, they soon met others who were diagnosed at a young age.

Jennifer O’Neill found out she had cancer at 36. She found the lump after randomly rolling over in bed one morning and went to the doctor to have it checked out.

“I had invasive carcinoma in both breasts. I had stage two in my right breast and stage one in my left.”

Sharon Cardinale Murray was diagnosed at 35.

“I felt the lump and we really weren’t too worried about it at first,” Murray said. “We thought it was a cyst.”

For younger women diagnosed with cancer, it can be difficult finding others their own age to help them deal with what they’re facing. Many breast cancer support groups tend to have older members who have different challenges. So, Anne, Julie, Jennifer, Sharon, and a fifth member, Leah Miller, formed a support group of their own. They began meeting for dinner to talk about what they were going through.

“We had different issues than women who were post-menopausal or had already raised their children,” O’Neill said. “We were seeing a lot of women in their 50’s and 60’s (in treatment), but we weren’t seeing a lot of women who looked like us, women who were still working full-time, still raising their children or still wanting children.”

“It was really nice to talk to other people around my age who were going through the same thing,” says Murray. “I always thought it was an older person’s disease.”

The National Cancer Institute says an estimated 232,000 women (231,840) will be newly diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015. More than a quarter of them (25.6 percent) will be between the ages of 55 and 64. However, 9.1 percent will be women between the ages of 35 and 44.

“Everybody sort of seems to think breast cancer is a disease involving women over 50, over 60 years old,” explains Dr. Angela Mislowsky, a breast cancer surgeon with the Coastal Carolina Breast Center. “And that’s sort of the premise of why mammograms were recommended in women over 40, to catch cancers at a treatable, curable stage. There’s been sort of an increase possibly in women under 40 that have been diagnosed.”

Mislowsky says an increased awareness has led to many of these women discovering their cancer on their own.

“I think more younger women seem to be doing their own self-exams and finding things which need to be worked up. Most of the time, luckily, it’s not breast cancer, but unfortunately some of the times it actually is.”

Every breast cancer case is different and treatment plans vary greatly. Some women might have lumpectomies while mastectomies are required for others. Other phases of treatment may involve chemo, radiation or drugs in varying combinations.

Muray says they found great strength in getting together and talking about what was happening.

“It helped as we were going through treatment to talk about what we were going through as far as treatments, what kind of treatments we did have, and what was similar and what wasn’t.”

“Just having somebody to kind of lean on, to know what you’re going through.” notes Skillman. “Because you have lots of friends who are supportive, but they don’t really know what you’re thinking or how you’re feeling unless they’ve been there.”

As they dealt with cancer, they also talked about other aspects of their lives and found themselves building a deep and lasting friendship that’s grown stronger over the years. They had to rely on that bond when Miller lost her battle over the summer. It was a difficult and painful loss for the group, as well as Miller’s husband and three children and other family and friends. Miller was much loved and “one heck of a fighter.”

It’s a reminder that while survival rates have improved, there’s always an awareness that nothing is ever certain.

“You always worry. You just have to have faith in God and know he’s really the ultimate creator,” says Skillman. She and the others are grateful to have passed, or are close to passing, an important marking point.

“They say when you hit your five-year point, you’re not really in the clear, but the percentages are better (that cancer won’t return), so you can breathe a little bit easier.”

So, the goal, after cancer treatment is to be grateful and move forward. And as O’Neill says, just get back into life.

“You go on and try to do what you can to put it on the back burner. And you live your life the best you can.”

As they do that now, they remain grateful to each other for a friendship and “sisterhood” that helped get them here. And as Olszewski says, will continue to provide support and encouragement the rest of their lives.

“I don’t see us losing touch for anything. There may be times and distance between when we get together, but I see us being friends always. Just in the past five years the youngest one, Sharon, got married ... and Julie and I have kids in high school. So, we’ve all been through these different life events together.”

This story was originally published October 29, 2015 at 6:18 AM with the headline "Support group creates sisterhood for those battling cancer."