Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Interview Feature
“Laugh, Laugh a Lot”: A CCPC Board Member on Facing Breast Cancer at 40
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Chatham County Partnership for Children board member Connie Fenner shares what she wishes every woman knew.
Before her diagnosis, Connie’s life looked like the picture of health. She was running a busy team at work, raising two young sons who had just started first grade, and fitting in workouts before the kids woke up and again after they went to bed. Two years earlier she had lost 50 pounds. “I was in amazing shape,” she says. “We were really your normal family.”
Then came the diagnosis, and it was a shock.
A lump, and a family in crisis
Early in the year, Connie noticed a knot under her arm, about the size of an almond. She didn’t rush to the doctor. Her brother’s young daughter was fighting a rare form of leukemia, and the family was focused on getting her the best care possible. “I just thought it was nothing, and I just moved on,” she says.
The lymph node wasn’t the worst of it. Behind the nipple of her right breast was a very large tumor.
After a visit to the OB-GYN who had delivered her children, Connie was sent straight to the hospital. She had just turned 40 and was having her first mammogram. There was a sense of urgency in the room, but her mind was somewhere else. Her niece had just passed away, and she needed to get her family through the memorial service. She told a close friend what was happening, set it aside, and asked to deal with it afterward. Telling her mom she had to come back within 48 hours for more scans was one of the hardest parts.
“We’re moms. We have to do everything, and we put ourselves last,” she says. “That’s where we need to stop.”
Getting younger, getting real
During treatment, Connie was the youngest woman in the room, until a patient arrived who was six months younger. “It was the wake-up call that it’s happening younger and younger,” she says. She knows another mother, diagnosed at 35, with a three-year-old and a six-year-old at home. Her message: “Mothers have got to start prioritizing their care.”
Don’t settle for the first doctor
Asked what she would warn a newly diagnosed woman about, Connie doesn’t hesitate. “Do not settle for the first doctor you see.”
She says many women hesitate to ask for a second opinion because they worry about hurting someone’s feelings. “This is your life. You’re going to be with these people for at least two years, with follow-ups every three months, then six months, then a year. You’re married to these folks. If you don’t like them, switch.”
That might mean a different practice in town or a larger cancer center farther away. What matters is finding a team whose style fits yours. Connie’s own doctor was one she could joke with on a bad day, “a couple of expletives and all,” and it was okay.
Humor, hair, and carrying on
What carried Connie through was humor and routine. She kept working. She stayed around people. And she gave herself permission to do it her way.
“It’s okay to go bald. I can rock a bald head and a four-inch heel and some eyeliner like nobody’s business.” If a wig is itchy, especially in a North Carolina summer, she says it’s fine to skip it, or to tie on a scarf and big earrings instead. “Try to find the sense of humor in it. It’s not forever.”
Five of her six brothers shaved their heads in solidarity. She jokes that hers was the only head of hair that grew back, and it came back white. “I dyed it after someone asked if my nephew was my grandchild,” she laughs.
Her advice, in four words: “Laugh. Laugh a lot.”
What Connie wants Chatham County to know
[on-camera portion of the interview: what she’d say to someone who thinks it could never happen to them, and what she’d like Chatham County to do for women facing breast cancer. mobile 3D mammogram screenings that take about 30 minutes, “the same time as getting coffee,” held at places like churches, and the message that it’s never too early to start caring for yourself.
Take the next step
If you’re due for a mammogram, or you’ve noticed a change in your body, don’t wait. Call your doctor this week. Your family needs you healthy, and you deserve the same care you give everyone else.
