BY DANI TIETZ
dani@mahometnews.com
For every eight women in the United States, one will be diagnosed with breast cancer during her lifetime.
Even as Cathy Croft continues to undergo her own treatments for breast cancer, this statistic — one in eight women in the U.S. — is what she spends a lot of her time thinking about.
“It is really quite a shocker to me,” Croft said.
But Croft did not believe she would be one of those women.
“My family has a whole host of medical problems, they have every kind of medical problem you could ever think of,” Croft said. “But we have no cancer in our family, thank God; we were always very excited that that’s the one thing our genetics didn’t have.”
Croft’s symptoms did not mimic what women typically find in a self-examination. Instead of a lump, she had nipple drainage.
According to the Mayo Clinic, nipple drainage can be a signal of many different conditions, many benign, but according to its website, breast cancer can be a possibility if: a woman has a lump in her breast, only one breast is affected, discharge contains blood, the discharge is spontaneous and consistent and/or the discharge affects only a single duct.
Croft thought her diagnosis meant that her life would end sooner than she had planned.
“I remember sitting with the surgeon, I was like, ‘I just don’t want to die,’” she recalls. “I just don’t want to die. I just don’t.”
“Now whether that was going to be one year, two years, I wasn’t quite sure what that was going to look like,” she said. “But I thought it really meant like, I was going to die.”
With the help and education from her doctors at Carle, Croft learned that she can be a breast cancer survivor.
“Everybody’s journey is different,” she learned.
During the same time she was going through the diagnosis, she and her partner, Tim Feldkamp, were looking to purchase an auto repair business on Prairieview Road.
Croft was first diagnosed with cancer that is not known to metastasize, so, the surgeon scheduled a bilateral mastectomy, believing that the removal of the tissue would also get rid of the cancer.
A biopsy revealed though that Croft had a “flake” of cancer in a lymph node, meaning that the cancer had metastasized.
Feldkamp described the emotions as a roller coaster of hot and cold.
But, Croft said that Feldkamp’s demeanor during the roller coaster helped keep her focused on the positive.
“That helps, too, when you’re with somebody who is so laid back,” she said. “If I were to get worked up about something, he would be like, ‘it will fix itself.’”
After the bilateral mastectomy in December, Croft began reconstruction surgery, consistently getting expanders put in. The expanders were taken out in July, and Croft began nipple reconstruction, which has been the hardest thing to grapple with.
Because the cancer began in her nipple, surgeons also had to take the nipple.
“Psychologically, for me, the whole nipple thing has been a barrier,” she said. “I’ve done fine with everything else, but the whole not having a nipple, I don’t know.”
Surgeons are now able to take skin from other parts of the body to reconstruct a nipple. Once the area is completely healed, they can go back and tattoo the area to pigment it into the color of a nipple and an areola.
Croft is currently in the middle of this process.
As Croft continues to take medication to stop the spread and development of cancer for at least the next five years, she knows just how lucky she is.
Not just to be alive, but also to be blessed with a support system, with the financial means and the proximity to the Mills Breast Cancer Institute.
And so, this October, she, alongside Feldkamp and Feldkamp’s West, located in Mahomet, want to give back to people within East Central Illinois who are not as fortunate.
“I said to Tim, ‘I really want to do something to give back,’” she said. ‘There’s so many people that are struggling to make all of these doctor’s appointments and to do all this stuff that we’ve had to do that isn’t pleasant, but we’ve been able to do them.’”
Feldkamp said that he would give a portion of every tow and car service during the month of October to the Mills Breast Cancer Institute. And, as a member of the Sundowners Car Club, Feldkamp reached out, asking if the group would bring its car show to Mahomet on Nov. 2 to raise additional funds for breast cancer warriors.
The owners of Fired Smoth’rd & Covered Food truck will give a portion of their sales back to the fundraiser and a 50/50 drawing will raise additional funds.
Feldkamp’s mother, Pat, also got involved, visiting local stores to look for breast cancer awareness bracelets for the event.
Croft said everything the Mills Breast Cancer Institute has done for her and her family over the last year of treatment has been exactly what she needed.
“People have no idea how much time you spend in these processes,” she said.
Over a sixth-month period, Croft said she went to at least 65 doctors appointments and had multiple surgeries.
Living close to the facility, with family and friends nearby, helped her get the care she needed. But Croft has met women who have to drive hours to get to their doctor’s appointments and treatments.
She also said that Mills provides each patient with a wide-variety of materials and services to help them through the process: a book that serves as a guide, a library to do research, a bag with necessary tools and equipment during treatment, yoga to help promote wellness, and nutritional and family services, among a variety of other tools and resources.
The organization also helps provide financial assistance to patients who need it.
Online support groups also helped Croft connect with women going through the same emotions, but it has been those one-on-one connections that have really meant a lot to her.
Shortly after a new employee, Chris, came on at Feldkamp’s West, his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Understanding what was to come, Croft and Feldkamp were empathetic to what the family needed.
Croft spent last weekend at a Sundowners Car Show, passing out flyers about Feldkamp West’s upcoming event.
She met women who were fellow breast cancer survivors and one woman who was recently diagnosed.
“It is literally astounding to me, the number of people that are affected by breast cancer,” Croft said.
All of the money raised during Feldkamp’s October fundraiser will be marked to stay local.
“The last thing that people need to worry about is how you’re going to get to or from, or you know, worried about having the support when you’re faced with breast cancer,” Croft said. “It’s a real emotional thing.”
Croft said that this will not be the only or last time that Feldkamp’s looks at how to make an impact in the lives of those with breast cancer. She said that the fundraiser could become an annual event or there has been talk of developing a non-profit.
But she does know that educating the community on breast cancer statistics and raising money for the scope of research to daily care is what is most important.
In taking care of others and remaining positive, she hopes that more stories end up like hers.
On the same day that she underwent the nine-hour bilateral mastectomy surgery in 2018, her daughter, Bethany Seefeldt, ended up leaving the hospital because she became nauseous at the smell of food.
A few days later, as her daughter was taking care of her post-surgery, Croft asked if she was pregnant; she remembered that the smell of food also made her nauseous when she was pregnant.
With all of the ups and downs over the previous months, Bethany and her husband, Brayden, had decided to wait until Christmas to tell the family that they were expecting. She swore her mom to secrecy.
“For me, it just signaled that everything is going to be okay,” Croft said. “During that time, you pray all the time, and it was just God saying it’s going to be okay.”
