Archive for April, 2009

Robbie Baker King shared her experience with sisters, co-workers, church members — anyone who would listen. The lump was sitting between her breasts near her rib, and it would have never been detected with mammograms

By ROBBIE BAKER KING

I am a truly blessed seven-year breast cancer survivor.

I’m very glad to share my adventure with breast cancer. With the range of emotions that fill your entire body from the moment you feel the “lump,” adventure is the only true word that best expresses what I went through!

I’ve always had an athletic build. Nothing “extra” on my body, including the chest area! So, in the summer of 2000 when I was laying on my stomach, I felt something different near my left breast. It didn’t hurt, but I could feel it. A lump sitting right on one of my ribs. I had been performing self breast exams for five years, since my mother’s breast cancer diagnosis in 1995, and this area is not included in the circular path associated with the breast …

Continue reading CANCER TALES Breast cancer was an ‘adventure’ »

Parents of Susan Weber

By SUSAN WEBER

My dad had complained of a pain and swelling in his side for several months, and being the stubborn man he was, he refused to see a doctor. I think it was fear as much as stubborness that kept him from the doctor.

He kept telling me (his only child) that it was “just a pulled muscle and only needed some linament”. He hated doctors, and didn’t believe in them, especially after he lost my mom after 42 years of marriage because of what he called a “quack doctor”.

Finally, a friend of his convinced him that he should be checked out. We were not prepared for what was to follow. They did exploratory surgery, and found that cancer had taken over his abdominal cavity, spreading to various organs. Ten days later, he was gone!

I have always heard that once it “hits the oxygen in the air, it’s all over with.” Now I believe that. The family was in shock that he went downhill so fast.

I didn’t have time to say good-bye, or tell him just how much I …

Continue reading CANCER TALES She “didn’t have time to say goodbye” to her father »

By RHONDA K. FANT

My dad (left) and his best friend Lamar

“There are no do-overs in life.”

Of the many words my brother Danny had spoken to me – these I remember the most. He had been diagnosed eight weeks earlier in July 2003 – and little did we know we would only have him for nine more weeks.

Once a strong, determined, active and funny brother – the cancer made him tired, angry, quiet and not so funny.

I had never been close to my brother who was eight years older than me – but we lived and talked a lifetime in those 17 weeks. We learned a lot from cancer. You can mend broken bridges, you can forgive and forget, but most of all you can truly love.

He forgave my father, Dan Sr., for years of arguments, anger and poor choices. It was something he had to do so that he could let go. As I watched my brother’s health decline – I realized that those years were gone forever.

Then on the day after what would have been my brother’s 49th birthday, on July 16, 2004 – my father was …

Continue reading CANCER TALES Loss of brother, dad helped her understand loving, letting go »

By LISA BURKE JONES

Robert L. Burke and his nephew, Capt. Corey King of the Georgia National Guard before King’s deployment to Iraq in Spring 2005.

There were not too many battles that my father, Robert L. Burke, could not win, but his last one, the one he fought the hardest, he lost.

Dad was the youngest of seven children. He was originally from Helena, Ark. He married my mother, Sara, a Georgia girl, and they had four children. They settled in Georgia after he retired from the Air Force.

Dad was the person in our family we could always turn to for help with anything. If he did not know how to do it, he figured it out. He once built a console color TV in our living room out of a kit he bought.

Dad was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue in June 2003. He had never smoked and was not a drinker. He was exposed to a lot of secondhand smoke during his days in the military when it was an accepted practice to smoke in the workplace.

Surgery was an option, but we were told it would …

Continue reading CANCER TALES Warrior dad battled tongue cancer to the end »

By RHONDA ABAIR

The author’s grandmother, Ida Felton

My faith has helped sustain me through the death of my dear grandmother and my mother to cancer.

My grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer in late 1990. I adored her. She had raised me as her own because my mother gave birth to me at a very young age.

My grandmother was dirt poor, but she gave me everything that I needed. She taught me good manners and values and how to live without being extravagant and have everything that you need.

Her lung cancer was a shock to the family because she never smoked. She was a health fanatic. We had fresh veggies everyday.

When I was very young I used to pray and ask God to take me first because I knew that I couldn’t live without my grandmother. We buried her on July 1, 1991, two days before my birthday. Part of me went with her.

I have really been trying ever since to live right, obey God’s laws and treat people as I want to be treated.

My mother died from ovarian cancer in November …

Continue reading CANCER TALES Rhonda Abair: I miss my mother, grandmother »

By Michelle Harding

Cancer is a weed. It suffocates and destroys what is good and pure and true. It takes a beautiful Sunday garden and tramples it with ugliness and despair.

Continue reading CANCER TALES Michelle Harding of Suwanee: Cancer is a weed »

By Alpen Patel, MD

Spring is here and with its beauty comes budding trees, greening grass, blooming flowers — and allergies. While many of us long for warmer weather and getting outdoors more, most of us do not look forward to the pollen that it brings. Unfortunately, for the next few weeks as pollen counts increase, allergy sufferers can expect a surge in sniffling and clogged nose, sneezing, watery eyes, and coughing and scratchy throat.

Of course Atlantans are not the only ones suffering the pollen onslaught. As many as 40-50 million people in the United States suffer from allergies, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

So, what causes allergies? Essentially, an allergy is an increased hypersensitivity to a specific substance that causes a reaction. An allergy comes about when the immune system, which is there to protect us from microbial invaders like viruses and bacteria, reacts to a normally harmless substance.

Environmental allergens, or …

Continue reading DOCTOR IS IN: Surviving allergy season »