Cindy Gregory runs pieces of cloth through her sewing machine while creating pillows to comfort cancer patients undergoing chemo-therapy.
CHARLESTOWN — Everything was going as planned for Cindy Gregory this summer. She’d lived in Charlestown with her husband of 32 years, Chuck, in a home he built for them. She was 32 years into a career as a bus driver and had two children. Cindy liked to garden and take her Golden Retriever and father on walks and as a couple, the Gregorys enjoyed boating, camping and kayaking together.
They had gone kayaking in Starve Hollow State Park the first weekend of June. A few days later, Cindy’s life would change.
“You’re just living life and laughing and having fun and bam! It stops you on a dime. You’ve got cancer,” Cindy said. “I never dreamed I would. I never dreamed I would walk this path.”
Before the kayaking trip, Cindy went for her annual mammogram. This year, she opted for a 3D exam, knowing that she has dense breast tissue. The 3D exam showed something — a “slight pucker” in her right breast, Gregory recalls her doctor saying. However, nothing appeared on a follow-up ultrasound. Rather than go for a biopsy right away, Gregory chose to have an MRI when she got back from her trip. Like the 3D mammogram, the MRI revealed an issue in her right breast.
“It showed up as 3 or 5 little spots. Just these little spots and so then they wanted the biopsy,” Cindy said
A biopsy was done, but Cindy couldn’t stand to hear the words from anyone but Chuck, so she asked her doctor to tell him first so he could tell her the results, whatever they were.
“He came home and when he walked through the door I could tell by the look on his face and I just lost it. I started crying and I felt like this is it. Everybody feels the same way — it’s over, life is over. I have cancer,” she said.
After Chuck broke the news, Cindy got a call from her doctor explaining the diagnosis — stage 1 invasive carcinoma. It was not life threatening, not aggressive, and they caught it early.
Ten days later, she was on the operating table for a lumpectomy.
Her doctor removed breast tissue and seven lymph nodes. Those nodes would later be tested to see if the cancer had spread. Again, Cindy didn’t want to hear it from anyone but Chuck, so they made a plan. If the cancer hadn’t spread, he would come home with a dozen pink roses.
“... I heard the back door open. [Chuck] walked around the corner with tears in his eyes. He had 12 pink roses and he was bawling. I screamed as loud as I could scream. It’s not spread … I’ve gotten roses before, but those are the prettiest roses I ever got in my life.”
Cindy Gregory
Though the cancer hadn’t spread beyond her breast, a test revealed that there was a 29 percent chance of it returning. To ensure it wouldn’t, Cindy would undergo four chemotherapy treatments. As of Oct. 3, she had completed two.
“I had pictured it being horrible, but it’s not really been bad,” she said. “I pictured being sick, but there’s so much medicine they can give you. I never had nausea, never threw up. I have other [symptoms]. My nails are discolored and I get a lot of acid reflux, stomach bloating. Those are my main symptoms. Bloating and stomach acid and sleepiness. Sleepy is the worst, the absolute worst.”
She gets three weeks between her treatments and in the third week, she almost feels like herself again — but not for too long.
“The next week I have chemo and then I’m right back bloating, hurting and tired. But I’m glad I have that third week. Some people don’t have that, they have to have it every week,” she said.
After her first round of chemotherapy, Cindy’s thick hair started coming out by the handful in the shower, so she made a decision. “I took my hair before chemo did.”
In September, she shaved it off, with her friends by her side.
“I shed three or four tears and we laughed the rest of the time because they were teasing me about my head,” she recalled.
Those same friends have been by her side throughout her whole journey, inspiring Cindy to help other breast cancer fighters once her journey is complete. She says that while the cancer is the diagnosis, it’s “what you have to handle and go through after surgery. That’s the fight, too. It’s not the cancer, it’s everything else.”
Because of that, Cindy plans to sit with patients going through chemotherapy alone, sew specialty pillows that provide comfort after surgery, and encourage those around her who are going through the same thing.
“Really, seriously, I feel like this has really changed me totally,” she said. “It’s changed my whole thought of life.”
But perhaps before all that, Cindy has some ideas for what she’d like to do once her chemotherapy and radiation are complete and things go back to normal.
“I want to go on a big trip. I want to go on a riverboat cruise,” she said. “I just want to do something. My main focus, after I get back, I just want to be back to normal, but I do want to keep helping. I won’t stop, I won’t stop helping.”