Kari Smelser holds up two wrist pink bands she wears for cancer awareness. The light pink band that she received before her first surgery early this year says ¿Cancer Sucks,¿ while the darker band says ¿Fight Like a Girl,¿ her Relay for Life team name. (Elizabeth Varin) |
Kari Smelser had a feeling she would get breast cancer sometime in her life.
Her grandmother is a breast cancer survivor and had colon cancer, her mom has had cervical cancer and her grandfather died from lung cancer. Those factors together are part of the reason why she has regularly had mammograms since she was 29.
What Smelser didn’t expect was to get the disease so early in life, let alone two cancers within the same year.
“Even when I first was diagnosed I said, ‘At 35 years old this is something that my grandmother and her friends might experience or even my mom might experience; not me, not my friends,’” she said.
However, after the biopsy, the bilateral mastectomy surgery for breast cancer less than two weeks later, and doctors finding lesions in her thyroid indicating papillary cancer after that, it’s become apparent to her that those cancers don’t just affect the older-than-40-year-old group.
“Cancer could impact anyone at anytime,” she said.
Half of all men and one-third of all women in the U.S. will develop cancer during their lifetimes, according to the American Cancer Society. Though only a portion of the more than 100 types of cancer are inherited, many types — like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer to name a few — are linked to a family history of cancer.
Cancer is such a common disease that it appears many families have at least a few members who have had cancer, according to the Cancer Society’s Web site. Certain cancers may appear to run in some families, but that can be caused by a number of factors.
Family members often have risk factors in common, such as smoking, according to the Web site. In other cases, the cancer is caused by an abnormal gene that is passed along from generation to generation.
Only about 5 percent to 10 percent of all cancers are inherited.
Cancer in close relatives is more of a cause for concern than distant relatives, and it is important to look at each side of the family separately, according to the Cancer Society. The age of the person diagnosed also is important. For example, having two or more cases of colon cancer diagnosed in close relatives younger than 30 — colon cancer is rare in people younger than 30 years old — could be a sign of a gene syndrome.
The type of cancer matters too, as more than one case of the same rare cancer is more worrisome than more common cancers. Still some of the more common cancers can be seen running through a family, like breast or ovarian cancer.
That can be seen in Smelser’s case.
She’s gone through two surgeries, had both of her breasts and her thyroid removed and sat through six chemotherapy treatments, she said. It’s been a long road, a long year, but she feels she’s learned in that time what’s really important.
Family. Friends. Those people who will stand by you, she said.
She said she’s learned to appreciate those around her and grown stronger because of their support. She’s also learned how strong she herself can be.
She tries not to worry about what could lie ahead, whether there will be another problem, another biopsy, another cancer.
“It’s always going to be in the back of your mind, I don’t know how it could not, especially after not one but two,” she said. “I guess I’ll just have to cross that road when I get there.
“I’ve got a lot of things left to do.”
Staff Writer Elizabeth Varin can be reached at evarin@ivpressonline.com or 760-337-3441.
Her grandmother is a breast cancer survivor and had colon cancer, her mom has had cervical cancer and her grandfather died from lung cancer. Those factors together are part of the reason why she has regularly had mammograms since she was 29.
What Smelser didn’t expect was to get the disease so early in life, let alone two cancers within the same year.
“Even when I first was diagnosed I said, ‘At 35 years old this is something that my grandmother and her friends might experience or even my mom might experience; not me, not my friends,’” she said.
However, after the biopsy, the bilateral mastectomy surgery for breast cancer less than two weeks later, and doctors finding lesions in her thyroid indicating papillary cancer after that, it’s become apparent to her that those cancers don’t just affect the older-than-40-year-old group.
“Cancer could impact anyone at anytime,” she said.
Half of all men and one-third of all women in the U.S. will develop cancer during their lifetimes, according to the American Cancer Society. Though only a portion of the more than 100 types of cancer are inherited, many types — like breast cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer to name a few — are linked to a family history of cancer.
Cancer is such a common disease that it appears many families have at least a few members who have had cancer, according to the Cancer Society’s Web site. Certain cancers may appear to run in some families, but that can be caused by a number of factors.
Family members often have risk factors in common, such as smoking, according to the Web site. In other cases, the cancer is caused by an abnormal gene that is passed along from generation to generation.
Only about 5 percent to 10 percent of all cancers are inherited.
Cancer in close relatives is more of a cause for concern than distant relatives, and it is important to look at each side of the family separately, according to the Cancer Society. The age of the person diagnosed also is important. For example, having two or more cases of colon cancer diagnosed in close relatives younger than 30 — colon cancer is rare in people younger than 30 years old — could be a sign of a gene syndrome.
The type of cancer matters too, as more than one case of the same rare cancer is more worrisome than more common cancers. Still some of the more common cancers can be seen running through a family, like breast or ovarian cancer.
That can be seen in Smelser’s case.
She’s gone through two surgeries, had both of her breasts and her thyroid removed and sat through six chemotherapy treatments, she said. It’s been a long road, a long year, but she feels she’s learned in that time what’s really important.
Family. Friends. Those people who will stand by you, she said.
She said she’s learned to appreciate those around her and grown stronger because of their support. She’s also learned how strong she herself can be.
She tries not to worry about what could lie ahead, whether there will be another problem, another biopsy, another cancer.
“It’s always going to be in the back of your mind, I don’t know how it could not, especially after not one but two,” she said. “I guess I’ll just have to cross that road when I get there.
“I’ve got a lot of things left to do.”
Staff Writer Elizabeth Varin can be reached at evarin@ivpressonline.com or 760-337-3441.
