WESTBROOK – October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and this month thousands of people nationwide will be taking part in various fund drives to raise money to fight the disease. Some do it to celebrate their own victories over cancer, while others do it to remember loved ones they have lost to it.
Westbrook’s Robin Goodwin, 46, will take part in the Dempsey Challenge in Lewiston on Sunday, and she is doing it for both reasons, which leaves her with strong yet conflicting emotions.
“I’m so happy that I’m sitting here talking to you, whereas they’re not,” she said, referring to two fellow patients she bonded with, and her sister, who also died of the disease.
A Windham native, Goodwin moved to Westbrook in 1996 with her husband, Steven. She raised her son, Cam, now 18, her daughter, Brooke, now 16, and her stepson, Brad, now 24, sending them to Westbrook schools. Being an active mother, she volunteered to be a chaperone at field trips and took part in other school functions.
All the while, she said, she has maintained a need to see the positive side of life, coupled with an almost stubborn determination to endure life’s curveballs.
Life threw her a curve on Labor Day weekend in 2002, when she found a lump during a breast self-exam. Within days, she said, she had a mammogram, which was followed with several follow-up tests. No one told her right away, but she said she knew.
“Then I just really started getting nervous,” she said.
When the diagnosis came, she said, there were no tears, no depression, nothing but that dogged determination. She was going to fight it, and that was all there was to it.
“I was so young, and my kids were so little,” she said. “I wanted to make sure I was going to be there.”
Doctors performed a lumpectomy, removing the tumor on Oct. 1, 2002, 10 years ago this month. While that was the last of it, doctors still prescribed a lengthy chemotherapy regimen, to make sure. She spent weeks taking the “red cocktail,” a liquid fed by a needle into her arm. After that came another 12-week chemotherapy regimen with fewer side effects, then six weeks of radiation treatments, five days a week. As if all that wasn’t enough, she said, doctors then performed a hysterectomy.
She described the treatments with a matter-of-fact tone, which reflects how she dealt with the side effects. When her hair fell out, she said, she didn’t get upset; she just started wearing bandanas.
“I figured my hair would grow back,” she said.
The chemotherapy killed her appetite, leaving a metallic taste in her mouth, so she lost weight, then a follow-up prescription of steroids made her gain weight, but she didn’t get upset. Even after the hysterectomy, which triggered a hormonal imbalance, Goodwin said she didn’t get upset.
“I just figured it was what I had to do,” she said.
It helped, Goodwin said, that she had a support network of family and friends, and as a mother of three, she had plenty to do. She volunteered to help with the Girl Scouts, and joined the local parent-teachers organization. She became vice president, there, and later president. While she did all this for her children, she said, there was an additional benefit.
“It helped me keep my mind off (the cancer),” she said.
Last week she marked 10 years without a recurrence, and now she hopes to help promote awareness of the disease. According to the National Cancer Institute, there will be an estimated 226,870 new cases of breast cancer in women in 2012, and 39,510 deaths. It is the second-deadliest cancer in women next to lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
But Goodwin doesn’t need to be told how fortunate she is to have beaten it. During her treatments, she became friends with three other women who came in at the same time for similar treatments. They bonded so well, she said, that the nurses jokingly called them the “Monday coffee club.” Two of those women, Goodwin said, have since died.
Goodwin also said her sister, Wendi Atwell of Portland, was diagnosed with breast cancer more than three years ago, at age 36, the same age Goodwin was when she was diagnosed, but surgery wasn’t an option. Atwell’s cancer was a different, more aggressive form.
“It wasn’t caught in time,” Goodwin said, and after battling the disease, Atwell died in 2009. “It wasn’t a good year and a half.”
Goodwin also has turned her sorrow into action, participating in many events to raise money and promote cancer awareness. She has volunteered to work at events such as the Tri for a Cure triathalon, and she has participated in walks for cancer fundraising, such as Making Strides Against Breast Cancer.
But for Goodwin, this year is different. Not only has it been 10 years since she beat cancer herself, but it will be the first bike ride she has ever done, riding a 10-mile loop starting and ending in Lewiston on Oct. 14. She plans to honor her sister, she said, by riding Atwell’s bike in the event.
The ride is part of the Dempsey Challenge, an annual fundraiser collecting donations for the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope & Healing at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston. Goodwin estimates it will take her roughly an hour. So far, she said she has raised $150, but hopes to raise $1,000.
“That’s going to be pretty big,” she said.
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