A light to encourage others

Get a mammogram.

That’s the advice that Dawn Powell, 53, would give to women. She was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in 2016, a year that was difficult for Powell for others reasons as well. She was going through a divorce and started taking care of her father, who had Alzheimer’s. She then learned her father was dying from Stage 4 liver cancer.

During all of this she also went for a mammogram after finding a lump in her right breast and had a biopsy done.

“After the biopsy, they found traces in the margins around my breast tumor in my right breast,” she said. “The surgeon wanted to do and MRI of my complete chest with PET scan and nuclear bone scan. After finding out I had two lumps in my left I knew what I needed to do. My grandmother had a double mastectomy and so I knew if she could suck it up and keep on going until she was in her 80s, I could to as well. I opted for just that. My surgery for the double mastectomy was November 2016 with reconstruction using expanders and silicone. They found out I had three lymph nodes in my right arm that were cancerous after removing 13 total.”

Following the double mastectomy, Powell said she then underwent four attempts at reconstructive surgery, with all four failing. She kept getting infections, and ended up in the emergency room with MRSA and almost sepsis. She added that because she was HER2 positive, she was told she had to take a hormone blocker pill for five years.

“That one little pill really kicked my tail,” she said. “It made all of my bones ache, legs and feet cramp up in the middle of the night, aggravated my degenerative disc disease and cause me to have osteoarthritis. I was tired emotionally and physically.”

She continued to push ahead, and things changed for the better in 2018 when she moved to Cleveland and started going to Longstreet Clinic. The doctor told her that after looking at her history and QR score of the cancer returning with the medicine or without, her score was low and to go get her life back.

“I did just that,” said Powell, a paraprofessional at White County Middle School. “I started working for White County School System and I met a cafeteria manager lady. We got to talking one day and she told me she had cancer and they did a deep flap stomach procedure and made breast out of her stomach fatty tissue.”

Powell said meeting the cafeteria manager was God connecting dots and placing people in her pathway. During her experience, she said she became closer to God.

“Not only with what I’ve been through before with my son, when you knock on death’s door yourself or one of your children, you start to look at life differently,” she said. “You start to look at people you can help, people you can be a light to. You’re not granted tomorrow, you’re not promised tomorrow, and so I did get closer to the Lord. I feel like God has placed other women in my life who have had breast cancer that I’m able to be a light to, encourage them, tell them they can gain strength just like I did and they’ll make it because I’m still standing.”

This November, Powell will be five years cancer free and can become classified as a breast cancer survivor.