At age 39, Diane Richardson knew something wasn't right when she performed her monthly breast self-exam.
After a visit to her doctor she was told that the lump she felt was nothing but fibrocystic disease, or lumpy breasts. She was advised to drink less caffeine and to take more vitamin E. After a visit to a second doctor she was advised that a mammogram was not necessary, but it would be available to her if she wanted one. She did.
The mammogram revealed the shocking reality — she had breast cancer.
"I didn't know what it was, but it just didn't feel right," Richardson said. "I just knew. I could tell how the technician was behaving. I was crying through the ultrasound."
Richardson, who graduated from ASU in Aug. 3, 2000, with her master's degree in statistics and is a part-time ASU Math 117 instructor, was diagnosed in June.
Before her diagnosis Richardson described her left breast as feeling "achy, throbbing and itchy."
"I thought that you could have problems with your breasts and have it not be cancer," she said.
Today Richardson is coping with breast cancer using traditional chemotherapy treatments. Every three weeks Richardson goes in for one of her eight rounds of chemotherapy treatment. She has completed five so far.
During her visits to an oncologist, doctors use two different drugs to treat Richardson's cancer, because research has shown it to be more effective than the normal one drug treatment.
Richardson described the side effects of the treatments.
"It's like you have the stomach flu every three weeks," Richardson said. "Your bones ache. It's like you have arthritis."
In order to spend the maximum amount of time teaching, Richardson receives her treatments on Friday, so she can spend Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with students.
As a math instructor, Richardson tried to incorporate the mathematics used in testing for breast cancer into her classroom lectures.
"Sometimes you think 'When am I going to use this?' and it might come up in your life," Richardson said.
As a way to put a real life spin on college algebra, Richardson used her bone scan test as a way to teach her students about exponential functions, half lives and radioactive isotopes.
Since her diagnosis Richardson has decided to focus on what is really important.
"I'm trying not to let some of the small things get to me or stress me out," Richardson said.
Richardson will complete her chemotherapy later this year and will begin radiation treatment in January. In the spring Richardson will begin teaching Math 117 and Statistics 226 full time.
Reach Christina Higdon at grimm119@aol.com.
