Editor’s note: Each Friday in October, The Dispatch will publish an article centered on breast cancer awareness.
On Good Friday 2015, Columbus resident Shilo Goodman gave her 15-year-old son a hug and noticed what felt like a knot in her chest.
There was no history of breast cancer in Goodman’s family, but she scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the following week. At the appointment, she had an ultrasound. Then her first ever mammogram, since she’d just turned 40. Then a biopsy.
The next Monday, Goodman’s doctor called back and confirmed: Stage 1 cancer.
“Honestly I didn’t even cry at that point because I think I just knew,” Goodman said. “I was just ready to fight against it.”
The fight
Goodman was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma. The cancer had spread to the tissue but not to her lymph nodes, she said — although the knot she’d felt when she hugged her son wasn’t part of the cancer.
She began thinking — and praying — about treatment. Doctors in Columbus wanted her to go through 35 rounds of radiation and a lumpectomy. But Goodman wanted to treat the cancer quickly and was already thinking about a double mastectomy when she contacted a plastic surgeon at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama.
The surgeon recommended the double mastectomy because of Goodman’s age. Plus, it would get the treatment over with and keep her from having to come back for another lumpectomy every five years.
“I went from finding the knot on April 3 to having the mastectomy on May 12,” Goodman said. “So it just flew by.”
A positive attitude
When Goodman was first diagnosed, she didn’t want to tell her two sons, the youngest of whom was 10, without her husband. Her parents took the boys out to eat so Goodman could tell her husband in private. When the boys got back, she and her husband told them together.
“Of course my worst fear was my kids,” she said. “What if I did die? My kids … I just wanted to be around to (see) my kids grow up.”
She was lucky to not need radiation or chemotherapy, she said, but the weeks following the mastectomy were still difficult. She had to go to Birmingham every two weeks to get expanders in her breasts filled. Trips like that caused her to miss end-of-the-school-year events in her boys’ lives, which she had never missed before.
In between the trips, Goodman couldn’t lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk or raise her arms over her head. Even something as simple as sweeping the floor had to be left to another family member or friend.
She picked the phrase “Choose Joy” as her motto, finding Bible verses and quotes that reminded her to focus on things that made her happy.
“I just think that a positive attitude helps a lot,” she said. “It goes a long way.”
She was blessed to have a large support system, she said. Her parents and sister all live within walking distance of her home and helped out. Her sister brought together a group of friends to leave “happies” on Goodman’s doorstep twice a week — something as simple as a batch of cookies or a plant. Goodman also had friends from church bringing food and sending cards. She and a small group of friends who also had battled breast cancer had a sort of mini support group. They would call or text each other, checking in and sharing stories.
Doctors put in new inserts that September. Goodman now takes tamoxifen, which blocks estrogen in her body and works to prevent her from having bone cancer in the future — which she said is most likely how a cancer recurrence would manifest.
“I think my faith helped me through it most of all,” she said. “Just having faith in God and having a great support system.”
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