Woman Is Newly Cancer Free Because of Mammogram Program

When Vicki feared cancer after a self-exam last November, she panicked.

She was an independent contractor with . Her husband of 40 years had passed away from an illness just a few short years ago. And she had no health insurance.

“I had no idea what I was going to do,” she says. Googling, she admits, isn’t of her generation. “Even if I had had insurance, you just hear the word cancer and you panic.”

A friend put her in touch with the Mammography Voucher Program at Morton Plant Mease hospitals, the beneficiary of Dunedin's event Thursday (5 to 9 p.m.). The voucher program provides free breast cancer services to women of a certain income level and who have no health insurance.

Vicki says she was accepted into the program in January and matched with a caseworker that guided her through the process and cheered her through four grueling months of chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Vicki is two weeks cancer free.

She pulls down the neck of her shirt, exposing a purplish mark near her collarbone.

“People think you don’t want that port,” she said, “but it becomes your best friend.”

Chemo injections in her port we far better than being poked with 24-gauge needles.

The treatments made her nauseous and listless. Everything smelled bad, and she couldn't eat or work.

"I lived on a diet of mashed potatoes and pasta, with no sauce," she says. The chemo pill, which she must now take, makes her nauseous, tired and causes bone and joint aches, but "it's nothing compared to the chemo."

Vicki’s eyes well with tears.

She is overwhelmed with emotion as she recounts how friends rallied to aid her during harsh chemotherapy treatments that began in February.

People brought her food, drove her to and from doctor’s appointments, picked up the cost of her electric bills, and kept prayer chains going. One friend even slept on her couch for two weeks after her mastectomy to drain fluids when needed.

“I have a stack of cards this high,” she says. “All of the positive reinforcement I got — every bit of it — helped me get through.”

She grabs a tissue to dry her tears.

Now, she says, she is having fun with wigs, since she is on the chemo pill for a while longer and it’s “obvious” that she’s wearing a wig anyway (unless you have money to spend on authentic-looking wigs — which she doesn’t, she says). She set up a private boutique in her room, where she matches wigs to her outfits.

“I’m thinking about getting a Mohawk,” she says, smiling. “Maybe blue, too.”

Want to go?

• What: Second annual
• When: 5 to 9 p.m.; Thursday (Oct. 6)
• Where: and
• Want to help? See what the to support Morton Plant Mease's Mammography Voucher Program.

Looking for more Breast Cancer Awareness events? See .

Editor's note: Dunedin Patch respected Vicki's request to omit her last name. The six-year employee is now back at work at Maurice Jewelry Design.