Mount Olive Tribune 061908 NC

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Your home paper since 1904.
Our mailing address is PO Box 1039, Mount Olive, NC 28365.
Thursday, June 19, 2008

Serving Southern Wayne and Northern Duplin Counties

410 NW Center St. • Mount Olive, NC 28365 • Telephone 919-658-9456 • Fax 919-658-9559

Community mobilizes to aid single mom fighting cancer

19 June 2008 – By John Cate, staff writer

Something told Tonya Hill-Matthews not to take ‘no’ for an answer.

Seven weeks after discovering a suspicious lump in her left breast and two negative tests later, the 33-year-old single mother was still worried that something wasn’t right. So she pressured her doctor to perform one additional test.

The decision might have saved her life.

On Feb. 18, Ms. Hill-Matthews emerged from anesthesia following a surgical biopsy to find her suspicions borne out.

“As soon as they went in, the doctors found that it was cancerous, and already in Stage 4,” she recalled. “I came out of surgery and Dr. (Gilbert) Garcia was holding my hand and telling me the news.

“They kept telling me it was an infection, but I had a bad feeling.”

Because of her persistence, Tonya has a better prognosis than most breast cancer patients, especially those in an advanced stage. But she still has a fight on her hands. Luckily, she’s got a lot of help.

Mobilizing against cancer

Ms. Hill-Matthews always expected to contract breast cancer at some point in her life. Her grandmother had (and beat) and disease 28 years ago, and because breast cancer seems to run in families, Tonya figured it would happen to her someday.

But not when she was still a young woman, with a small child.

“Being 33 years old, I never imagined this,” she said. “I never prepared for this, not this soon.”

To have any hope of stopping the cancer in its tracks, Ms. Hill-Matthews was forced to begin an aggressive course of chemotherapy. The side effects of the drugs forced her to leave her job at Southern Bank in Clinton, while her medical bills, and health insurance premiums, were mounting and she still needed to support herself and her daughter Haley, 7.
Upon learning of Tonya’s plight, the Smith Chapel United Methodist Church and the community banded together to help her.

“We had our board meeting around the first of May, and Tonya’s grandmother was there,” said Cathy Waller, who is coordinating the June 28 benefit event for Ms. Hill-Matthews. “Her grandmother asked if we would like to do something to help her.”

The answer, of course, was in the affirmative. Tonya already had the support of her mother, who had come in from her home in the western part of the state to help, and Haley. Now the whole Smith Chapel community joined forces to help send their neighbor’s breast cancer packing.

“At the first meeting we had, I was overwhelmed by the support,” said Mrs. Waller. “Everybody has worked really hard to get this together.”

On Saturday, June 28, the Smith Chapel UMC will host a barbecued chicken and pork dinner, starting at 4 p.m. and continuing while supplies last. On the same day, the David Jacobs Farm, located not far away at 1845 Highway 55 West, will host a benefit trail ride starting at 10 a.m. A barbecued chicken and pork meal will be served at 5 p.m.

Plates for the dinner will be $6 each, while tickets to the trail ride are $25 each, including the meal.

Fighting back vs. cancer

A cancer in Stage 4 has been present for some time, has grown large and often will have spread to other parts of the body. But Tonya was fortunate in that regard. Although the tumor was too large to be operated on immediately, it has showed no signs of spreading. The chemo has halted the tumor’s growth and reduced its size. She has responded well to the treatment, and is expected to have surgery to remove her breasts—and the cancer—around Sept. 1.

Following the surgery, known as a mastectomy, Ms. Hill-Matthews will undergo nine additional months of chemo, followed by six to seven weeks of radiation therapy five days a week, which will hopefully destroy any surviving cancer cells in her body.

Because the cancer had not spread, her prognosis for recovery is good. However, Ms. Hill-Matthews’ life is presently a struggle. The chemo drugs she receives are deadly to cancer cells, but only slightly less toxic to the healthy ones throughout her body.

“I can’t work,” she said. “The treatments put me down for seven to nine days at a time. My white blood cell count goes too low and my doctor doesn’t want me working right now. My immune system is too weak.”

The drugs have wreaked havoc on Tonya’s endocrine system, making her diabetic and requiring her to take five shots of insulin and two pills every day.

On top of that, the chemo doesn’t even do the same things every time, meaning Tonya never knows how she will feel afterwards, except that she will be ill.

“I have different side effects every time,” she said. “The sickness is the worst. When the nausea hits, you can’t even sleep.”

Breast cancer in young women

Mammography, which is normally highly effective in discovering breast cancer, doesn’t work as well in women under 40 years old. Younger women have much thicker fatty tissue in the breast, which sometimes prevents the scan from discovering cancer before it’s too late. Breast cancer is not nearly as common in younger women, but it does occur. In Ms. Hill-Matthews’ case, she had particular concerns because of her grandmother’s history.

When both a mammogram and a needle biopsy of the breast came back negative, she was still concerned and requested that the doctors actually go into the lump and perform a surgical biopsy. When they did so, they immediately discovered cancer.

Ms. Hill-Matthews’ insistence had caused her cancer to be discovered far earlier than it otherwise would have been, greatly increasing her chances to survival. For that, she had a customer at her bank to thank.

“It was a customer, Cathy Faircloth (of Clinton), who told me to be very persistent if I thought something was wrong with me,” she recalled. “The doctors all thought this was just an infection, but I wanted to be sure. I was very, very lucky.

“Don’t just let doctors write something off if you think something is wrong. Sometimes the doctors are wrong.”

Although mammography is less effective in younger women, it is still helpful, and most physicians recommend that women between the ages of 35 and 50 have regular mammograms if there is a certain degree of family history of breast cancer, and that any woman of any age seek care immediately if they discover anything abnormal, such as Ms. Hill-Matthews’ discovery of a lump in her breast at 33.

Helping out

For those who can’t make the benefit dinner or trail ride but still would like to help Tonya, Smith’s Chapel UMC has created a fund to help pay her medical expenses. Checks can be mailed to Smith’s Chapel United Methodist Church, 879 Waller Rd., Mt. Olive, NC 28365. For more information, call Mrs. Waller at (919) 658-5631 or Charlie McClenny at (919) 658-5378.