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| 'It will make me a stronger person' |
Horsepasture District Supervisor Debra Buchanan is shown in a January 2009 interview after her election to her first term as chairman of the Henry County Board of Supervisors. |
Sunday, February 14, 2010
By DEBBIE HALL - Bulletin Staff Writer
By DEBBIE HALL
Bulletin Staff Writer
Horsepasture District Supervisor Debra Buchanan is relying on her faith and medical advances to beat a silent killer.
Buchanan, a 14-year supervisor who is serving a second term as chairman of the Henry County Board of Supervisors, recently was diagnosed with Stage 1-C clear cell ovarian carcinoma (cancer).
Before the diagnosis, Buchanan said she had “been having some problems, but I didn’t really know what those problems meant.”
She attributed her frequent abdominal pain and fatigue to overwork. And “I thought it maybe was my age” of 52.
“I was burning the candle at both ends. Other than work, I attended quite a few meetings and events” as supervisor, she said.
But on Wednesday, Jan. 20, Buchanan said the pain in her abdomen was worse than usual. The next day, she called a doctor.
She had similar symptoms in the past and discussed them with a doctor, but that day “I knew something had to be done,” she said. “I told the doctor something was wrong.”
He ordered numerous tests. While she was at the doctor’s office prepping for the CT scan, Buchanan was told to alternate drinking a mixture used “to light you up” during that scan and drinking water.
As she finished drinking the first portion of the mixture, “I had this pain in my abdomen, under my right breast. It was excruciating,” she said, describing it as worse than childbirth. The pain was so intense that “for a few seconds, I didn’t even have control of my right arm.”
Buchanan was taken to the Memorial Hospital of Martinsville emergency room and admitted. She said she later learned that a tumor in her abdomen had ruptured and caused the pain.
In the hospital, doctors checked Buchanan for kidney stones, gallstones and other illnesses “to rule out what was or wasn’t wrong with me,” she said.
After that series of tests, a doctor whom she declined to identify “came in and told me it was cancer. He told me that I would just have to deal with it and that it would probably require surgery,” Buchanan said.
She was discharged from the hospital the following Sunday, Jan. 24, and Buchanan said she later saw Dr. Kimberly Matchett, a local gynecologist.
“When she talked with me, she was very detailed,” and told Buchanan that while it could be cancer, her problem also could be caused by something else. “We will not know for certain until we go in” and do surgery, Buchanan said she was told.
“It was the first time I had smiled in days. The other reports were more bleak. Dr. Matchett provided a ray of sunshine ... a ray of hope,” she said.
Matchett recommended Buchanan see a gynecologist⁄oncologist (cancer physician), and set about making a referral.
She could not see a physician at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center until mid-February, so Matchett turned to Roanoke Memorial Hospital.
“That was the best move I ever made,” Buchanan said, adding that she saw Dr. Natalie Gould, a Carilion physician.
Gould “is a small, petite woman, but she is dynamite,” Buchanan said. Gould “sits and talks with you like you’re the only patient she has. ... She writes and draws” as she talks.
After that consultation, “I left with several pages of notes that she (Gould) had written,” Buchanan said. Gould explained that the notes may be helpful because some points made during the conversation “may not register” until later.
With her surgery scheduled for Feb. 2, Buchanan attended a grand opening for the new location of the Henry-Martinsville Social Services department the night of Jan. 25.
“I was pretty weak” then, she said.
A few days later, she had a total hysterectomy that included removing a mass “the size of a grapefruit,” she said. The omentum, a “fatty apron” in her abdomen, also was removed “because cancer cells hide in fat,” she said. She also had 10 lymph nodes removed and several “washings” to try and ensure any trace of the ruptured tumor was removed.
“The surgery, I think, went well,” Buchanan said.
Buchanan saw Gould for a follow-up visit Wednesday.
“She told me, ‘Seeing you is rare,’” Buchanan said. Initially, “I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, that means this is a rare form’” of cancer, but Gould explained that it was uncommon to detect the cancer while it was a Stage 1 cancer, which is an early stage.
“Usually, by the time I see a woman with ovarian cancer, it’s a Stage 3, but yours is a Stage 1,” Buchanan said she was told. “Normally, it gets worse before it’s caught,” she was told.
The doctor also told her that ovarian cancer “is an early killer,” with no symptoms or only a few that often are overlooked or ignored.
In hindsight, the ruptured tumor “was the warning sign that pushed me to get the help I needed. If I had not had that rupture, I probably would have kept going on like I had been,” Buchanan said. She added that she does not have a family history of the illness.
But her ordeal is not over. Buchanan will begin taking six rounds of chemotherapy in the spring.
“The chemo is more preventative because of that rupture” and the possibility that some cancer cells could be lurking in her abdomen, she said. It also is needed because the clear cell 1 carcinoma can be more aggressive than other forms.
“With Stage 1 cancer, the recurrence rate is 1 in 4, or 25 percent,” she said. Six rounds of chemotherapy over 41⁄2 months will reduce the risk of recurrence to 19 percent, Buchanan said.
She opted to have chemotherapy locally, at the Ravenel Oncology Center in Martinsville. She was told to plan on being at the clinic for up to six hours per treatment.
One of the drugs, called Taxol, takes about three hours to administer, Buchanan said. A second chemo drug, carboplatin, will take about half an hour. Tests and prepping — which includes medicine to ward off nausea and tests to monitor her blood count — will take up the rest of the time, she said.
As she prepares for the chemotherapy and the other changes that will occur, Buchanan said she is relying on her faith and a strong support system of family and friends to get through the next few months.
She said she learned the importance of faith when she was about 6 years old and battled nephritis, an inflammation of the kidneys that also is known as Bright’s Disease.
Buchanan said hers was “the potentially fatal kind (of the disease). ... My kidneys shut down,” and her doctors “told my parents I was going backwards, that I was not making any progress and that I wouldn’t make it through the night,” Buchanan said.
Her parents were even told to go home and make funeral arrangements for her and “find something for me to wear,” Buchanan said.
“But God decided my time was his time,” she said. Although it was a difficult two- or three-year process, Buchanan eventually recovered.
“God had a reason then to keep me around,” she said.
Between now and when she begins chemotherapy, “my game plan is to go ahead and cut my hair short” in anticipation of losing it as a side effect, Buchanan said. “My hair hasn’t been short since I was a child,” she said.
Publicly, Buchanan always wears her hair braided and wound into a bun atop her head. When she won re-election to the board of supervisors in 1999, she kept a pledge and let her hair down. It flowed down her back to her waist to the delight of supporters.
“This will be a big change for me,” she said. “For all those people who wondered what I look like with short hair, they will get to see.”
Buchanan plans to shop for a wig that is similar to her current salt-and-pepper hair color “so it’s not such a drastic change,” she said. But she may experiment a bit as well.
“I might be a redhead” or find a patriotic wig with red, white and blue hues, she quipped. “I’ve always been a little different, but I don’t know that I can be that different,” she added with a laugh.
“You have to laugh. You have to smile. I’m looking at this as a challenge,” Buchanan said, who is on medical leave from the board of supervisors.
The journey back to health is a learning experience, she said, and she plans to use the knowledge she gleans to help others.
For instance, Buchanan said, in the past, she has been sympathetic — even empathetic — when talking to and⁄or visiting others who have cancer.
Now, she knows that “unless you’ve truly been there and done that, you cannot truly understand what it is like,” she said. “I’m looking at this as a different phase in my life. If I turn that next corner, I will try to accept the things I cannot change and deal with it the best I know how. It will make me a stronger person.” |
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