By Courtney L. Anderson
On May 20, 2008, Judy Baker found out the lump in her breast was cancerous. It was only the beginning of a bad day.
It had been a rough time for the Brookfield family, as daughter Rachel had been admitted to the hospital two days earlier due to a persistent fever and suspicious blood work. Earlier in the year Rachel had mononucleosis and both she and her roommate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania had each battled the virulent infection methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA, the super bug.
While waiting for the results of a test of Rachel’s bone marrow, Mrs. Baker, now 48, got the bad news about her own health.
Mrs. Baker sat at her then 19-year-old daughter’s bedside for a couple hours before another doctor delivered more bad news — Rachel had lymphoma.
“She was really calm about the whole thing,” Mrs. Baker said of her daughter.
After the diagnosis was delivered, Mrs. Baker dropped more bad news on her daughter.
“I said ‘We’ll do this together. We’re going to go bald together,’” Mrs. Baker said. “ ‘We’ll be our own support group.’ And we really were.”
Miss Baker is conflicted about her feelings about them both having cancer at the same time.
“It made it a little bit easier having someone right there going through the same thing with you, but I didn’t want it to have to be her,” Miss Baker said.
The duo got through the ordeal with chemotherapy and possibly an even stronger dose of humor.
“You can’t help but laugh and smile when you’re around her,” Miss Baker said of her mother.
“I think we both have a very light personality,” Mrs. Baker said. “We like to joke and tease each other. That was such a big help.”
Mrs. Baker has a lot of tales about her daughter’s spirit through their battle with cancer. All the nurses would fight over who got Miss Baker as their patient, her mother said.
Because Miss Baker couldn’t sit in bed for long periods because of the potential for blood clots, the pair walked the halls of the hospital a lot. Mrs. Baker said that when they’d pass the glass partition at the nurses’ station at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh, Rachel would pretend to disappear down a flight of stairs and then come back up.
There were no dramas on the television while the women were recuperating, Mrs. Baker said. Comedy only. And laughter really was the best medicine, she said.
Mrs. Baker’s cell phone wallpaper is a photo of her daughter, bald and wearing a tiara and funny-nose glasses while making a well-known naughty gesture. It’s something that still makes her mom laugh.
Mrs. Baker said her doctor once pointed out how even-keeled she was about being sick. She said that’s probably because she had to concentrate on her daughter.
She saved a text message from Rachel that said “I don’t want to die.”
“That was just devastating,” Mrs. Baker said. “Every once in a while I look at it and think ‘she was such a strong girl.’”
Support from family and the community helped the Bakers fight their cancer, Mrs. Baker said.
“Neither of us really got sick sick — not that chemo was a walk in the park,” Mrs. Baker said, adding that they didn’t suffer vomiting or weight loss.
Miss Baker, who turned 21 on Monday, is “in complete remission and doing just awesome,” her mother said.
A pre-med/biology major at Youngstown State University, Miss Baker wants to be a pediatric oncologist. Prior to her illness, she’d been an archaeology major, but because of her experience she changed her mind.
And while school work is a little harder now that chemotherapy has messed with her memory and she lost a lot of muscle tone from several months in the hospital, Miss Baker is committed to finishing college and going to medical school.
She wants to help children going through cancer treatment because she knows what they’re going through.
Mrs. Baker is doing well, too. She was to get her medication port removed last week, which “finally puts closure to everything,” she said.
“How lucky we are — here we are and we’re both doing tremendous,” Mrs. Baker said.
A licensed cosmetologist, Mrs. Baker recently got certified to conduct classes through the American Cancer Society’s “Look Good, Feel Good” program for cancer patients in Trumbull County.
She can relate to the ladies because she’s “been there done that” and will show them how to apply makeup to draw new eyebrows and to enhance their eyes even though they have no eyelashes.
Mrs. Baker said that most people would think that losing a breast would be the hardest part of going through cancer treatment, but she said losing her hair was worse because it was more a part of her identity.
“I didn’t let my husband see me for the longest time without something on my head,” she said.
Mrs. Baker had a few words of advice for cancer patients and caregivers. She suggested taking a tape recorder to the doctor’s office, especially in the initial visits.
“Half the stuff the doctor says, you don’t even hear it. Emotions are very high,” she said.
She also said it was nice to have her mother and sister visit and take care of housework or her husband’s family make dinner, especially on bad days.
“That really helped.”
And family and friends should “just be there” for the person suffering.
“Maybe don’t ask questions. Let them tell you what they want you to know,” she said.
It’s also important to be positive and keep having fun, Mrs. Baker said.
“You can’t go to a person with cancer and be depressed. You’ve just got to treat them like nothing’s wrong,” she said.
Miss Baker finishing treatment is one of the final hurdles for the family, Mrs. Baker said. Another is that Mrs. Baker will soon be without health insurance because her husband recently lost his job. Cancer treatment is expensive and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, she said.
