When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, it forced Kathy Baxter to return to her home in Northern Virginia. The retiree was awaiting biopsy results for breast cancer when the devastating Category 5 storm hit the island, but she soon found herself undergoing treatment back in the States.
The decision to leave Puerto Rico may have ultimately saved her life, she says. “The care I would have gotten there would not have been as good as the care I got here.”
Baxter and her husband retired to the west coast town of Rincon, Puerto Rico, several years ago. Her husband and father were business partners for some Jiffy Lube franchises in the Northern Virginia area while she was a nurse.
In September 2016, Baxter’s sister Sue was diagnosed in the left breast with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS)—a noninvasive breast cancer in the milk duct. Just a few short months later in December 2016, Baxter noticed her left breast had some nipple retraction.
“I started to feel where that was and I could feel a lump,” she says. “… I vaguely remembered that you don’t want to see that where the nipple changes. I got scared and went ahead and talked to my GYN doctor in Puerto Rico.” The doctor did an ultrasound and noted to keep an eye on the lump. Baxter has fibrocystic breasts, a condition where breast tissue may feel lumpy or rope-like. “In my mammogram, nothing really looked like breast cancer,” she says.
When she went back in June 2017 for a follow-up, the lump had changed. The next month, she got a biopsy. Visiting family in the states in August 2017, she got the results that the lump was cancer. Back in Puerto Rico in the beginning of September, Baxter drove three hours to San Juan to see a surgeon who specialized in breast cancer. “He felt something in my lymph nodes that nobody else could pick up,” she recalls. “The mammogram didn’t pick up. The sonogram didn’t pick up.”
With an office in a hospital, the surgeon walked her straight to radiology for a biopsy of her lymph nodes. She went home to await the results.
Then Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the small island territory back to back in September 2017.
Get Out
Although several trees crashed onto their property, the Baxters’ home, which sits in the middle of a hill, suffered minimal damage from the hurricanes. “We were really, really fortunate,” she says.
A week after Hurricane Maria, the couple drove to San Juan meandering through debris and no electricity for traffic controls to find out her biopsy results. Two of the 14 lymph nodes were positive. She was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC). According to the National Breast Cancer Foundation, IDC makes up between 70 to 80 percent of all diagnosed breast cancers.
Baxter’s maternal grandmother had breast cancer in her 40s and died from the disease. Her mother’s side of the family had other instances of breast cancer.
Medical staff told her to find an oncologist but even locating a cellular signal was tricky. One of the few spots they found was just off the side of local highways. So the Baxters sat in their parked vehicle making calls. “I couldn’t find an oncologist,” she says. “The telephones were not working and most of the offices were closed because there was no electricity.”
The couple knew they needed to get Baxter to treatment. Given the massive devastation Puerto Rico suffered from the storm, they knew coming back to the United States was the only option. Baxter’s son-in-law began making calls. By the evening, Baxter was on a plane back to the Northern Virginia area.
Arriving back on Oct. 2, Baxter started chemotherapy on Nov. 2 at Sentara Northern Virginia Medical Center. “[The staff has] been absolutely amazing,” she says. “I have nothing but good things to say about Sentara.”
While undergoing treatment, including a lumpectomy, Baxter has been living with her daughter and son-in-law. “It’s been very comfortable,” she says. “It’s been a wonderful thing to be here. I know it has been hard on my daughter.” Another daughter lives close by in Dumfries. “It’s been such a joy to be around my daughters and especially my grandkids. During my dark times during chemo, they were such a joy to have [around] to take my mind off of things.”
‘I Only Have Right Now’
Looking back on her journey, Baxter believes she was pretty shell-shocked when she first came back to the United States, surviving not only two major storms but also getting diagnosed with cancer. She told her oncologist to “do whatever” and didn’t do much research on the subject.
After six sessions of chemotherapy, Baxter’s tumor went from 5.4 cm to 4.2 cm, leading doctors to conclude the treatment doesn’t work for her. After finding out, she became angry. Not so much at her medical team but more at her own body. “Never in my life did I ever think that I was going to have to go through this,” she says.
But the experience also made her want to be more proactive. She sought out a second opinion at Johns Hopkins, which concurred with the original findings. The next course of action was radiation.
Baxter finds herself telling people to appreciate their good health. “Live in the present,” she says. “Live in the moment. This is one thing [that cancer] has really taught me is that I only have right now. I can’t worry about the future or the past. I have just now.”
She encourages women to speak up and ask for a biopsy if their doctor just wants to keep an eye on a lump. “I wish in retrospect I had done this,” she says. “… I can’t help but think that if they had biopsied that lump that I had [in late 2016] that they would have found the cancer.”
Baxter and her husband still have their home in Puerto Rico. Her husband has gone back several times since the fall to check on the property. She has not been back because the chemotherapy made her so sick but she plans to return. “I want to feel like I am good and ready to go back,” she says.