Mas

By: MARIA MACHUCA

    Griselda Cormier and Duviet Rodriguez hope they’ll never have to hear the words, ‘You have breast cancer.’

    Just the thought of finding a lump or getting an abnormal diagnosis scares them.
    They know they are at a higher risk. They’ve lost relatives to it.

    As a result, Cormier, 28, and Rodriguez, 26, are fighting back by helping raise funds to find a cure and volunteering their time to  educate other Latinas.

    Both volunteer for the local  American Cancer Society. One of their biggest projects is the annual Relay For Life, the cancer society’s largest fund-raising event. Cormier is currently team captain coordinator for the Bakersfield event and Rodriguez is co-chair of the Wasco relay.

    “The Relay helps me cope with the loss of my mom. This was an event close to her heart, and I will continue to carry on and hopefully one day find a cure,” said Cormier.

Breast cancer among Latinas

    The statistics drive the two to stay involved in hopes of turning the numbers around.

    Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among Latinas, according to the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Facts & Figures for Hispanics/Latinos 2003-2005.

    One of the problems is Latinas are not taking advantage of early detection screenings. And Latinas who are diagnosed with breast cancer learn about it in the later stages, when it’s harder to treat, said local health experts and educators.
Family history also plays a role.

    For instance, Latinas whose relatives have suffered from breast cancer are more likely to develop the disease, according to a study of cancer cases in New Mexico reported in Cancer Causes and Control.

    According to the New Mexico study’s leading author, Frank D. Gilliland of the University of Southern California, the rate of breast cancer in Hispanic women, which has been traditionally low, is now rising dramatically.

    What can make a difference? Early screening tests like Pap tests, mammography, and clinical breast exams. Sometimes it’s a matter of having a female doctor, said Leslie Bloomquist, a woman’s health nurse practitioner at Clinica Sierra Vista.

    “They feel very comfortable going to a female provider than a male provider. Many, many have commented to me that they are glad that I’m a female. Many have come to this clinic just because I’m a female provider,” said Bloomquist, who is now working out of the Oildale clinic, but used to work in the McFarland clinic where most of her patients were Hispanic. “I don’t know if I can say that Hispanics are the ones who delay treatments and exams. It seems to be more of a personality of a woman. Whether they are Hispanic, black or Asian, some women just don’t want to come for their exams.

    “There is a personality type that doesn’t want to come in, whether they are nervous, whether they are embarrassed, whether they are afraid of what they are going to find, whether they are working and don’t want to take the time off.”

Mother teaches important lesson

    Cormier learned about breast cancer the hard way. In 1999, her mother, Maria Carmen Perez, was diagnosed with the deadly disease.

    Cancer was not new to Cormier’s family. She was 10 years old when she lost her abuela, a smoker, to lung cancer.

    Her mother’s cancer detection was a shock. She didn’t smoke. She took care of herself.

    “The whole experience with her disease was more like a rollercoaster,” Cormier recalled. “She was diagnosed, went into treatment, then she was cancer free. She was re-diagnosed and had stem cell transplant. But her (cancer) came back six months after stem cell transplant and hers came back, very, very aggressive.”

    The experience was traumatic for Cormier, but her mother left her an important lesson of survival and courage.

    “She is like an inspiration for me. She came a long way in her life, always a hard worker, very determined,” she said.

    Even after her diagnosis and during treatment, Cormier said her mother never missed work or complained.

    “While I was experiencing it with her, I realized it could happen to me and it frightened me,” she said. “But after seeing the way she handled things, I feel that if she could do it, I can do it.”

Cancer spreads to relatives

    For Duviet Rodriguez, breast cancer took a toll from the start, affecting half of the women on her father’s side.

    She lost two aunts, Alma Rosa Mendez and Guadalupe Richkardai, and her grandmother, Amalia Rodriguez, within three months to breast cancer.

But the disease was something her family rarely talked about, she said.

    “When my aunt Alma Rosa was diagnosed, somewhere in Delano, I remember that day she came back from the doctors and walked in through the back door of the house and was screaming and crying, and my mom started crying,” Rodriguez recalled.

    “My aunt Alma Rosa passed away in December that year. And the following February my aunt Guadalupe passed away, and a week after, my grandma also passed away,” Rodriguez said. “When my grandma passed away, that’s when I started asking questions.”

    She then discovered that her great-grandmother died from breast cancer years earlier.

    “Even when I do my self-breast exam, I’m scared. I’m like, what if I touch something and it happens to be cancer,” she said. “It really scares me, but at least I’m aware that it runs in my family and I know what I can do to prevent it. I think a have little bit of chance.”

    A few months after her relatives’ deaths, Rodriguez was driving around in Wasco and listening to the radio, when she heard about the American Cancer Society and Relay For Life.

    She felt compelled to get involved and called the organization.

    Since then, Rodriguez has a lot more information she wished she would have had when her aunts and grandmother were battling the disease.

    Rodriguez and Cormier to stay involved because they don’t want local Latino families to go through this disease by themselves. Screening can save lives, they said.

    “Everyone should find out. Even if no one in their family ever had cancer, it doesn’t mean there is no chance you are going to get it,” Rodriguez said.
Bloomquist agrees.

    “A lot of people said, ‘Well, I don’t have any breast cancer in my family so I don’t need to in for a mammogram. I don’t need to check my breast at home.’ In reality, it’s just the fact that we are all getting older, we are women, and we have breast. Those are the reasons why people need to get screened.”

Más writer/editor Rosario Ortiz contributed to this report.