When her family relocated to Cullman in 2015, one of the first things Jennifer Limerick did was get acquainted with Relay for Life organizers. Years earlier, she had watched her grandfather battle, and defeat skin cancer. It was the catalyst that lead her to take on the role of a volunteer for the organization. Years later she’d take on a new role … survivor.
Three years before her husband accepted a job with Rehau, resulting in her family moving to Cullman from a small North Carolina town halfway between Asheville and Charolette, Limerick said she began to notice a small lump in her breast. She described it as feeling almost as if there were a BB under her skin.
She mentioned the lump to two different doctors within those three years asking if she should schedule a mammogram as a precaution. At the time Limerick was considered to be at low risk for breast cancer. She was in her mid-30s and even though her grandfather had previously been diagnosed with skin cancer, there was no family history of breast cancer. The doctors chalked it up to fibrocystic changes.
“I just trusted them. They said not to worry about it, so I didn’t worry about it. Every year it felt like it would get a little bit bigger and I would ask about it and they said they saw it in my notes and that they’d take a look, but it was just fibrocystic changes and nothing to worry about,” Limerick said.
Between the move in 2015 and the pressures of adjusting to life in a new community, Limerick said she failed to see a doctor during her first year in Alabama. That changed in 2017 when she woke up in the middle of the night from an intense itching on her breast. Limerick texted her husband, who was working third-shift, and the two agreed that she would schedule an appointment the following morning.
Her new doctors scheduled an ultrasound quickly, followed by a biopsy. Two days later she met with a surgeon who diagnosed her with breast cancer.
Limerick said the treatment — a double mastectomy, six rounds of chemotherapy and close to 50 rounds of radiation — took away a year of her life. Due to the location of the cancer, Limerick would need to wait a year before she was able to have reconstructive surgeries.
Now in remission for more than five years, Limerick reflects on the mental strain the experience had on her.
Along with the physical trauma on her body, Limerick said she felt like she was losing her identity.
“Not having your breasts as a female just did something to me. I felt like I didn’t look good in my clothes anymore. I felt like everybody was looking at me, even though probably nobody even noticed or cared. It was just me, it just really kills your self-esteem,” she said.
With funds raised through Relay for Life events, the American Cancer Society offered opportunities to rebuild that self-esteem. The ACS provided her a free wig and sponsored makeup classes at Wallace State.
“They invited us to come and love ourselves again,” she said. “They gave us techniques on how to do our makeup to look less weird without eyebrows and told us that we can still be beautiful even though we’ve lost all of our hair.”
Looking back, Limerick said she would tell her younger self to advocate for herself more and to become more educated on the types of treatment and testing available.
“I would have asked for further testing. Don’t take their word for it, get proof and get lab work done. At least ask what types of tests could detect breast cancer. It’s not just mammograms, I learned over the years that they could have done an ultrasound to show that,” she said.