A self-exam helped Corneil catch cancer early

On Tuesday, Sept. 12, Janet Corneil’s life changed forever when she heard the words, “You have breast cancer.”

“I think I went into a little bit of a mental shock,” Corneil said about learning about her diagnosis. “I didn’t cry. I was a little bit shocked. I went into automatic pilot; I didn’t show emotion.

“I think, probably my most memorable moment was when I found it in the shower, and I went, ‘Oh my gosh. What is that?’ I got out of the shower (and) felt it again, thinking it was my imagination. I went and laid down in the bed and prayed, ‘Please don’t let this be cancer.’”

She learned she did have breast cancer almost two weeks after feeling a lump in her breast while performing a self-exam in the shower.

“I took a shower one Wednesday afternoon to go to choir practice,” she said. “I was fine. I always check myself; it’s just become a habit.

“The next morning, a Thursday morning, I’m taking a shower to go to work, and there it is.”

She found the lump before Labor Day weekend, so she contacted her doctor and scheduled her appointment as soon as possible.

“He didn’t think it was cancerous, but he said we were going to go through the whole (process),” she said. “So, that Friday, they did the mammogram, ultrasound and a biopsy. The following Tuesday, I got the results back (Sept. 12).”

She said her surgeon told her that her cancer, though aggressive, was common. She had gotten to it early, making her chances for beating it very high.

“He reassured me that because of the type it was – because they can tell all this stuff from the biopsy – that they knew this cancer,” she said. “It was one of the most common kinds, so he was very familiar with it. He reassured me that they could handle it.”

She had the cancer removed on Sept. 21, having only a lumpectomy to remove the cancer.

“It was about the size of a pecan,” Corneil said. “It was 1.8 c.m. That was when it was biopsied. Ten days later, it had grown to 2.2 c.m. when he took it out. That’s how fast it was growing.

“It’s just a very aggressive form. (My surgeon) said I did everything right.”

She will now have to endure five months of chemotherapy – one treatment every other Friday – and one month of radiation.

Corneil said her doctors were informative and answered any questions she had about breast cancer, her treatment and more.

“(My oncologist) talked with me for over an hour,” she said. “She told me all kinds of things. She went over, thoroughly, the diagnosis; she had all the paperwork right there in front of her. She’s the one who had told me how much it had grown, and she kept reassuring me that I did the right thing, that I was going to make it because I did the right thing by coming in and not ignoring.”

She said her oncologist also spoke with her about losing her hair, a common side effect of chemotherapy treatments.

Corneil said she also learned the differences between lumpectomies and mastectomies from her surgeon.

“He said, ‘I’ll show you the statistics, Janet,’” she said. “’With your kind of cancer, if you compare diagnoses of one person to another – this person had a mastectomy and this person had a lumpectomy – the prognosis for survival is the same. He was very definitive about that.”

“I don’t get a sugarcoating sense from them,” she said. “I think it’s all based on experience. I don’t think they’ve sugarcoated anything, and I don’t think they’ve overlooked anything.”

Though she has only recently been diagnosed, Corneil said she has received tremendous support from her friends, her church and even from strangers.

“You’ve got to have that network of help because all of a sudden, you’re alone,” she said.

She also credits her faith with helping her making it this far in her breast cancer battle.

“My faith is so strong,” she said. “I belong to Jesus. Nothing is going to come to me unless it goes by Him first. He knew this was coming toward me. He knew that, and I think He knew that together, with His strength, that I could handle it. It’s happening for a reason. I don’t know why; maybe to help somebody else.”

Even after receiving her diagnosis, she said she never doubted that God would be there for her.

“I never questioned it. Never,” she said. “I had one hard day, which was the day I went to (my surgeon) first, the week to the day after I found out. So, I had one week of not knowing how bad it was or whether it had spread. So, that week was the toughest week until I saw him and he was able to explain the facts to me.

“Satan’s first arrow that he shoots at you is discouragement. He shot it at me really hard that day, but I can’t explain it. It was just like the Lord put His arms around me; He was holding me just a little bit tighter that day because the panic level (was high). It was like all this undercurrent of emotion, but He had me.”

She also continues to pull encouragement from a memory she had of her church choir family praying with her after she learned she had breast cancer.

“My choir is part of my family, and my Sunday school class is part of my family,” she said. “The church is the big family. I wanted to tell my choir family all at once.”

Corneil asked her choir to pray for her during a call for prayer requests.

“The choir director said, ‘Janet, we’re going to pray for you right now,’” she said. “I felt all these hands all touching me (in prayer). The whole choir stood up and prayed with me.

“That was just awesome. It was a good memory to pull from. I told them then that I wanted prayer first. Prayer was not my last line of defense. I wanted it to be my first line of offense.”

Corneil said she hopes other women learn to not wait if something feels wrong with their bodies.

“I want everybody to know that it can hit you that suddenly,” she said. “Within less than 12 hours, I found a lump, and it can happen that quick. Don’t delay getting it checked out. Don’t ever, ever think you can put it off.”

She also learned to not wait after her mother died from ovarian cancer in 1991.

“She waited,” she said. “She would take us to the doctor (first). So, get checked out. If you think something’s a little bit wrong, get it checked out because she waited too late.”

Corneil also said women should regularly perform self-exams.

“The other part of the story to me is, don’t depend on a yearly mammogram,” she said. “Check yourself. Be responsible for your own body.

“You’ve got to know your own body.”

She also encourages those women who have battled breast cancer to share their stories.

“I think you need to remove the fear,” Corneil said. “There’s fear anyway, but it shouldn’t be surrounded by mystery, that it’s a terrible topic to talk about. It needs to come out in the open. People need to be open about it. I don’t always want to be talking about breast cancer; I want to talk about other things in my life, but Sept. 12, my life changed forever, and it’s a part of my life now.

“I would talk to anybody that wanted information about it because the more we know, the more it’s out there, the more we can remove the horrible mystique about it, that it’s a death sentence. It’s not a death sentence anymore, and I think a lot of people still think it is, or they think it’s not that serious.”

Corneil said it is important to live a normal life during a battle with breast cancer.

“Live every day just, really, as normally as possible,” she said. “Anybody with cancer wants to seem as normal as possible. (You) don’t want to talk about cancer all the time, so do some fun stuff.”

She also suggested creating an email or communication chain to provide regular updates to people.

Corneil said she has no doubt that she will make it through this journey.

“It’s like I told (my friend),” she said. “I said, ‘I have three things. The Lord is holding me, (my friends’ and church’s) prayers are holding me up and I’m stubborn as hell.”