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Moore's Messenger - Spring 2004

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Women who avoid having a mammogram for fear of the pain 
they may encounter should consider how painful it would be 
to have a mastectomy. 

That's the message Judy Musick has for women all over Cecil County. Musick, a 55-year-old mother and grandmother, is now recuperating from a radical mastectomy in which her left breast and 30 lymph nodes had to be removed. She admits she never thought she'd get breast cancer. "I was in perfect health," she said from her Rising Sun-area home. "I was feeling so good and healthy."

Already a skin cancer survivor, Musick said this year her participation in the annual American Cancer Society Relay for Life will have new meaning. Her need to give others hope is what drives her. "I want them to be able to find a cure so others won't have to go through what I've been through," she said. The Relay for Life will be held June 4-5 at Elkton High School. Musick will be on one of the teams taking laps around the track to raise money for cancer research and patient services.

After her ordeal, she's knows first-hand the needs of cancer patients. Musick had a mammogram in December 2002, which uncovered a mass that a breast biopsy later determined was benign. "Of course I went back this year for another mammogram," Musick said. This time lumps were found on the other side, and this time the news wasn't good. "They found two kinds of cancer," Musick said. And this time a lumpectomy wasn't an option.

"The first time they said, 'we'll take this out and we'll take this out,'" Musick recalled. "This time they said, 'we'll take the whole thing off.'" Musick said she wasn't prepared for the news. "I went by myself to the doctor's office to get the (biopsy) results," she said. After all, she reasoned, last year it was fine. But this time it wasn't fine. Musick said the news felt she had been handed a death sentence.

"I cried and cried and cried," she said. At some point Musick said her doctor led her across the hall to an oncologist who, as luck would have it, had a cancellation and could see her that afternoon. She remembers little of that day. She does remember a kind man who did his best to try and give her a moment of sunshine in a dark time. She said the elderly man asked her why she was crying. "I told him I had just found out I had cancer," she said. "He came over and sat next to me."

After her meeting with the oncologist, Musick said, she decided: "I'm not telling anybody ... that I'm going to die ... that I'm not going to see my grandchildren grow up." She soon changed her mind, called her children and gave them her news, then called everyone together for a family dinner. "I needed them all close by," she said. The dinner wasn't a sad affair, she recalled. "It wasn't gloomy," she said. "They were great, very supportive." She said there was laughter and joking all around the table. "One of my daughters joked that I should get a tattoo on my scar," she said. It was even suggested that the tattoo be a music note. "The tattoo would probably hurt worse than the surgery," she said.

The next day, Musick said, she was wallowing in self pity and fear. "I pulled the covers over my head and cried," she said. "I'm too young to die, I don't want to die. Then I heard this voice that said, 'Don't worry,'" Musick said. She said that message, which she believes came from God, gave her the peace to move forward. She uses scripture to remind her of that message. "By His stripes, we are healed," she recited from Isaiah 53:5.

From that point on, Musick said, she no longer wanted to hide. She went to church and asked for prayers and she prepared to have the surgery that would remove her left breast and hopefully the cancer it was carrying. She couldn't believe the response she received from her family at Moore's Chapel United Methodist Church near Elkton. "They had an anointing service for me," she said. "At least three-quarters of the church was laying hands on me."

The surgery went so well that Musick won't need chemotherapy or radiation. She does have to take Tamoxifen for the next six years, however. "Women who have had breast cancer have a 10-percent chance of it reappearing somewhere else in their body," Musick explained. Tamoxifen lowers her chances to 7 percent, she said. After the surgery, like many mastectomy patients, Musick said she couldn't look at her chest. "I didn't look for a couple of days," she said. One woman didn't understand how she could be thankful for losing a body part. "That's vanity," she replied. "I told (my doctor) to cut them both off. He wouldn't do it." She reasoned she couldn't get cancer in the right breast if it wasn't there.

Musick said some people were asking her why she would want to tell her story in such a public forum. She sees it as an opportunity to help. She wants women to know they need to get a mammogram every year, and that breast self-examinations aren't enough. "The kind of cancer I had can't be detected with breast self-exam," she said, "It can only be detected with a mammogram. If what I went through can save one person's life it's worth it." 

By: Jane Weaver
Reprinted from the Cecil Whig by permission 03/23/2004