When Melissa Lay needed surgery and chemotherapy after her breast cancer diagnosis, she had a huge incentive to keep going: the single mother had a young son who needed her for the future.
“My son had just turned four so I was taking care of a preschooler as well as taking treatments,” said Melissa, an embryologist at Cabell Huntington Hospital’s In Vitro Fertilization Lab. “He was a big part of my outlook of ‘You’re going to be fine and get through this.’”
Lay received her diagnosis in the spring of 2012; after surgery she started four rounds of chemo that November. Because of the tumor’s hereditary origins (ironically, the gene came from her father), she chose chemo even though doctors placed the chance of reoccurrence at just 12%.
“Even though my lymph nodes were clear, I wanted to make sure that nothing else spread,” said the North Carolina native, who has lived in Huntington since 2005. “It was my choice to do chemo rather than my physician saying, ‘You have to do this.’”
Her treatments took about six months and were followed by regular check-ups. She went back to the Edwards Cancer Center every three months for the first two years and then every six months to the five-year mark. Now she visits an ECC nurse practitioner for an annual check-up.
In her case, Lay feels like she has accomplished something significant. That’s because in 2001 she had been diagnosed with a melanoma (skin cancer), but doctors caught it early and surgically removed it. No follow-up treatments were necessary.
She credits her cancer-fighting success to her mother’s teaching.
“A driving force for catching these things early enough so they didn’t spread was my mother was an advocate for going to the doctor,” Lay said.
“She believed in having yearly exams and doing what you could to stay healthy. That’s one reason the melanoma and breast cancer were caught so early and I’ve been so successful in my recovery and survivorship moving forward.”
She’s also a believer in cancer victims gathering with other patients to discuss their mutual problems, fears and solutions. ECC offers a number of monthly support groups for people who are (or have been) in treatment; Lay attended one for five years.
“Don’t let this have a detrimental effect on your wellbeing,” Lay says of those who just received a diagnosis. “There are so many people who have gone through the same thing. There are people who have been through what you’re headed through.”