Facing Breast Cancer

Emma Patti Harris 0 Comment Nation breast cancer, Dallas

PLANO, TEXAS — The wake-up call did not come with the cancer diagnosis. Or the double mastectomy.

Or news that cancer had spread to her lymph nodes.

For Noelle LeVeaux, it came 10 days before the first round of chemo. The dishwasher overflowed. Water seeped under the wood laminate floor. She loaded her two young daughters into the family car and left for the nail salon. They would escape reality for a while.

She drove her GMC Acadia down the road, through a red stoplight and into a Chevy Escalade. As airbags deployed and her SUV spun, she thought of how the stoplights seemed out of sequence. She looked at her daughters in the back seat.

In that moment, she realized how much she wanted to live.

Oct 12, 2012

The Sisterhood of the Stage 4 Pants

Algerina Perna 1 Comment Maryland, Nation, The Baltimore Sun Ann Brashares, breast cancer, jeans, Kelly Lange, metastasized, METAvivor, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, state IV

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Many people are familiar with the movie “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” based on the book series by Ann Brashares. One pair of jeans shared by four young women is a means of keeping the friends connected as they each make their way from teenagers through young adulthood.

The “Stage 4 Traveling Pants” is a sisterhood of a different kind. These sisters span the globe. The pants they share, metaphorically, is a diagnosis of stage IV breast cancer. Stage IV means that the breast cancer has metastasized or spread throughout other parts of their body. Their individual circumstances and journeys merge in their struggle against the terminal stage of this disease.