“A mother will die for her children. If I had to give my life to save theirs, it’s not even a question, and that’s something I want to pass on to my children,” said Anna Morehead, of Lawa’i, at 39
“A mother will die for her children. If I had to give my life to save theirs, it’s not even a question, and that’s something I want to pass on to my children,” said Anna Morehead, of Lawa’i, at 39 a breast cancer survivor of five years.
“I have no plans of dying from this,” she added.
In 1998, the day after Mother’s Day, Anna had her left breast removed in a mastectomy, then started six months of chemotherapy followed by radiation therapy and breast reconstruction. Last month, she underwent a hysterectomy.
“The times when you want to cry and feel like your world is out of control, it’s the people around you who give you strength,” she said in an interview at her home earlier this week. Anna said she gets her resiliency from her daughters, Amanda, 17, and Becky, 13, and her husband John. Close friends Karen and John Glover have been her support, too, from when she was first diagnosed.
Anna smiled as she waited for John to come home from work. One statistic she found was that 70 percent of husbands leave their wives after they’re diagnosed with breast cancer. “I can only imagine how difficult it would be, he was such a rock, he never got angry with me because I was sick, or made me feel bad,” she said.
“When I was first diagnosed, I was really naive. I didn’t know what was involved. I thought I was going to have a lump removed and be on my merry way,” Anna said. But, Karen did some research and found out what kinds of treatment she’d require.
Not a week after being diagnosed, Anna was on a plane to Arizona for the surgery, where her mother and another close friend, Melissa Coates, live. Though she said it was horrible being away from her family for about three months, she was thankful for being with her mom and friend.
The ups and downs after surgery and during treatment, thankfully, had more high points than depressions, she said. After about three months of chemo, she realized she was more sick than she wanted to admit to herself. After the fourth treatment, she said she decided she would rather stop. That’s when Becky, 8 at the time, went into her bedroom and said “Mom, if you don’t do your chemo, you’re going to die,” Anna remembered. “At that point I realized I was doing this for them.”
She listed the three things she wants to see in her life: her daughters’ high school graduations, their weddings, and children. In less than a month, Amanda will graduate from Kauai High School.
She admitted that there have been some struggles in recovering from cancer and recently another major surgery, and taking care of her two teen-agers. She learned some lessons from her own mom’s nurturing and calm ways. “I could have given my mom the worst possible news and my mom would still embrace me and love me, and that’s how I am with my girls. It’s a challenge at times, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world,” she said. “Moms are there for you through thick and thin,” she added.
Anna said frankly, that if something did happen and she were to die soon, her daughters wouldn’t remember the materialistic things, they’d look back on their times together, staying up late talking, sitting on the beach and just being together.
Anna’s story became part of a special fund raiser organized by McDonald’s Restaurants of Hawaii, with proceeds to benefit the City of Hope National Medical Center and Beckman Research Institute in Los Angeles, a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center.
This week at McDonald’s restaurants, customers could buy pink-ribbon sugar cookies and pink paper ribbons for $1, to be displayed at the restaurant. Since 2000, McDonald’s restaurants has contributed to breast cancer research through this fund-raiser.
“Breast cancer has affected so many here in Hawaii, we can’t think of a better time to remember the special women in our lives by joining the fight against breast cancer during Mother’s Day week,” said Melanie Okazaki, marketing manager, McDonald’s Restaurants of Hawaii. About one in eight women has or will develop breast cancer in her lifetime. Each year, 182,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women on Kauai, though most deaths occur from lung and colon cancer, said Mary Williamson, executive director of the American Cancer Society’s Kauai Field Office. From 1990-1998, there was an average of 700 cases of breast cancer per year, and the mortality rate for the same time period was 123 per year, according to the Hawaii Tumor Registry at the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii.
“It’s no longer a death sentence. There’s been so much progress in treatments, it’s a more treatable disease when people find it early,” she said.
Many tests and treatments can be done here at home, but radiation therapy can be done in-state only on O’ahu, Maui and the Big Island. Williamson estimated that Kaua’i’s population is probably about 30 percent Filipino and about 15 percent Hawaiian or part-Hawaiian.
“Those two ethnic groups have the highest mortality rate from breast cancer in the state. This doesn’t mean these ethnic groups get breast cancer more than other ethnic groups. It means they are finding it later or don’t have access to health care, or may have cultural barriers,” she said. Japanese and white women have a higher rate of diagnosis, but because they’re finding it earlier, the mortality rate is lower, she added.
“We really try to have our programs seek out women of these groups to educate and encourage early detections,” she said, citing one of the American Cancer Society’s slogans: Early detection is the best protection.
One such program is “Tell-A-Friend,” which teaches women to talk openly about breast cancer, and to get a mammogram done every year.
Morehead has had to cut back on some involvements since her hysterectomy, but participates in another program in which cancer survivors meet with women who have recently undergone surgery or treatment.
The American Cancer Society has funds for transportation, support, and housing for women who have been diagnosed. The federally-funded Breast and Cervical Cancer Awareness Project, which provides free annual screenings for uninsured and under-insured women ages 45-65.
For more information, access the American Cancer Society’s Web page at cancer.org, or call the 24-hour information line at 1-800-ACS-2345. The BCCCA at 245-7767.
Staff Writer Kendyce Manguchei can be reached at mailto:kmanguchei@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 252).
