Fighting As A Family: Reservist and her mother fight breast cancer

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Shawn Rhodes
  • 927th Air Refueling Wing
MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  It was a warm day in July when Senior Airman Andrea Lucy, a dental technician with the 927th Aerospace Medicine Squadron, awoke. When she went to bed that night, her life would be changed forever. That day, her mother was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer.

"One minute it was all fine, and the next minute my mom had breast cancer," said Lucy.

The 23 year-old Sarasota native, a mother herself, is a traditional reservist with the 927th Air Refueling Wing, stationed at MacDill. She was using her Post 9/11 GI Bill to finish college and planning her annual tour with the wing when the news came.

"I'm too busy taking care of her to have very many emotions," Lucy said. "I'm being tough for her."

Lucy's mother, Cate Thorp, a case coordinator supervisor with the Florida Guardian and ad Litem Program, noticed a tiny cyst in her breast a year ago. Her doctor told her to watch it, and it left her mind. When she noticed it hurting this July, she went in for a checkup. The cyst was as large as a tennis ball.

"If I hadn't ignored it, I wouldn't be as bad off as I am now," Thorp said in an interview August 23, 2012. "I start the first of 35 chemotherapy sessions today."

The cyst was actually invasive lobular carcinoma, a type of cancer that quickly spreads to other parts of the body. Thorp's lymph nodes showed traces of the lethal cancer. The first surgery removed most of the cysts and her lymph nodes, but was not successful.

"They had underestimated the size of the cancer," Lucy said. "I asked the doctor, 'What do you mean, you didn't get it all?'"

With more surgeries and chemotherapy sessions scheduled for the coming months, Lucy and Thorp are concentrating on beating the cancer that threatens to take her away from their family.

"I'm just mad about it in general," Lucy said. "But mom treats it like more of a nuisance."
"Sometimes, I don't know whether to laugh or cry," Thorp said. "It's serious enough that you have to joke to get through it."

Thorp said that researching her condition on the internet doesn't help things, so she tries to concentrate on staying positive and maintaining a good outlook on life.

"A positive attitude makes a difference toward recovery," Thorp said.

Lucy juggles her commitment to the wing and her country with making sure her mother receives the care she needs and gets to her doctor appointments. During her recent two-week annual tour here, she would drive more than an hour each way to Sarasota every other day to spend the night with her mother. In an act of sympathy, she donated 10 inches of her own hair to Lochs of Love so that her mother wouldn't feel so awkward about the hair loss that often accompanies chemotherapy.

"When I cut my hair, I said 'See, mom, having short hair isn't bad at all," Lucy said.

As Thorp and Lucy prepare for the road ahead, they look back at what they could have done to catch the cancer before it had spread.

"Never in a million years did I think this would happen to me," Thorp said. "Tell your sisters, mothers and grandmothers: 'Get it checked out. Don't wait.'"