NC State fraternity FarmHouse won Zeta Tau Alpha’s “Pink Out Your House” competition Tuesday. The house-decoration competition was in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month." />
Contributed by Kate Goudy
NC State fraternity FarmHouse won Zeta Tau Alpha’s “Pink Out Your House” competition Tuesday. The house-decoration competition was in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, Mindy Sopher, an NC State academic advisor, shared her story of living with breast cancer for over 13 years. Sopher plans to use her experiences to give back through Zeta Tau Alpha’s Pink Out Week by speaking on their Breast Cancer Education Panel tonight at 7 p.m. in the Talley Coastal Ballroom.
Sopher recalled an experience when she was lying naked on a long, cold metal table that had draped over it a single sheet that was supposed to keep it warm. The medical technician placed the treatment fields in the correct positions on her skin based on the tattoos she had gotten so they could properly aim the radiation in the same spot at each session.
After prepping, the doctor left and shut the door, which, being entirely made out of lead and isolating her in this room, she said resembled the door of a prison cell. She remembered that there was an overwhelming feeling of aloneness and reality of the situation like no other that came about her as that door shut. At this point, she said, “there was no way to deny that I had cancer.” The doctor standing in a booth above the room told her to hold her breath, and as she did so the buzzing noise from the radiation chimed.
Six months previously, in August of 1999 Sopher went in for her annual physical, noting to her doctor that she had felt something different in one of her breasts. Upon examination the doctor immediately took her in for an ultrasound and biopsy of both her breasts’ tissue. Next, Sopher said was the worst part of the whole process — the waiting.
After nine days of waiting on the test results, constantly worrying and wondering what her future would look like, she got the phone call from her doctor. He said, “We’re ready to set you up for surgery, and we want to take out the lump in your breast because it’s definitely cancerous. Stage 3.”
She went in for surgery in September, “9/9/99” to be exact, and the doctors removed the plum-sized tumor from her breast. For the next six months, she had chemotherapy treatments.
A widely unknown side effect of the chemotherapy is that it causes teeth to become frail and easy to crack. A week before her brother got married, she fell and chipped her front teeth because they were so brittle and dry from the treatment. Ever since, she has had to use dentures, which, as she puts them in every day, are a constant reminder of the fact that she had cancer. In high school, she had won the award for Best Smile, and after having braces, everyone always told her that she had a beautiful smile. It was her trademark, until her teeth fell out.
Since 2000, she has had three rounds of breast cancer and one diagnosis of urine cancer. From 1999 until 2013 she was ill, and is currently in her longest cancer-free streak, going on a little over two years without another diagnosis. But that does not mean that cancer has ever left her mind.
“Every day I wonder if it’s going to come back,” Sopher said. “It’s just been living with cancer for all this time.”
Sopher uses her experiences to give back to the cancer community by educating others and spreading awareness about all the effects cancer has on somebody that others do not often think about.
She teaches a nonprofit leadership class where once, while she was going through a round of chemotherapy treatments, she let a good friend shave her head to give the class a face to the problems people hear about cancer. Additionally, she and her students volunteer with the Koman Foundation, American Cancer Society and Pretty in Pink.
As part of Zeta Tau Alpha’s Pink Out week at N.C. State, Sopher will be speaking at a panel alongside geneticist Katie Hoadley and an oncologist from the UNC Healthcare system to interact with students and inform them about breast cancer.
Kate Goudy, a junior studying business administration and the Pink Out Week Chair for Zeta Tau Alpha, said the goal of the panel is to give students a closer look into breast cancer education and awareness. She said they reached out to Sopher because of her energy and her ability to communicate her story to an audience.
“Being so involved on NC State’s campus as an academic advisor, we thought Ms. Sopher would be a great choice to connect our philanthropy with our school,” Goudy said.
Because she has given speeches on several occasions, Sopher has a list titled “Top Ten Cancer Secrets” that she said she likes to share whenever she speaks at a conference. One of them states, “no one can hold your hand during radiation. I’ve never felt so alone. It’s a cold and scary place. No matter what, cancer’s a lonely road at times.”
In 2015, 40,290 women are expected to die from breast cancer. Statistically, one of every eight women in the United States will be diagnosed.
Sopher believes that Breast Cancer Awareness Month is important not only because it helps to raise awareness for the issue and inform patients about the types of support that are available to them, but also it helps to establish a sense of pride for those who are diagnosed with breast cancer, both men and women. Because even though she says she was surrounded by more love and support than she could ask for, there were still times she felt hopeless. She hopes that others can find hope again, as she did, through the help that organizations such as the Koman Foundation and Zeta Tau Alpha provide.
“There are times when any one of us could have given up,” Sopher said. “Whether you have cancer or not, there are choices that you make every day, like whether or not you’re going to get up out of bed and make something of your day. “And we all do that — some of us do that with cancer.”