Leslie Stephenson
September 11th, 2007
I was diagnosed in the deep winter of 1997, and the hardest part for me was going home to tell my four children. Actually, my story really started with my mother’s death in 1977: We both had contracted breast cancer when we were 38 years old. I kind of had a sneaky suspicion that this would be an inherited disease. I lived in a town of 39 people in rural Minnesota at the time, and I had a Stage One but very fast-growing cancer, and I was told that it was a death sentence. But I just told myself that I am not going to repeat history and die the way my mother did. I started researching all over, by phone, and I literally established a network of people who said, “I tried this, I tried that.” Eventually I went to the Mayo Clinic and got some professional advice. I ended up being willing to have a double radical mastectomy and chemotherapy at the same time, and take my chances that way. The biggest drawback was that I was in the middle of nowhere, and I didn’t have the resources.
I found myself at a point where I would actually have to tell my doctors what was going to happen to me and to my body next, which was really unusual and kind of defying logic to a lot of people. But I had a choice. I could have certain operations. For me it has been major surgery after major surgery. It’s been difficult, especially because I was uninsurable and had no insurance. I was broke, and I had to try to scrounge up the money through churches and other places. The hardest thing was, I had to take a vow of poverty. I knew that if I needed to get completely cancer-free, I would be declaring bankruptcy.I knew I could not afford the chemotherapy. I applied to the Partnership for Prescription Assistance for help with medicine. I began to receive my medicine, for free, delivered right to my door. I did not even have to worry about paying for the shipping. My medication cost over $100,000 for one year, at no cost to me whatsoever. It gives you hope when you need it most.
Leave a Reply