Lisa Hale continues to spread awareness on breast cancer

Longtime Enterprise nurse Lisa Hale has been cancer free for more than a decade but she continues to spread awareness, especially to young women on the importance of mammograms.

Hale – a Massachusetts native – moved to Enterprise in the mid 1990s as she and her husband were in the military and stationed at Fort Rucker. After leaving the military, Hale went into the private sector as a nurse, in a job she has spent the majority of the past 20 years doing.

In 2007, Hale was a nurse with the Enterprise Women’s Clinic and noticed a trend with female patients having anxiety or fear of mammograms because things they had heard about the exam being painful. Hale decided she would get the exam done despite being only 36, as it’s typically urged for women to begin getting mammograms at 40.

“When I went in, I went in taking notes on the steps so I could teach our patients what happens and let them know this isn’t painful, it’s just a little uncomfortable,” Hale recalled.

Immediately following the exam, Hale had to return for follow ups because of a lesion found on her breast. Hale had triple negative breast cancer, a very aggressive breast cancer, and one that is only detectable with a mammogram.

“I had just had a yearly exam done two weeks before and we had some nurse practitioners there training and I let them do my breast exam as practice and they didn’t feel anything,” Hale said. “You just couldn’t feel it. My doctor told me by the time you can feel that lump on the type of breast cancer I had it was advanced to stage three or four.”

Hale’ cancer was in stage one and after the tumor was removed and chemotherapy treatments, she was cancer free. Hale said that the fact that she went in for her exam early is likely what saved her life.

“My patients not getting their mammograms and me trying to educate them on it saved my life,” she emphasized. “My oncologist told me that the (cancer) cells were replicating at like 96 percent. They were growing very fast and he told me I would have never, ever seen 40.”

Hale also says she owes Medical Center Enterprise’s Natasha Sumblin and Jessica Hagland for her keeping her appointment.

“I almost cancelled my appointment but Jessica and Natasha at the hospital told me I wasn’t cancelled and to come get it done,” Hale remembered. “I thank Jessica and Natasha yearly for (saving) my life. I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t done that exam.”

Hale is a big proponent of women getting mammograms before the age of 40 because it very well could save lives.

“It’s more important than ever,” Hale said. “You don’t have to even have a genetic reason to get breast cancer. I had the gene test done and I was negative. Last year, my baby sister was diagnosed with breast cancer.”

Both Hale and her sister are now cancer free. Hale also speaks with patients that are diagnosed with cancer to help them through the battle and has remained friends with a numbers of those patients. Hale also urged that young women should be familiar with their body so they know when something is not right.

“Girls should learn early what their bodies feel like,” Hale emphasized. “I know a lot of people are kind of afraid to touch their body but if you don’t know what’s normal you won’t know when something is abnormal.”