By Jennifer Willhite
For The Republic
When traveling on her cancer journey, faith and attitude made the difference for a Westport area woman.
As Sandra Taylor rolled over in bed one day in 2009, she said it felt like she’d laid on something. But there was nothing there.
Taylor said she hadn’t been doing self breast exams. Each month she was used to her breasts getting “lumpy and bumpy,” so she didn’t think much of it. She’d just had a mammogram five months earlier and it was clean. It never crossed her mind she could have cancer.
“I called the doctor within a day or two and scheduled an appointment. I was at the doctor within a week,” Taylor said.
Doctors performed several imaging tests and another mammogram. Due to the density of the mass in her breast, the previous mammogram had not detected it. An ultrasound showed three tumors in her right breast and additional cysts in her left breast.
“The worst thing was they actually called me to tell me the results,” said Taylor, 54, who lives in eastern Bartholomew County.
She was en route to the Indiana State Fair that August day with family and a close friend when the phone rang as they stopped at a gas station.
Taylor said all she recalled hearing was “Blah, blah, blah.”
“It doesn’t matter how prepared you think you are, when someone takes that word (cancer) and says, ‘This is yours,’ no one is prepared for that,” she said. “We ended up not going to the fair and went to the doctor’s office instead so they could actually tell me what they were going to do next.”
For more on this story, and the upcoming Colors for a Cure section, see Saturday’s Republic.
