FRANKFORT, Ky. — Kentucky’s Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman said it was a risk she had to take.
Just days after stepping into her second term in office, Coleman underwent a double mastectomy.
“If I had waited, if I had put it off, I don’t know where we’d be right now,” she said.
Coleman said doctors expressed concern during her very first mammogram in September.
“There was one place that was of grave concern, and there were three others that they were like, we'll deal with this after the first one,” Coleman said. “I went back for the biopsy, and they made the decision there that they were going to need to remove that place. Then, the conversation shifted to we’re going to biopsy this and remove it… it was going to go on and on. I have a 3 year old. I can’t run the risk, I just couldn’t gamble. I felt like that’s what that was.”
Though Coleman had already been cleared in genetic testing for both the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 mutation, she couldn't ignore the odds.
“I have a pretty serious family history,” she said. “My mother, my aunt, and my cousin all had breast cancer. In the back of your mind, there's this fear, when you have that kind of family history, it's like you're just waiting to hear the news.”
Pathology results revealed a benign mass, with what Coleman said had “malignant potential.” It was a race against the clock in more ways than one.
“If you recall, we were running for office; we were on a statewide campaign,” Coleman said. “Staying that busy kind of helped to keep my mind off of it.”
Coleman scheduled the double mastectomy the first week of January.
“I opted for immediate reconstruction, so I'm still going through some of these phases, and I'll have one more surgery in a few months," Coleman said. "The doctors say it'll be nothing compared to what I've been through."
It’s a process that’s proved challenging both emotionally and physically.
“That was scary, I didn't know what to expect,” Coleman said. “Once I got through it, the calls and the cards, and the letters from women across Kentucky, it’s remarkable how common this is. I think it gave women an opportunity to talk about their experience.”
“It’s very painful. I had a lymph node removed on one side. Who knew a lymph node would be that painful? And there's no way to prepare for what you'll see, what you'll look like. I think about the support from my husband. When you say, till death do us part, you don't realize you might have to empty your spouse’s drains. Those types of things become reality.”
Coleman says she used the holidays to recover at home with family.
“When they said four to six weeks [recovery], I thought that was crazy, but it did take me that long,” she said. “We’ve had to tell Evelynne for a few months that, mama has a boo boo. I couldn’t pick her up for a long time. That was hard. I never let her see me because I didn’t want her to see that. That would be too hard for a 3 year old to understand."
Women know their bodies, they know what would be best for them and their family, and that's the decision we have to make. For this mom, it was all about her family's future.
“In a way I did it for her; I did it for Emma and Will and Nate and Chris," Coleman said. "The thought of not being around, that wouldn't be fair to Evelynne. If I had waited, if I had put it off, I don't know where we'd be right now. In a way, I feel like we beat the clock.”
Coleman said it's never the right time to delay doctor visits. Get screened, get informed, and know you're never alone in this journey.
Each year in the United States, about 240,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed in women and about 2,100 in men, according to the CDC. About 42,000 women and 500 men in the U.S. will die from it. Black women have a higher rate of death from breast cancer than all other women.
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