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Cynthia Frame
“You can own this, or it can own you.”
Those are the words breast cancer survivor Cynthia Frame heard from her husband when she received her positive diagnosis in December 2015. For Frame, 55, her diagnosis came after a lump she had found during a self-exam had changed. She went in for a biopsy on Dec. 16, 2015.
“After the biopsy, they called Friday, Dec. 18, and it was exactly a week before Christmas and they told me it was cancer,” she says. “So of course immediately you don’t really know how you’re going to go through it, but the good Lord is going to help you. Immediately my husband, Randy, told me one thing: He said ‘you can own this, or it can own you.’ So I choose to own it. I stepped up. So my journey began. That’s what I always refer to it as, my journey. With that I became focused on a Bible verse of Exodus 14:14, ‘God will fight for you, you only need to be still.’ That was my focal point.”
That January she underwent surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation, she says. And during it all, her husband was her rock.
“Randy was there with me, very supportive sidekick, he would always be there,” she says. “And you’ve got to have that good support team. I also had a good support team at work, I worked at United Community Bank in Blairsville at the time. And it wasn’t an easy journey, but everybody around you made it go on.”
Following her cancer journey, Frame said that her mindset has changed when talking to others with cancer.
“I have talked to other ladies that have started going through their stuff and once you hear somebody that has it and you’ve been through it, your heart is just different,” she says. “You feel, you don’t feel sorry for that person, but you feel for that person. And you do give an encouraging word, which you can because you’ve been there.”
As for what her encouraging word is to women, it’s to pay attention to your body.
“If you find something, don’t ignore it. Do not ignore it. Because you know your body, you know if it should be there or if it’s something new. Follow through. Get that doctor’s appointment, get that mammogram if that’s what it takes.”