Early detection helped Sparks find appropriate treatment options and remove the cancerous tissue completely.
By KRYSTAL NURSE
The Sun
Seventy-year-old Tina Sparks, of Wenonah, considers herself to be lucky compared to others fighting breast cancer due to her doctor at Pennsylvania Medicine in Woodbury Heights, University of Penn Hospital in Philadelphia and South Jersey Radiology detecting cancerous tissue, and choosing to get her breast tissue removed.
“It might just be my personality, but I didn’t really think it was cancer,” said Sparks. “It’s almost like you put in your mind that it was something you just had to get rid of. I didn’t really get upset.”
Sparks has been free of the cancer for the past three years and said it was all due to the new technology scanning her breasts, and coming up with an appropriate plan of action with her doctor, who works in Woodbury Heights and Philadelphia, for removing the cancer.
“The alternative was a lumpectomy, radiation, and hormone therapy for the rest of my life,” said Sparks. “I went with a mastectomy, which meant I didn’t have to do all of that. My cancer was ‘in SITU,’ which means it was in duct and did not spread.”
A lumpectomy requires only the cancerous portion of a breast to be removed, keeping the rest of the tissue intact. A mastectomy is the procedure of completely removing the breast tissues.
“Things have gotten so much better to get to the point where they’re so good at [finding the cancer],” said Sparks. “If we didn’t have a 3-D mammogram, they would’ve never sent me for anything else. I just feel like that it was caught so early, I didn’t get that upset.”
Mammograms were a usual occurrence for Sparks because she had what doctors call dense breasts. She went in for routine scans at South Jersey Radiology and biopsies to check for cancerous tissues and one came back positive for cancer.
Sparks’ sons were afraid of her future because of the cancer diagnosis, but also credited her to being one of the strongest people they know.
“I have three sons (Thomas, William and Robert) and they were afraid of it,” said Sparks. “They couldn’t believe I had cancer.”
She hopes anyone who is diagnosed with breast cancer will “try to investigate or learn as much as you can,” from the type of treatment they should seek to remove the cancerous tissue, to whether or not reconstructive surgery is the right option for them.
“If I had to do it again, I would never go through reconstruction,” said Sparks. “It’s like, ‘who’s going to see you besides your husband?’ It’s just a lot of pain I think that you don’t really need to go through again.”
She said the process of getting her breast reconstructed caused a lot of pain. Through the surgery, plastic surgeons entered into her breasts, inserted a saline solution and put in the inserts to partially rebuild her breasts.
At Clearview Regional High School’s football game on Sept. 28, Sparks and other women who are fighting, have beat, or lost their battle with breast cancer were honored during the Breast Cancer Awareness night game. It was something new for Sparks because she hadn’t participated in anything like that before.
“I was a little embarrassed because maybe people didn’t know because it was something so personal,” said Sparks. “But then I thought ‘so what? Maybe people will see that I am here, healthy and still OK.’ If it would help someone, then great.”
She hopes to soon be able to donate her time to local breast cancer awareness events in the area, but noted that it’s tough for her because she has family in Italy and California, whom she often spends time visiting.
