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| Saturday, Apr 29 2006 10:56 PM
Last Updated: Saturday, Apr 29 2006 5:09 PM
The women's laughter can be heard throughout the outpatient chemotherapy area. It rings off the syringes, test tubes and IV drips.
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It finds its way past the pain in some of the patients' faces, past the why me's and not now's.
"Are we done with the pictures?" asks Linda Specht, as the newspaper photographer gets ready to leave. "I'm sweating up a storm." Specht rips off her short blond wig, running her hand over the light hair on top of her shorn head.
Specht smiles and fans herself with the wig for comic relief. The other women around her burst into laughter.
They are the HER2 Sisterhood, a group of women battling the same type of breast cancer. They usually sit in a corner of the chemo area at the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center on Truxtun Avenue, cutting up and breaking the tension.
All the women -- about 14 total-- have cancer cells that overexpress the HER2 protein, which contributes to faster-growing tumors.One in three breast cancer patients has this type of cancer, says Dr. Ravi Patel, one of the founding doctors of the center.
While technically a "support group," the women, who meet while getting their intravenous treatments, don't act like one. They gossip, talk about their families and jobs. Complaints about shaving legs and paying taxes are mixed with radiation stories and jokes about "chemo brain," memory loss due to chemotherapy. Once a month they all go out to dinner together.
"It's a group of women who understand what we're going through," says Specht, 46. "Many of us won't join a support group. I don't want to go there and feel like a victim."
Pelton went to a traditional support group once. While she stresses that support groups are great for some people, "it scared me, and I never went back."
"I found that my friends were the people that uplifted me," she says. "We started out as acquaintances and became friends."
The type of chemical therapy they use also bonds the women. At some point, they all have taken Herceptin, a drug that specifically targets the HER2 protein.
All the women have used chemotherapy as part of their cancer-killing regimen, but Herceptin has been the least harmful to their bodies, they say. Unlike traditional chemotherapy, which targets all growing cells, Herceptin leaves healthy cells alone, and that means no hair loss or terrible side effects.
Time on the drug ranges from several months to several years, Patel says.
"When you're on Herceptin all the time, you're constantly being reminded that this is a way of life. There isn't a day goes by that I don't remember that I have cancer," says Nancy Pelton, a founder of the group. Pelton has been on Herceptin since her second cancer diagnosis four years ago."This group lifts your spirits."
Friendly conversation
The nurse injects the needle connected to the Herceptin IV drip into Pelton's Port-a-Cath -- a quarter-size device used to access veins -- implanted under the skin in her upper chest."It leaves your arms free," she says, smiling and gesturing. While ports are becoming more common, chemotherapy is usually administered through veins in the arm, Patel says.
Pelton, 53, was first diagnosed with cancer in 1998. She felt a lump in her right breast, she says.
"That turned out to be negative, but I still felt a lump," says the Bakersfield accountant. "My doctor sent me to a surgeon. (Before the surgery) the surgeon said the same thing: 'Nothing to worry about.'
"He did the surgery, and it was breast cancer."
After traditional chemotherapy and radiation, cancer was found in the lymph nodes under her arms in 2001.
It was during Pelton's second time around that she started Herceptin treatment and got the idea to begin the sisterhood. Placed next to another Herceptin patient for treatment, Pelton started sharing her experiences.
The nurses alerted Pelton to other Herceptin converts in the hopes of easing their time in treatment with friendly conversation. Since that point, in November 2004, the group has been growing.
"I'm a gabber," Pelton says.
'No placebo for me'
Several of the other women pull up empty chairs and occupy the pink and green recliners located in this corner of the ward. Germaine Darazs of Porterville takes a seat next to Pelton.
Of all the women, Darazs, 66, has been on Herceptin longest -- almost 10 years.
"I'm the grande dame of Herceptin," she says.
She was first diagnosed with breast cancer in May 1994 when she was living in Ridgecrest.A year later, the cancer had spread to her liver. "I had chemo, but the cancer stuck."
Though the doctor didn't give Darazs a life expectancy, the prognosis wasn't good.
"He told me, 'If you want to do something, do it now,'" she says. "But I was too sick to travel, too sick to do anything."
She stayed that way for two months.
Then, through a friend, Darazs found out about a trial the Comprehensive Blood and Cancer Center was doing with UCLA on Herceptin.
"I figured if it doesn't help me, it will help somebody else," she says. "I hit the jackpot.
"No placebo for me."
The great-grandmother is now in the midst of planning trips to Alaska and the Panama Canal with her husband.
On this day at the center, Darazs isn't getting prepped for treatment. She just came in to talk to friends -- it's her week off. On Jan. 27 -- about 10 months after the cancer had reappeared in her liver -- the doctors told her the cancer was gone. Now, Darazs has to come every three weeks for treatment.
"It lifted me up. I felt five feet tall," the 4-foot-11 woman said of finding the group.
Writing on the wall
On a wall behind the women, some of the center's regulars have written good wishes and thoughts in rainbow markers: "HOPE" and "Life is good," among others. Other people have simply written their names and "was here."
"HER2 Sisters" and many names in the middle of a heart decorate the wall near the nurses' station.
"We want to be on Oprah," Specht says.
Mary Cruse, who joined the group at the end of January, shakes her head no and laughs.
"Oh, we're going to dope you up, and you're not going to know you're on the plane," Specht says.
Next Saturday and Sunday, most of the group will join other survivors at Bakersfield's Relay for Life, an all-night event celebrating cancer survival that raises money for the American Cancer Society.
At the beginning of the rally, the cancer survivors take a "survivors lap." After that, the goal is for each team to keep a member walking on the track throughout the night, symbolizing that cancer doesn't sleep, and one person can make a difference.
Besides relaying together, the Sisterhood is going to have a table and sell temporary pink ribbon tattoos and HERtinis -- pink lemonade, Sprite and cherries -- for $1.
"A lot of the women have never done it before," Pelton says of the relay. "Most of us are here because of the research they've (the American Cancer Society has) done."
The banter and swapping of cancer war stories goes on for about another hour as the women, one by one, reach the end of their 30-minute treatments.
They leave, bubbling, ready to come back next week.
"I know now it's not necessarily a death sentence," Cruse, 61, says of cancer. "You look forward to coming every week."