Breast Cancer Awareness Month: Oden reflects on breast cancer journey
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LEWISTOWN - Kylie Oden’s hair had begun to fall out by the time her husband brought her home from chemotherapy. She couldn’t handle watching it happen little by little, so she asked Eric Oden to cut it off.
Then their four children came home from school.
Kylie removed her hat in front of Savannah, Karolina, Styers and Hart. They cheered.
Their mother had prepared them for this. She’d told them that when her hair fell out, it would mean the medicine was working.
“They all started cheering, and they said, ‘Well, good. Medicine’s working,'” Oden recalled.
The explanation she gave to protect her children became their way of reassuring her.
Over seven years after her diagnosis, Oden is sharing that story during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Private by nature, she said it took this long to speak openly. When she was asked whether she’d tell her story, Oden felt honored.
“It’s actually kind of therapeutic for me to talk about it,” she said. “Hopefully, someone reads it and it helps them.”
Oden turned 40 in November 2018. She knew of no family history of breast cancer and hadn’t begun getting mammograms. At her annual appointment the following February, she planned to ask whether it was time to schedule one.
During the examination, the doctor found a lump in her right breast. On Feb. 28, 2019, her father’s birthday, Oden received the call: She had breast cancer, and a lymph node was involved.
Her first thoughts went to her four children, who were then in fifth and sixth grades.
“How am I going to tell my kids?” she remembered thinking. “I need to be here. I need to be here for them.”
Her doctor moved quickly to arrange appointments with a surgeon and an oncologist. Kylie and Eric waited to tell the children until they understood the treatment ahead.
Oden asked her oncologist the question beneath all the others: Could she beat it?
“He said, ‘Absolutely,'” Oden recalled. “He said, ‘This is what you’re going to have to go through.’ And I said, ‘OK.'”
The answer gave her something firm to carry home. When she and Eric sat with the children, Styers said what Oden had feared hearing.
“I don’t want my mom to die,” he told her.
Oden couldn’t promise the coming months would be easy. She could tell them what her doctor had told her: The cancer was beatable, though the process would be long.
She completed 16 rounds of chemotherapy, underwent radiation, and chose a bilateral mastectomy. Two more surgeries followed because of reconstruction and healing problems. The first four chemotherapy treatments required injections to increase her white blood cell count. The injections left her entire body aching so badly that she didn’t want anyone to touch her.
Chemotherapy didn’t make her vomit, but it exhausted her. Losing her hair hurt the most.
Oden had spent 20 years as a special education teacher in the Mifflin County School District. She took medical leave because chemotherapy weakened her immune system.
She tried to preserve the family’s routines. They went to the pool and took a vacation. Going into public without hair remained difficult.
During a beach trip, Oden went to the pool wearing a swim cap. Savannah, Karolina, Styers and Hart ran out of the house together, each wearing one too.
“They were like, ‘Well, if Mom has to wear a swim cap, then we’re going to wear a swim cap,'” Oden said.
Her children complimented her wig and encouraged her to wear a headscarf on hot days. They told her they didn’t care if she was bald. They wanted her to feel better.
“You don’t really feel human, if that makes any sense,” Oden said.
Members of New Life Church prepared meals for the family, and her pastor visited their home to pray with her. Oden’s mother-in-law, who had completed breast cancer treatment before Kylie and Eric married, understood what she faced. Their relationship grew closer.
Central Pennsylvania Pink Connection reached out, offering the reassurance of people who didn’t need an explanation before they understood.
One encounter stayed with Oden. She attended her daughter’s dance recital wearing a wig and felt as though everyone knew. Jennifer Schaefer approached and asked whether she was Kylie Oden.
Schaefer introduced herself and told Oden everything would be okay. Oden later learned that Schaefer had metastatic breast cancer. She never discovered how Schaefer had heard about her or recognized her that day.
“I think God sent her to me,” Oden said.
Oden’s cancer was estrogen receptor-positive. She said she doesn’t carry an inherited breast cancer gene. She continues to take a daily hormone-therapy pill, receives an injection every three months, and returns for checkups every six months.
Those appointments could pull her back toward the uncertainty of 2019.
Oden said she doesn’t breathe during those visits until she’s told everything is OK. “And then I’m OK,” she said.
Her faith deepened through treatment. So did her understanding of what people need during illness.
“You need people,” Oden said. Sometimes they don’t need to say anything; a hug or a pat on the back can help.
Oden once believed she needed to remain strong for her children. Looking back, she thinks she needed them more than they needed her. They cheered when the medicine took her hair. They wore swim caps beside her. They faced the illness with her.
Oden still hesitates when anyone calls her strong. She can name the doctors, relatives, church members, and survivors who carried part of the weight. She can name four children who refused to let their mother wear a swim cap alone.
“I never really thought I was that strong of a person,” she said. “I still don’t really think I’m a very strong person.”
But she is here.