Surviving breast cancer is an ongoing, emotional journey.
Two Vicksburg women are testament to the widest ranges of those feelings — from hope to anger, from fear to focus and from sadness to accomplishment.
Karen Jones was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, in January after a co-worker at RiverHills Bank urged her to have a mammogram “and something inside of me told me to go get one too,” she said..
Jones admitted that it had been years since she had had a mammogram.
Something suspicious was seen on Jones’ first mammogram, she said — so a second was ordered.
“Then I had to have a biopsy,” said Jones.
The results came back three days later
She got the call in a place best kept staid and unemotional — at work.

“They called me at the bank with the results, and when I found out I cried and was upset,” Jones said. “Then I got mad.”
“Your emotions go from getting upset, to getting mad and then you have to move on to what you need to do.”
In 2009, Carolyn Butler’s emotions were shaded by disbelief when told she tested positive for HER2-related breast cancer, a variety of the disease linked to a mutated gene.
“I had a mammogram six months before that was normal,” Butler said. “And I didn’t have a family history. I was taking a shower and I felt the lump.”
Memories of her going into surgery to have a left breast mastectomy bring tears — the joyful kind, that is.
“The people at the hospital thought I was a celebrity,” Butler remembers. “I had my best friend, Elaine Campbell, with me, my family, my husband, my church family from Cedar Grove Baptist Church. I just felt blessed to have all those people around me.”
Jones and Butler met this week for the first time, their lives improbably brought together by a disease they hadn’t dreamt they’d have to deal with. Butler said the experience brought about some “sister love” that comes with finding a fellow survivor.
Both have years of therapy and maintenance to stay cancer-free.
“On Aug. 29, I got my final pass and now I will only have to go for a mammogram every six months for the next two years,” Jones said this past week. DCIS is a form of breast cancer found inside a milk duct in the breast. It’s the most common “non-invasive” form of breast cancer if caught early. Jones is just six months removed from a lumpectomy that led to radiation therapy and many a night spent drained of energy.
For six weeks Jones said she drove herself to the Cancer Center of Vicksburg before heading to work.
“I would go into a room and they would run a machine around me zapping a laser my body,” she said, where she’d be stripped down to a robe.
By the end of the week, Jones said she was drained of energy and would try to rest over the weekend only to begin another round of treatment on Monday.
Butler had hit her 40s in stride at the time she was diagnosed— a new job with the City of Vicksburg, a loving husband and two grown children on either ends of college. She still works for the city and has maintained faith, but she remembers how it was tested.
“I had the left breast removed and had lymph nodes removed in 2009, then in 2013 after an abnormal mammogram I had right breast mastectomy, then reconstructive surgery on both breasts,” Butler said.
“There’s CT and PET scans every six months,” she said. “I take prescription hormone blockers that lower the chances it’ll come back. My oncologist just recommended I stay on them another five years.”
The dominant emotion in their lives might well be a noun — resolve — as both women have thrown themselves into fundraising for survivors of cancers of all types.
Jones has stayed plugged into her responsibilities, first as an administrative assistant at the bank and second as business manager for Miss Mississippi. In July, she was awarded volunteer of the year at the 2014 Miss Mississippi Pageant in Vicksburg. And she’s redone her Facebook page with the Breast Cancer awareness logo.
“I’m going to try to be an advocate for breast cancer, and I want to also urge women to be screened,” she said. “I have got a team together to do the Susan G. Komen walk in Jackson,”
“I was a strong person before breast cancer, but I am even stronger now.”
Butler, a self-described “dreamer”, put her personal experiences and those of cancer patients she’s met into action in 2010 when she formed Believers of Faith Cancer Organization. She and several members of her church use donated funds to defray the costs of treatments and other health-related expenses for those dealing with the disease.
“The need out there and what we want to do is vast,” Butler said, adding her organization hopes to find a physical location to house a meeting room and resource center for people in all phases of cancer treatments. “Our survivors won’t have to travel to Jackson to get what they need.”
Butler counts about 30 cancer survivors in Vicksburg, Port Gibson, Fayette and western Hinds County among those currently receiving help from Believers of Faith. It’s their stories of living with the disease, as well as her own, that keep her moving.
“We have a lot of plans in Believers of Faith,” Butler said. “We’re not going anywhere.”

 

By Danny Barrett Jr.
danny.barrett@vicksburgpost.com
and Terri Cowart Frazier
terri.frazier@vicksburgpost.com