Dorothy: [00:00:00] 22 years ago, Russanne Kelley received the life threatening diagnosis of breast cancer. She faced a difficult path of treatment. She also had to navigate a divorce, three moves, her son’s deployment to Iraq, and the death of her beloved dog. This was Russanne’s most difficult year, and it was at that point that The Rose was there to help her.
She needed a second opinion, and there was no way that she was able to get it until one of The Rose doctors pulled some strings and got her in. Today, Russanne talks about why she is so grateful that she had insurance, how she knows what it means to be alone with this kind of disease, and the importance of friends.
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Let’s Talk About Your Breast. A different kind of podcast presented to you by The Rose, the Breast Center of Excellence and a Texas treasure. You’re going to hear frank discussions about tough topics, and you’re going to learn why knowing about your breast could save your life.
Russanne, Thank you so much for joining us here today. It’s just delightful to be with an old friend and, um, especially one that has such an interesting history.
Russanne: Oh, thank you. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me, Dorothy.
Dorothy: Of course.
Russanne: Pleasure.
Dorothy: So, tell us a little bit about Russanne Kelley before the diagnosis.
Russanne: Oh my gosh. Going how far back?
Dorothy: Well, not that far back, but I mean, just. Tell us about you and your dreams, what you were doing.
Russanne: Oh, well, um, I had a very, [00:02:00] uh, peripatetic, I don’t know if that’s the word, uh, career, starting like many of us did back then, uh, as a teacher. And then we started our own business with my husband and, um, grew it from five people in our living room to about 200 people. And, um, from then I moved on to a client server technology company in, um, Greenway Plaza, had clients all over the country, was always on an airplane. And then when I got on my last kid, almost off to college, I thought, I can do something I really want to do. And I can feel good about what I do, and I can stop tap dancing this fast.
So that’s when I moved to the United Way and into the non profit sector. And I have loved it. I’ve never looked back. It’s just been a wonderful, wonderful second career for me.
Dorothy: Oh, and you were so good at it. You were our facilitator with our leaders group. But. Um, we —
Russanne: You were my first one.
Dorothy: Oh, were we?
Russanne: Yes, you were.
Dorothy: Really?
Russanne: Yes.
Dorothy: I didn’t know that.
Russanne: Very special.
Dorothy: My goodness. I, you know, we’d go, and [00:03:00] now Russanne’s going to tell us, don’t do this and do that.
Russanne: Oh, I hope I wasn’t that kind of a facilitator.
Dorothy: No, no. But it was, it was great for us. We were new. And as executives and all of us had lots of questions and, uh, that’s one of the best services I think the United Way does for up and coming non profit, uh, leaders.
It just meant so much and, and you always had the answers. If you didn’t, you knew where to go find them. So that, that was a big part of it.
Russanne: Right, right.
Dorothy: Yeah. But now, our history.
Russanne: Yes.
Dorothy: Really goes back to around that time that you were diagnosed with breast cancer. So how, how were you diagnosed? Did you find a lump or did you—
Russanne: Yeah, I did. I, um, I found a lump and I went to my PCP at the time, my family practitioner. And, um, she said, oh, it’s probably nothing, but we’ll do a biopsy. This was a group called McGregor. I’m going to say their name because they’re no longer in business. [00:04:00] Um, and so they did the biopsy. And I got a call saying, um, that the results had come back and it, it was highly possible that it was carcinoma. And would I make an appointment with a surgeon? Did I want a lumpectomy or a mastectomy?
Dorothy: That was your call?
Russanne: Yes. Yes. And, um, well, I was devastated. I was at work at the time, and Ronnie’s in my office, we’re right next to each other, and I was dissolved in tears. Ronnie heard me. She came over. We just hugged each other. I don’t know who was more devastated, Ronnie or me. We just hugged each other and cried. And then, um, Linda Black, who was, um, the vice president, United Way, came down, and she, she, again, was very supportive and loving and, and, and caring and, um. So, um, what I did then, Dorothy, because the, the diagnosis was kind of [00:05:00] iffy, I picked up the phone and I called you. And I told you, and you got me an appointment with Dr. Janet the next day.
Dorothy: Mm hmm.
Russanne: And I took that report that I, they’d faxed over to me. And I showed it to Dr. Janet and she looked at it and she said, This is really shoddy work. You need to get a second opinion. And Dorothy, that was in the day, because we’re talking like 22 years ago, when it was really hard to get into MD Anderson. There was like a three or four month wait. And I don’t know what string she and The Rose pulled, but I got in like the next week to have a second biopsy at MD Anderson.
Dorothy: You’re talking about Janet Hoagland.
Russanne: Yes, yes.
Dorothy: And she was a, uh, General Surgeon, who had had her own cancer experience, not breast cancer, but once she had her chemotherapy and all, she was not really able to return to surgery.
Russanne: Right. I remember that story now that you say [00:06:00] that, yeah.
Dorothy: And so, Rose was so fortunate.
Russanne: Yeah.
Dorothy: I mean, here we had this amazing doctor, surgeon, who had specialized in breast cancer, and now she was serving as our, as our physician for our uninsured people primarily and, uh, just an excellent doctor. So, I do remember that part. I remember, I think she had to do an introduction letter of some kind. Because I just remember that, that process going on.
Russanne: Well, you made it happen. And I’ll be, I shall be forever grateful to you and to The Rose.
Dorothy: Oh.
Russanne: For that goodness.
Dorothy: Well, that’s what we did. But now your cancer was, was very, very aggressive, it was very different.
Russanne: Yeah, it started out, it was supposed to be, it was supposed to be stage one. Um, uh, it started out, I had a lot of chemo. It was on the chest wall, so they were trying to shrink it to get it away from the chest [00:07:00] wall, so they did a lot of aggressive chemo, that didn’t work. So then I had, um, a couple of operations.
The first operation, to remove the tumor and check the lymph nodes. And then, you know, they put the expanders in, because you want to kind of look the way you were going in as going out. But when the report came back with five lymph nodes involved, and I was going to have to have nine and a half weeks of daily radiation, and I had to have another operation to take the expanders out because that might interfere, so.
And then I went on with the radiation. So, um, yeah, it was, it was a long haul. And, um, and during that time, as Ronnie kind of alluded to my, personal life. Um, you know, that summer, that spring, my last son was going off to college, Dorothy. And I didn’t want to be alone. You know, I just didn’t want to be alone in my life.
I had been alone as an only child growing up and [00:08:00] moving all over the country and overseas and nine schools and 13 years through, you know, kindergarten through high school. I just didn’t want to be alone. So I married a man I didn’t know very well. And, um, yeah, um, When I called after I had gotten my phone call and pulled myself together to tell him that I had cancer, he started to cry.
I thought he was crying for me. He said, you should have found that out before we got married. You’ve taken my choices away from me. This is going to be a year out of my life.
Dorothy: What?
Russanne: I know. If I wasn’t devastated before, I was devastated then.
Dorothy: Oh, yeah. My gosh.
Russanne: I know.
Dorothy: And this was over the phone.
Russanne: Yeah.
Dorothy: How did, how did you go home and talk to him?
Russanne: Because, you know what? I had stood up before God and my friends and my family and sworn I do and I will. And I was going to make it work. [00:09:00] Somehow I was going to make it work. And I tried. I did. But, you know, by, after the two, after the chemo and the couple of operations, you know, Ronnie alluded it to, to this in her talk.
I had to get out of there. It was so toxic, Dorothy. I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t know where to go. I mean, I was living in his house. All my stuff was in storage or in his house. I had a dog and two cats. I had been working all the time. I was tired. And so I was, I felt trapped. And then Ronnie found this corporate apartment, kind of near MD Anderson and United Way.
And one Saturday morning in early February, they came. In trucks and vans and U Haul its and you name it, they came all up and down the street. And they came in and they said, Russanne, just sit there. Tell us what you want. And they, they started packing up. It was just amazing. Um, [00:10:00] you know, four hours later. They were all loaded, and the caravan started off down the street toward my new home. I loaded Dixie and Sugar Cookie and Tao in my car. I was the last car out of the driveway. I never looked back.
Dorothy: And then they are your friends who showed up.
Russanne: Oh my gosh, they were family, friends, co workers. Just men and women, husbands of co workers, and, um, and I just, that night when I slept in that new corporate apartment, I felt at peace for the first time in a long time. And, yeah, I’m sure that really helped my healing process.
Dorothy: How long before you were divorced?
Russanne: Well, I filed for divorce in, um, January. And, you know, in Texas you have to wait six months. So that didn’t come through until, I don’t know. July, June or July sometime.
Dorothy: And you’re still going through treatment [00:11:00] that whole time?
Russanne: Oh yeah, that was the nine and a half weeks of daily radiation. Oh, you know what, I want to talk to you about uninsured women, because you had meant to ask Ronnie about that. So, at the time, United Way did not have a long term or short term disability in place. So even though I kept working, and I tried to keep working, um, I had gotten kind of tired and sick a lot, and so I had used up all my vacation time, all my sick time.
And I was looking at not having a paycheck. And even though our insurance covered 80 percent and we had 20, I mean 20 percent of thousands and thousands of dollars is a lot of money. I was panicking. I was so upset. I was so scared, so worried. And one day, our HR director called me in my apartment, and she said, Russanne, people at work have donated anonymously their sick time to you, so you’ll never [00:12:00] have to lose a paycheck.
Dorothy: Oh my gosh.
Russanne: I still tear up just saying that.
Dorothy: Oh my gosh.
Russanne: Just saying that, Dorothy.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Russanne: Yeah. It was, um, it was a miracle. Lots of miracles.
Dorothy: Well, now, You know, I remember a very, very sad time, but as you’re talking, I’m starting to see what, why you wrote your book. I mean, uh, and tell us about this. When did you, when did you write your book?
Russanne: It was probably in around, um, 15, 2015, 2016.
Dorothy: And how far was that from your diagnosis and your treatment?
Russanne: Well. 12, 15 years out. It was a long time, but I was working all the time.
Dorothy: Right.
Russanne: I wanted to thank the people in some way, significant way, because they were angels in my life. They were angels with skin on in my life. I could not have made it without them. Ronnie was head angel, but there were [00:13:00] my sons, there were coworkers, there were friends, there were strangers, uh, people from everywhere. And I just, I wanted to do something concrete to thank them. So that’s when I decided to write a little book that I did, and I call it My Year of Angels.
Dorothy: And it, how long did it take you to write it?
Russanne: Oh, it took me about a year.
Dorothy: Oh.
Russanne: Yeah. I was fortunate because I had taken a couple writing courses in preparation for this. And one of my teachers was a woman who was head of writers in the schools. And she knew a man who was in the, uh, journalism program at U of H. And he became my editor. And he knew someone who was a graphic designer. So he helped, you know, kind of put it together. And also to get it published on Amazon.
Dorothy: Amazon.
Russanne: So it just all came together. It was great.
Dorothy: Yeah. And, and in it, I have, I have read it and I have seen the reviews on it, but it’s so uplifting. I mean, you just think that, how could this woman have gone through so much? I mean, [00:14:00] a husband that said I didn’t sign up for this and you know, all the other things. It seems like you had three moves in that one year.
Russanne: Four.
Dorothy: Four.
Russanne: Four moves in one year. Got married, got divorced, got cancer. Four moves. Yep. One year. It was a year.
Dorothy: It was a year, yes.
Russanne: It was a year, yeah. But you know what? It’s um, I think, you know, at the time, I did not see the blessings when I was going through it. But as I look back, um, I’m so grateful for the love of all those people. And for how it, I think, changed me in many ways. I find I am more compassionate, um, more patient, kinder, more grateful for every day, every single day, because it’s a blessing. [00:15:00] Every single day is a blessing.
Dorothy: Do you ever, do find yourself going back to that time emotionally or or feeling afraid like you must have felt back then?
Russanne: Um, no, I you know, it was a hard time for sure and I was afraid during that time But I came to believe that god wanted me to experience unconditional love in my lifetime, and the angels he sent to help me or how he chose to do that. And that’s what I think of and that’s what I remember.
Dorothy: And do you find yourself talking to other women who have breast cancer?
Russanne: Oh, sure. Yeah. Um, in addition to my relationship with you and The Rose, I also became a volunteer and a volunteer trainer with an organization called CanCare.
Dorothy: Mm hmm.
Russanne: And they provide hope and walk along with people, side people who have cancer. And then, you know, as other people have come into my life with different experiences, like Ronnie was saying, you just do whatever [00:16:00] you can.
Dorothy: Right.
Russanne: And you don’t always ask, you know, sometimes you just do show up with the groceries.
Dorothy: Mm hmm.
Russanne: Or you just do show up to take them somewhere. Because when they say, well, what can I do for you? Right. Well. You don’t know. You’re so overwhelmed with everything. It’s hard to make a list of, well, I need this. So you just do what you can. You pass it on. I think it’s important to pass it on.
Dorothy: And you were fairly young when you were diagnosed.
Russanne: I was in my 40s.
Dorothy: Yeah. Yeah. Again, at that time, 40 year olds were not getting breast cancer and a lot of it was kind of, just like you said, oh, it’s probably not anything, but we’ll go ahead and do this biopsy. We’ll just see. Right. It was really not taken as seriously. I’m not even sure if it is even now, but, uh, we are seeing a lot of young women with breast cancer and it, it, it just has a whole different, it’s always devastating. It’s always difficult. But I think when you think you have your whole life ahead of you, [00:17:00] years and years to go, then it’s just, it is a different experience. It really is.
Russanne: Well, thank goodness for The Rose, and for your advocacy, and for your putting the awareness out there that this is not an old people’s disease.
Dorothy: No, it’s not.
Russanne: That, you know, young people need to be made aware and monitored and tested and followed.
Dorothy: And do you have surveillance still every year?
Russanne: No, no. Outgrew it.
Dorothy: Outgrew it. Well, that’s a good thing.
Russanne: It’s a great thing.
Dorothy: What do you want most in your life right now?
Russanne: It sounds probably corny if I say it. I want to be a light in God’s world.
Dorothy: Oh.
Russanne: I just like to, um, make a little difference somewhere, somehow. Be a good grandmother, be a good Gigi to my grandkids, be a good friend to my friends. Um, you know, I had to retire three times before it took, but it finally did. And what I do now is I teach ESL, English as a Second Language, [00:18:00] and civics to immigrants so that they can learn English and get a job or get a better job or talk to their kid’s teacher. Or they can get their American citizenship.
And I love it. I just love it. And where do you do that? Memorial Assistance Ministries. And then also some, a couple of companies have hired me to help their employees. That they want to move up in the chain and their English needed help. So I’m happy. And, Dorothy, I still facilitate two leader circles.
Dorothy: Oh, you’re kidding.
Russanne: I’m not kidding. All these years later, yes.
Dorothy: Oh my gosh.
Russanne: I know!
Dorothy: Well, why did you not come back to us?
Russanne: I think you were self facilitating by that point.
Dorothy: I don’t know. I don’t know. You know, we never had another one.
Russanne: I know. You were my first. You were my first and my best. Well, they’re all good.
Dorothy: Well, of course, we were the best class you ever had.
Russanne: But I tell you, you’re all my heroes. All of you.
Dorothy: Well, you certainly guided us during those early years. And you know, I [00:19:00] don’t know that we could say enough for any, anybody starting in any career needs that kind of help, that kind of support. But I do think really for women, it is critical. Because we would sit there and talk about things that would be very difficult to talk with anyone else about, you know, no matter how, uh, much you appreciate your employees or any of that, there’s just things that you can’t talk about it to anyone else who’s not dealing with it. So it’s really important. The leaders circle, United Way, any kind of group that, that will help you during those early years. Careers are tough.
Russanne: Well, and CEOs of non profits is a pretty unique position, Dorothy.
Dorothy: Yeah.
Russanne: I mean, nobody does just what you do.
Dorothy: Wow. No. I always say — .
Russanne: Other than other CEOs. And that’s, you know.
Dorothy: That’s it.
Russanne: That’s the purpose of the, the leader circles. Yeah.
Dorothy: All right. What is the most important message [00:20:00] you share with women who are facing breast cancer?
Russanne: Um.
Dorothy: Cause I don’t see you as being, uh, sugarcoating anything. I don’t see, I mean, that just never was Russanne. No.
Russanne: Oh dear. Well, one thing I tell them, I say, you know, people are going to come around you and they’re going to want to help. Let them.
Dorothy: Ah, good advice.
Russanne: Let them. And, um, the other thing, going through it, there are going to be times when you’ll be discouraged. You’ll be sick. You’ll look funny. You’ll hurt. But you are stronger than you think you are. And you will make this it through this. And never give up hope. Never give up hope.
Dorothy: Ah. Russanne, that’s great advice.
Russanne: Well, I got that advice. So I’m passing it on.
Dorothy: And you saw it, you saw it firsthand.
Russanne: I did.
Dorothy: It was [00:21:00] very hard for you to accept help for a while there.
Russanne: Well, Ronnie was pretty insistent.
Dorothy: Well, yes. Everyone should have a friend like Ronnie.
Russanne: Everyone needs a Ronnie. Yes, they do.
Dorothy: Hey, that’s your next book. Everyone needs Ronnie. Oh, that would be great.
Russanne: Oh, on the caregiver side. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yes.
Dorothy: Well, thank you so much for being with us today.
Russanne: Oh, Dorothy, thank you for inviting me.
Dorothy: Of course, it’s sharing your story. It’s a great story.
Russanne: Thank you.
Dorothy: And for being that light, being that hope that so many women need during this time. Thank you again.
Russanne: I’m blessed. And I’m blessed to know you.
Dorothy: Likewise, my dear.
Post-Credits: Thank you for joining us today on Let’s Talk About Your Breasts. This podcast is produced by Speke Podcasting and brought to you by The Rose. Visit therose.org to learn more about our organization. Subscribe to our podcast, share episodes with friends, and join the conversation [00:22:00] using #LetsTalkAboutYourBreasts. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Consider supporting The Rose. Your gift can make the difference to a person in need. Remember, self care is not selfish. It’s essential.
