Thursday, September 30, 1999

Speaking out after battling breast cancer

The Linda J. Deal of years past would have never considered talking publicly about anything personal, especially if it had to do with her health.
   "I was of the old school where you were raised to think that you had your picture in the paper only twice in one's lifetime - when you got married and when you died."
   Today, the 64-year-old has an entirely different perspective. She not only shares the intimate details of her breast cancer survival story with any group that invites her to speak, "I also get them to open up their pocketbook" for First Friday.
   First Friday is a local organization that raises breast cancer awareness and money to provide free mammograms for women who can't afford them. The organization hosts its annual fund-raiser Friday at the Omni Bayfront.
   Deal, owner/manager of a landscaping and lawn management company in Aransas Pass, credits First Friday with saving her life. What she does now for the organization, she says, is the least she can do for the "gift of time they've given me."
   Deal's story
   It began when Deal checked into the hospital in 1997 to have a large benign brain tumor removed. Because she and her self-employed husband had never had enough money left over after payroll and bills to pay for a health insurance plan, medical bills started to stack up quickly.
   The following year, during a regular checkup, doctors discovered a suspicious mass in Deal's left breast and advised her to get a mammogram. Not having the money to do so, Deal ignored the matter.
   But the topic came up the following month, when while attending a meeting of her Aransas Pass Women's Club a guest speaker handed out First Friday coupons entitling women who qualified to free mammograms. Deal took one home and 2 1/2 weeks later, worked up the nerve to call the number listed on it.
   Two weeks after making that call, Deal went in for a biopsy. A few weeks later she underwent a lumpectomy.
   Deal was fortunate; her tumor was small and removed before the cancer spread.
   Helping women
   But for every Deal, there are scores of women, who for lack of funds or because of fear, wait until the tumors are golf-ball sized to seek medical attention, says Cindy Eckman of First Friday. All the more reason for First Friday's continued mission.
   Says Kathryn Childers, who founded First Friday five years ago after numerous friends were diagnosed with the disease: "I thought this would be better than sending flowers and a card."
   The result: First Friday has provided 2,000 free mammograms in the past two years. It also has inspired a local woman, Kristen Parker, a medical student at Texas A&M University, and her Women in Medicine group to found a First Friday there. It is the idea behind First Friday, after all, that makes a woman's first line of defense against breast cancer true not just for some, but for all in a community with such an organization.
   (The First Friday Breast Cancer Awareness fund-raiser is Friday. For information, call 985-5022.)
  
  
 

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  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.